It seems no one loves a tasteless Christmas jumper quite like the big US sports league – particularly the MLB and the NBA which both ran festive sweater social media contests.
Unsurprisingly, for such image based initiatives these competitions were primarily run across visually-led social media platforms like Snapchat and Pinterest.
Major League Baseball’s ‘Ugly Sweater’ competition ran on Snapchat and Twitter using #MLBUglySweater across @MLB and essentially it simply invited baseball fans to create and post a screenshot of an original MLB-themed ugly sweater image created on Snapchat.
Running for two days between 22 and 23 December, entrants were asked to post entries via a public tweet by @mlb and include the hashtag #MLBuglysweater.
The judging was carried out by staff members of MLB Advanced Media, who selected the three most compelling entries and each winner was awarded a $50 MLB.com Shop gift code as a prize.
The aim was to engage in a little seasonal silliness and essentially to drive fans to add MLB on Snapchat and thus build the league following on the site (see http://t.co/zgmlo499HT).
Meanwhile, the NBA actually launched a set of official ugly sweaters for each franchise through ForeverCollectibles.com and available via the NBA Store at http://store.nba.com/Ugly_Sweaters
Awful team Christmas jumpers – complete with team logos and star player names – that seem to burn the retina and cost around $65.
Of course, we shouldn’t be too surprised at this NBA tactic, after all, the league annually releases special Christmas team shirts which are worn by the players for Christmas Day games.
Yes, the NBA plays on Christmas Day.
There was even a league-wide official sweater hideousness ranking which placed Dwayne Wade’s Miami Heat Christmas Jumper as the worst of all.
Indeed, some teams, such as The Sacramento Kings, truly embraced the seasonal spirit with an ugly sweater night when they hosted the Milwaukee Bucks the week before Christmas for a game carried on the TNT network.
This saw all the Kings players donning the ugly sweaters resulting in a frightening fashion photo gallery tweeted through the club’s official @SacramentoKings Twitter feed.
See http://allball.blogs.nba.com/2014/11/21/the-sacramento-kings-are-really-into-ugly-sweaters/
Comment
Whether it’s the snowy and sparkly embroidery, the festive pompoms, the horrible colour clashes – ghastly Christmas sporting garb was big over the 2014 festive season.
These terrible sweater competitions aim to drive social sports team conversation and Christmas comedy.
Have these once unwanted and mercilessly mocked Christmas fashion faux pas actually become sartorially hip?
Surely not!
Links
MLB Shop
http://shop.mlb.com/helpdesk/index.jsp?display=gift&subdisplay=ogc
MLB Twitter
@MLB
#MLBuglysweater
NBA Store
http://store.nba.com/Ugly_Sweaters
