No Casino Advertisements for Bears

There has been a new league policy put in place for the NFL, currently allowing casino advertisements to be featured on the stadium, which is something that has never been allowed before. Under this new policy, tons of NFL teams are going to be taking advantage of the opportunity to advertise for casinos but the Chicago Bears will not be one of those teams. In fact, the Chicago Bears have decided that they are not going to participate in closing any advertisement deals with different casinos due to the values of the team and its players. The Vice President for Sales and Marketing, Chris Hibbs, recently said, “From a business partner perspective, we’re lucky to have a ‘less is more’ philosophy where our focus is on top, blue chip brands that are highly associated with us.” He also said, “Adding to that, an entity in gambling doesn’t feel like a fit to me, and I would surmise that some of our blue chip brands would feel the same way.”

At this point in time, there are plenty of other teams who are willing to become partners with different casinos through advertisement deals. In fact, there are two particular casinos, the Horseshoe Casino and the Rivers Casino, both of which have campaigns featured in and around the area of Chicago. The Chicago Bears decision means that they will not be going ahead with the possibility of earning around $2 million but the Bears believe they can earn plenty of advertisement revenue from other sources and sponsors, without having to go against the original values of the team. “I’m sure there is a good group of teams out there scraping for every dollar,” Hibbs has said. “But it’s a pretty good position to be in to say our values trump the revenue.” The decision definitely looks good for the Chicago Bears and shows how committed they are to sticking true to their values.

Even so, the Bears are just one of a few of the teams in the NFL who will end up missing out on the opportunity to make millions each year. This means that the team will now have to consider other unique and innovative approaches for generative extra revenue since they are passing up on the casino advertisement deal. Many are still wondering how many different teams in the NFL are going to embrace the idea of casino advertisements, especially since the deals are going to be worth nearly a million dollars a year and possibly even more than that.