The skit that “missed the mark” occurred in a break in play during the second quarter of Charlotte’s game against the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday. The child was brought onto the court with Hugo, the Hornets’ mascot, dressed as Santa Claus. After a letter to Santa requesting a PS5 was read out loud, a cheerleader came out with a bag containing the video game console.
The young fan was visibly overjoyed as he received the pricy gift. However, according to an online acquaintance, he was less happy when the cameras turned off and a Hornets staffer took it away, replacing it with a jersey.
That one was not on the bingo board.
It comes in the 2025 expansion that nobody asked for. :/
they apologized or gave it back. this apology was planned.
No it wasn’t.
This means there was at least one meeting where this plan was discussed and approved by multiple staffers who have jobs and salaries and manage to find their way to work and back home at night.
I can almost guarantee that one of them wanted the PS5 for themselves, and insisted on swapping it out so they could take the console.
Sometimes psychopaths and other malignant types will purposefully influence a team into a bad move, to try and cast bad light on others who carry it out.
Likely it cost more to have said meeting than the ps5 itself
I think I know where they could have gotten the idea.
In re-runs of old gameshows, it’s not unheard of for them to edit the clips to look like the prize is Insert Sponsor Here, when the prize is actually something different. You can really notice this on Kid’s Gameshows when the prize is something like an Xbox 360 for a gameshow that took place in 2002. (When a PS2 would be fair more likely)
However that’s for RE-RUNS of PRE-TAPED SHOWS, meaning the person who won the original prize got the original prize and original airings would have shown said prize. The only “change” would been purely for advertisement purposes only.
That’s very different from “You’re getting an all-expenses paid trip to the Bahamas!” and then backstage they say “And here’s an old Terminator T-Shirt or something, the one we had in storage that doesn’t have the custard stain.”
Which is very much what this situation was.
They probably heard about this practice and assumed that they could give a fake prize that’s sponsor friendly, and then the real prize is something far less extravagant. Which tells me that they did not run this by their lawyers.
Retro-editing to update products in reruns is an interesting and weird concept, but makes total sense given the perfection paranoia of marketers.
LOL. Cheap bastards. I mean, PS5 is an expensive gift, but not for such an occasion, no?
Why? It’s a few hundred dollars, not a car or something.
The team has revenue in the millions. They’d never have noticed the money. This should be in the dictionary under Penny Wise, Pound Foolish.
That’s coincidentally the name of my last porno.
Kinda reminiscent of various Russian official events involving children.
It could have literally been a tax write off
It could have been a glitch in tax calculator tbh. Not my point. And I agree with you. “LOL. Cheap bastards” was my point.
yeah, anything under 1000 was a rounding error.
Budget lint
Not expensive for a literal NBA team.
Three. Billion. Dollars.
That’s what the team is worth and what it was sold for a year ago…
If a PS5 is too expensive to give away, then don’t pretend to give one away.
I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this.
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Compared to the marketing expenses of even very small companies, a PS5 is so ridiculously cheap that these costs are not even worth mentioning.
I meant expensive for a kid. Of course, yes.
Sure. But the Hornets aren’t interested in the child, they’re only interested in marketing. The only way I can explain this is that either some employee wanted the PS5 and just took it from the kid or the Hornets’ marketing department thinks that even bad publicity is free publicity. Maybe they intentionally planned for the predictable media coverage on this matter because it also brings attention. If the Hornets wanted to buy this kind of exposure, that paltry $500 wouldn’t even begin to cover it.
One of the comments about why
How would this commenter know that?
You want Lemmy adoption… you get folks with stature in the machine sharing mundane recon… you don’t believe anything.
Look, I’m just engaging in critical thinking here. I don’t believe everything I read on the Internet especially since people love just making up random crap just so they can have a story to tell.
That’s fair. I try to do the same. But we suspend belief all the time to survive the shit. Let some light in whether proven and your day might be better 🤷
That’s a Reddit comment though.
Whoosh. Sorry, don’t follow. What do you mean?
The comment in the screen shot is Reddit, not Lemmy.
Source: trust me bro
I mean surely it could be a lie but they just took away a PS5 from a kid…
what? lies? on the internet? why would anyone do such a thing.
