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Brands & Merch Business News
NFL bans Beats
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 7 October 2014
The NFL has announced that it is banning players and the like from wearing Beats headphones on camera during broadcasts of its American football games. This follows the signing of a new sponsorship deal with rival hi-fi equipment manufacturer Bose. Though that’s nothing to do with it, right?
An NFL spokesperson told Re/code: “The NFL has longstanding policies that prohibit branded exposure on-field or during interviews unless authorised by the league. These policies date back to the early 1990s and continue today. They are the NFL’s policies – not one of the league’s sponsors, Bose in this case. Bose is not involved in the enforcement of our policies. This is true for others on-field”.
“Over the last few years athletes have written Beats into their DNA as part of the pre-game ritual”, a Beats spokesperson responded, in apparent seriousness. “Music can have a significant positive effect on an athlete’s focus and mental preparedness and has become as important to performance as any other piece of equipment”.
Hilarious. As previously reported, earlier this year World Cup footballers were also banned from wandering around with Beats headphones on their heads. We’re still waiting for the research to come in that will confirm whether or not that affected their “focus and mental preparedness”.
