Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2003 | 11:13 a.m.
The National Football League has drop-kicked Super Bowl television advertisements promoting Las Vegas as a resort destination because the state allows people to wager on football games in its sports books.
The ads, which were to be shown publicly for the first time today at a Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority meeting, feature interviews of people talking about the good times they had in Las Vegas and do not depict people gambling.
The ads, titled "Vegas Stories," were produced by R&R Partners, the LVCVA's contracted advertising agency, and were directed by Brian Buckley, who supervised ESPN's "This Is SportsCenter" campaign.
One ad portrays a group of Shriners in a coffee shop talking about the wild time they had the night before, according to an LVCVA executive who has seen the finished product.
The Super Bowl game, which is television's most-watched event, pits the champions of the National Football Conference against the winners of the American Football Conference. This year's game, Super Bowl XXXVII, will be played in San Diego and it is slated to air on the afternoon of Jan. 26 on ABC. Games to be played Sunday will determine which two teams will be in the game.
Many wags have said advertisements during the Super Bowl are as entertaining as the game itself. Some of the most creative advertising campaigns have been saved for the Super Bowl so that they can be on television's largest stage. About 131.7 million people watched at least part of the New England Patriots' upset win over the St. Louis Rams last year and advertising rates have jumped to $2.1 million for a 30-second spot this year.
Among the advertisers for this year's game are H&R Block, which will have a spot featuring country singer and frequent Las Vegas entertainer Willie Nelson refusing to do a tacky shaving cream commercial until he's told he has tax problems.
Action actor Jackie Chan and Washington Wizards basketball star Michael Jordan will be featured in an ad for Hanes tagless T-shirts in another high-profile campaign.
Other companies fielding Super Bowl ads include Anheuser-Busch, FedEx, Visa, General Motors, AT&T Wireless, Yahoo!, Gatorade, Sony and Levi Strauss.
The game also delivers one of Las Vegas' biggest betting weekends, anticipated by casinos as one of the year's biggest money-makers. Thousands of football fans crowd into the city on Super Bowl weekend to party and to watch the game and place wagers on dozens of proposition bets that have become synonymous with the excitement the event generates.
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said Monday that Las Vegas' commercial was rejected last month after league officials reviewed it, though he did not specify why the league turned down the ad.
However, an August memorandum from the NFL to ABC clarifies the league's position.
The memorandum from Dennis Lewin, senior vice president of broadcasting and network television for the NFL to John Wildhack, senior vice president of programming for ESPN, a sister company to ABC, discusses the contractual restriction on gambling-related advertising on NFL programming.
"The reason for these contractual restrictions is our concern that an association between the NFL and gambling -- even in an advertising context -- could have a uniquely negative effect on the public's perception of our sport, its integrity and our athletes," said Lewin, who noted that the league's policy is more stringent than federal law and network standards and practices policies.
"There is obviously a further concern with respect specifically to ads relating to Las Vegas, because that is the only location in the country which operates legal sports books, and where there's extensive betting in connection with both NFL games generally and the Super Bowl in particilar," the memo said. "We have disfavored Las Vegas tourism ads of this kind in the past because of the sports book issue and would be particularly sensitive to airing such an ad in connection with the Super Bowl."
"The league office decided that the commercial was not in our best interest," McCarthy said from NFL offices in New York Monday. "The NFL has a long-standing policy that prohibits the acceptance of any message that makes reference to or mention of sports betting."
McCarthy said the NFL has a contract with ABC that gives the league the right to reject any advertisement related to sports betting.
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, a member of the LVCVA board of directors, ridiculed the NFL's decision in a recent radio broadcast.
Goodman criticized the league for its stance, saying it should focus more on repairing image problems that have been generated by bad-boy athletes who have had serious run-ins with the law.
The most serious involve Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, who played in the 2001 Super Bowl after being acquitted in a double murder case in 2000 and former Carolina Panthers defensive back Rae Carruth, who is serving time in prison for the shooting death of his pregnant girlfriend.
Goodman questioned the league's move at this morning's LVCVA meeting, noting that newspapers across the country publish the betting line for NFL games.
"It's a slap in our face and it's hypocrisy at its highest," Goodman said. "They'd better get their house in order."
Goodman also pointed out that the NFL apparently has no problem being associated with a beer ad campaign depicting two women who tear each other's clothes off and wrestle in the mud over whether the product tastes great or is less filling.
That ad has even caught the attention of Morality in Media, a New York-based organization that encourages the enforcement of obscenity laws and decency standards on television advertising and Internet websites.
"I know I wouldn't sell beer that way," said Patrick McGrath of Morality in Media.
McGrath said because the Las Vegas ad campaign doesn't deal with pornography or obscenity, his organization probably wouldn't get involved with it.
"If I were the head of the NFL, I wouldn't have any problem with the Las Vegas ad as you've described it," McGrath said. "If there's an ad out there worth protesting, it would be the beer commercial, not something about people sitting around and talking about having a good time in Las Vegas."
The Associated Press
contributed to this report.
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