Sky Sports are keen about cashing on the festive end-of-year mood and are trying different ways for maximizing viewership numbers on their content. Of course, the majority of viewership for the British broadcasting giants comes from football matches (mainly the Premier League) and they’ve secured rights to broadcast a large number of matches in December.
Not only that, but Sky have also struck gold by being able to broadcast all the matches of the 2024/25 PDC World Darts Championships in December to gain the eye of darts enthusiasts. Well, the Public Resource (PR) taem of Sky Sports has started a campaign that tries to attract maximum attention on both the Premier League matches and Dart Championship games broadcast on Sky Sports.
They have created a new advertising campaign with a slogan of ‘Merry Footballdartsmas’ as their unique rendition of “Merry Christmas’. Sky Sports have aired a number of advertisements where they have tried to get this ‘Merry Footballdartsmas’ slogan to get trending and start luring more viewers on their football and darts matches.
Sky Sports created a new advertisement for this featuring starts from the world of football and darts. In this commercial, Arsenal defender William Saliba approaches the viewer and says ‘Christmas is for Football’, before transitioning into Gary Neville wearing a santa hat.
The commercial also features multi-time PDC World Darts Champion Michael van Gerwan throwing a hat at Jamie Carragher and Kelly Cates, while British darts sensation Luke Littler adds ‘And the Darts’ before the ‘Merry Footballdartmas’ slogan is shown telling the viewers to catch all the festive sports action on Sky Sports.
Sky Sports’ advertising team probably felt that this Slogan would become a big hit among viewers, but it’s actually fallen flat on their faces. There have been complaints criticizing this slogan for being very cheesy and something that makes no sense. Fans can’t believe that a major broadcasting giant’s marketing team were lazy enough to just mix three words together in hope that it becomes a trend topic among those watching the commercials on TV or elsewhere.
One fan noted ‘You’re telling me that the marketing group at Sky Sports had a meeting and the best advertising they could think of was ‘Merry Footballdartsmas’. Another annoyed supporter claimed ‘“Footballdartsmas” is the worst advert sky have ever produced. it’s lazy, it doesn’t make any sense and it’s just 2 and a half words pushed together… it sucks and they should do better’.
Another disgruntled viewer complained about the advertisement by claiming ‘Someone at Skysports has actually been paid to come up with ‘Merry Footballdartsmas’. Sky Sports probably thought that they could unite football and darts fans into watching both products with this slogan, but it’s only united the people into criticizing the slogan for being cringeworthy and unoriginal.
Perhaps the backlash is proof that Sky Sports should just look to properly broadcast whatever sports events they cover and present the matches properly. It’s probably high time they stop trying to be cheeky with such shoddy marketing campaigns, which will not really help increase viewership for anything.