Now I feel like I’m back on Reddit.
tips le fedora
No, that’s Red Hat, not Reddit. Easy to get them confused.
I know, right? I’m human like you and totally not a dog
Ew, humans. snarls
It’s entirely plausible this person knows the lady in question.
By having met her.
Yikes.
Unfortunately, this applies to 99% of people in power I know of, if they think they’ll get away with it, they’ll do it.
You don’t usually get into places of power by being thoughtful and considerate.
It’d be nice if people stopped acting like fucking psychos.
$500 for good press or $0 for bad. Looks like Charlotte is as bad at math as they are at basketball.
I’m sure the Chinese made Jersey has some value.
I swear The Boys gets more and more blatant with how evil Corporate America is, but cmon, this episode is just completely ridiculous. Not even Homelander would be that ev…
Wait this happened in a REAL Sportsball game? This is not a bit? sugh
I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed
It’s absolutely amazing to me that they didn’t realize this was gonna cause a backlash.
Right? Like, I don’t understand in what universe did this seem like a good idea?
They actually read the fucking kid’s letter to Santa live at the Stadium, and only pretended to give him a PS5? This is basically bullying the poor guy.
“Ooooh, this is a letter to Santa. My mistake. I thought you meant Satan! Like we would pretend to give you a gift and then Satan would take it away.”
Was it even the kid’s letter to begin with? The whole thing just seems like a setup.
If it was setup, then why the fuck didn’t they just have the letter say he wanted the Jersey of his favorite Hornets player and aovid this shit? That just makes it even more incompetent.
PS5 seems more plausible that a kid would want, in my mind. 🤷♂️ But yeah. Pretending to do anything at all seems like a bad idea to begin with.
That sounds about right, I’ve never gotten anything nice from a hornet. The one time I did get something from a hornet, it was a painful disappointment.
That’s called theft. Legally a gift is irrevocable once it’s given.
He was given an empty box for show, letting him keep it wouldn’t make it any better.
IANAL Warning
Indeed, there was a story a while back where a bar had a contest for their staff; Whoever could sell the most drinks would receive a new Toyota.
Well one woman who really needed a new car busted her ass for that, and was taking to a parking lot where she was given a stuffed toy of Yoda from Star Wars; a “Toy Yoda”
She was told it was a joke and there was never any realistic chance of some local pub giving away new cars to minimum wage staff.
Well she sued over this joke, and actually won because during the contest she specifically asked what kind of Toyota it was and was told by her supervisor; the one who started the contest in the first place. That it very specifically was a real car that would be paid for in full and put in her name at no cost to her. Which invalidated any claim to this being a gag or a hoax.
You can imply that the prize is whatever you want it to be, and give whatever you want the prize to be. But the second you specify what the prize is in no unsubtle terms, you have to give it.
It’s why I can say in a public ad that if you show up to my house wearing a Ballerina Outfit and a Cowboy Hat, and then knock on the door in the rhythm of the BGM “Bloody Tears”, I will give you 100 Grand. You have no case if I hand you a candy bar literally called 100 Grand.
But if I said “That’s right, one hundred thousand dollars in cash!”, that wouldn’t fly and you can take me to court.
But If I stayed on message and only said 100 Grand, using THAT exact phrasing, especially if I make other misleading but accurate claims like it being “100 Grand, yeah that’s something to really sink your teeth into” then what I’m doing is hillarious.
By putting the PS5 Box in the kid’s hands and saying he won a Playstation, that ended any ambiguity, taking away the box and giving him a Jersey was an act of fraud.
She was told it was a joke and there was never any realistic chance of some local pub giving away new cars to minimum wage staff.
I remember that story. It wasn’t a local pub, it was a Hooters. Hooters is an enormous nationwide chain that could easily afford a Camry.
Hooters? Fuck I was told it was just some pub, that makes it 5000 times worse
Certainly possible it happened again at a local pub, but the one I’m familiar with was Hooters
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/former-hooters-waitress-settles-toy-yoda-lawsuit/
Yeah, I remember it as hooters too
They never intended on giving the kid the gift. If they allowed them to go home with the PS5, and then requested it back the next day, then the family would have a good argument that ownership was transferred to them. This was just a bad joke.
