So early on the Friday morning before the Super Bowl, Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile, tweeted, “Well this is fun… one of our @TMobile commercials was BANNED from the big game on Sunday.
Want to see it anyway…? You’re in luck! We’re giving it to the @TODAYshow to air today at 8am ET!!”
The ad featured the Tampa Bay Buccaneers legendary quarterback Tom Brady and his longtime teammate Rob Gronkowski.
In the commercial, set before Brady came to Tampa, the pair are on the phone talking about Brady’s future and possible retirement. Because the call breaks up, Brady hears Gronk, who is encouraging him to retire, tell him that he’s “soft” and “weak” and should come to Florida to “win another one,” meaning Super Bowl.
Brady agrees, and announces that Gronk, who had retired, would play with him again.
According to an industry publication, T-Mobile made several revisions to the ad, but still got a thumbs down from Verizon, the NFL’s official telecom sponsor.
The conventional wisdom was that someone – either the NFLor CBS — wanted to avoid a conflict with a sponsor.
Yet two other T-Mobile commercials – one featuring singers Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton, and another with actor Anthony Anderson, his real-life mother and Kansas City Chief Travis Kelce – did air.
Asked about the discrepancy, T-Mobile’s Chief Marketing Officer Matt Staneff told Ad Age magazine, “We are scratching our heads here.”
Liberals, it should be noted, have widely denounced Brady for his support for former President Donald Trump.