As not a fan of professional sports, every time I see a sports game on TV, I feel like the game itself is secondary. It absolutely feels like an advertising show with the unimportant addition of people playing something.
Which sports, specifically? I watch football and rugby and while both have a lot of advertising (in stadia and on jerseys) TV coverage is still very clearly focussed on the sport itself
Precisely.
I used to be an avid Arsenal fan, but now it seems that I would support "Emirates Fly Better". The fact that it's on every player's shirt one might say that "TV coverage is still very clearly focussed on the shirt itself".
I do enjoy admitting, their website https://www.arsenal.com/ is rather tastefully done (I turned off all extensions to have a good look), though. And 'Visit Rwanda' doesn't seem to such be a bad thing, though I couldn't find an Emirates flight to there.
Shirt sponsors aren't not a particularly new thing, though. But I guess in the past Arsenal in particular had sponsors with slightly less controversial owners - iirc JVC and SEGA/Dreamcast weren't directly involved in any slave labour controversies or human rights abuses like the UAE is :)
And gay rights, which both the UAE and Rwanda (where gay sex is legal now, but just another case where the gov has changed the law to appeal to Western sensibilities but sentiments of the public have no changed) are terrible at.
