Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like soccer (football). I don’t like most sports. It’s not so much a sport itself, but rather the mass-marketing and the mass-marketed-to people surrounding teamed ‘n themed sporting franchises that puts me off.
I find conversations from people engaged by mass-marketed team sports to be clichéd, hyperbolic, robotic and grossly uncreative. In other words, people talking about sports bore me to tears. Within 1-minute of someone talking about and/or watching sports I’ve pretty much left the room.
Needless to say, I’ve watched zero seconds of World Cup action thus far.
Then why would someone like me, who hasn’t watched or cared about 3-seconds of World Cup action, (almost) buy a U.S. Soccer team/franchise jersey?
Because the purchase of a U.S. Soccer jersey meant something to me. It spoke to my ego. A single picture of a customized soccer jersey fed my ego and my self-centeredness, along with my need for instant gratification.
The U.S. Soccer team jersey I almost bought was cute, in a patriotic red, white and blue. Best of all it was customized. On a mock-up photo, auto-generated on Twitter to get my attention, “my” jersey had my Twitter name (@SpaceyG) stamped across the back.
I wanted that thing. And to be mine, it was just a few more taps ‘n swipes away on my iPhone. An impulse sale was almost made in a mobile environment, something very hard to do, so it seems.
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