Paddy Power continued its impressive run of guerilla stunts ambushing major sporting events when Denmark striker Nicklas Bendtner pulled down his shorts as a goal celebration – revealing the betting brand’s logo on his underwear.
After scoring his second goal in the game against Portugal on Wednesday, he pulling down his shorts to reveal the bookie company’s advertising logo and brand colours on his underwear in what was surely a pre-planned move.
After all, the Irish bookmakers instantly rolled out a press release drawing attention to the stunt.
The stunt is a clear contradiction to the rules governing advertising in the competition and Danish FA spokesman Lars Berendt said: ‘We have an exclusive deal and this is of course a breach of it and it’s also a breach of UEFA’s commercial rules, rules against exposing personal messages. “Nicklas Bendtner has assured us that he will pay attention to respect the regulations and contracts made by UEFA and DBU for this tournament.’
Bendtner himself made a token effort to maintain his innocence, saying: ‘I was happy after having scored to make it 2-2, so I celebrated like I normally do, but it was not a conscious thing on my part. It was simply some underwear that gave a little luck’.
Both UEFA and the Danish FA will take a critical view of ambush and have warned the Arsenal/Sunderland player not to repeat the act again and have issued a one-match ban and a hefty fine.
While Paddy Power has said it will pay Bendtner’s £80,000 fine, there is nothing it can do about his ban from Denmark’s next competitive game – a World Cup qualifier against the Czech Republic in September.
One would imagine that this would be a one-off stunt as far as the player himself is concerned. Otherwise it could well lead to the end of his international career.
Comment:
For the Irish bookie, this is the second ambush campaign at the 2012 Euros.
The player pants incident follows an ambient/experiential stunt that saw it send a ‘record breaking’ oversized vuvuzela truck onto the streets of London to leverage the competition, drum up support for England and generate free PR coverage.
The idea behind the stunt was to generate publicity by attempting to wind up Swedish fans by parking the nine metre long vuvuzela truck and honking the horn at the following Swedish-related London hotspots: outside Swedish furniture retail giant Ikea, by the doors to Swedish musical Mama Mia and outside the Swedish Embassy.
The creative idea is based on the fact that UEFA banned the vuvuzela from stadiums in Poland and the Ukraine during Euro 2012 following their widespread use at the World Cup in South Africa in 2010.
The stunt supports a TV and online spot for the brand that also features the same vehicle.
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