The 2024-2025 NHL season is 33 days away and groups are on the point of hit the ice for coaching camps.
However an off-ice partnership is befuddling followers of the crew positioned within the nation’s capital.
On Monday, the Washington Capitals introduced that they had signed a three-year partnership with the favored and controversial social media app TikTok, making it the official sponsor of their away sweaters.
The app’s emblem will seem as a patch on the precise shoulder of the crew’s white away jerseys. Washington partnered with popular sportsbook Caesars in 2021 to have it sponsor the purple house sweaters with a patch.
Partnering with TikTok is a dangerous enterprise
The three-year deal Washington signed with TikTok will both repay as every other branding deal does or it might fall flat on its face, particularly if the app is banned by the federal authorities.
TikTok’s dad or mum firm, ByteDance, relies in China. In April, President Joe Biden signed a overseas help bundle handed by Congress that included a provision forcing the company to sell the app to a U.S. purchaser inside 9 months or face a nationwide ban.
Almost 5 months later, ByteDance nonetheless has not bought TikTok with a ban on the desk. Both Washington proprietor Ted Leonsis is aware of one thing all of us do not or TikTok provided a quantity he merely could not refuse within the quick time period.
Is TikTok utilizing hockey to foyer?
The ironic a part of all that is that if a ban on TikTok does take impact, the app’s emblem would seem on the jersey of the crew representing the nation’s capital — its enviornment positioned blocks from Congress and the president that banned it.
Even additional, the emblem would seem on the highway in cities and states the place people voted for the representatives that handed stated ban.
So, is the partnership only a 4D chess transfer to foyer the general public to stop the ban from going down? ByteDance’s deadline would take impact about midway by means of the NHL season.
If you consider it, it is form of a wise transfer. However now Washington dangers public scrutiny falling on its enterprise decisions as a substitute of specializing in the abilities of its gamers, presenting a possible preseason distraction.