Edit: on lemmy.world it’s like I never left reddit!
Intent matters but not if the intent was to deceive. If the act had all the elements that represent giving a gift, then legally it WAS giving a gift. Otherwise all gifts could be taken back at any time just by claiming that it was actually a joke.
That’s utter nonsense. A gift only counts if you make it home with the gift? Where did you come up with that?
The donor of the gift must have a present intent to make a gift of the property to the donee
Intent needs to be proven or it’s not a gift. They did not intend on giving a gift.
The cheerleader and other people around were reportedly also confused when the PS5 was confiscated. The child’s uncle was apparently informed he wouldn’t get to keep the gift, but not the child himself.
They unfortunately made the kid fully believe their whole intent was to give him the gift. That’s so sad for the kid. :(
I wonder how this would play out in court, though. The company can argue that it was the uncle’s responsibility to inform the kid as he was with him, but the kid’s parents can argue the uncle wasn’t his legal guardian and that he needed to be informed personally to play along.
Idk, this armchair is comfy though. lol
They couldn’t argue it was the Uncles responsibility to tell the child. The Uncle was told, and would also have been told to not tell the child. They set out to make the child believe they got the PlayStation because they wanted the reaction from the child.
I’m guessing it’s based on the rules of the schoolyard game to run from one side of a field to the other while avoiding the corporate bullies in the center.
Why would the act of going home change the legality? Or intent?
If i take a $20 bill and hand it to a stranger in front of witnesses and say, “Here you go, this is a gift.”
If in 5 mins, I snatch that bill back and walk away. That’s legal? Because he didn’t touch his house first, and I never had intent to give a gift?
It’s like a game of tag, once an item is exchanged you best start running home!
That’s why birthday parties are traditionally held at home
Source: I made it up
Don’t be defensive. I didn’t downvote you, but when you pull false claims out of your ass that make no sense, that’s going to happen…
How is my claim false?
because you said they never intended on giving the kid the gift. It doesn’t matter what they intended. They literally did give the kid the gift. and it isn’t a joke in any sense of the word. They gave the kid a gift, turned off the cameras, and took it back and gave him something else. That’s just theft. It’s not a joke, there’s nobody that would see it as a joke, it’s not even possible to interpret it as a joke, as who would be the audience?
Gift law, what the original person was talking about, literally states that the donor must intend on giving the gift.
The donor of the gift must have a present intent to make a gift of the property to the donee.
If you come over to my house and say “hey, nice PS5” and I say “you want it? It’s yours!” and then before you leave I say “I was just joking, you can’t leave with my PS5.” You really think you can go to the police and have me charged with theft?
If you did it on fucking tv then yes, you absolutely can, you’ve made your intent clear to tens of thousands, if not millions of people. You don’t get to take the intent back when the cameras turn off. The timing here matters.
That’s mixing up actions with intent. Their actions made it seem like it was a gift, sure. Their intent was that it was a prank. They even told the uncle it was a prank from the start.
If I go to a store an stick a PS5 into my jacket I can’t be charged with theft. It looks like theft, but intent to steal needs to be shown. How do they know my intent isn’t to pay for it? It’s not theft until I leave the store without paying. Just like sticking a PS5 into my jacket isn’t instantly theft, handing someone a PS5 isn’t instantly a gift. Actions and intent are different things.
The article has been updated to say they’re actually giving the kid a PS5 because of the bad press so in the end they’re doing the right thing anyways.
I feel like this is so boneheaded that it has to be the case where the staff member in charge of this giveaway just wanted to keep the PS5 themselves and thought the kids wouldn’t complain about the ol’ switcheroo! This just even sounds like something Michael Scott would have done in The Office.
No, Michael Scott is a moron, not a jackass. He wouldn’t pull this shit. He’s tone deaf, he constantly thinks he’s doing the right thing without realizing why what he’s doing has the opposite of the intended effect even when it’s obvious to everyone else. Giving a kid something he wants and then taking it away when no one’s look is a move of calculated evil.
He’d imply heavily a PS5 then give the kid a Jersey, at no point would he actually have the thing in the kid’s hand and then take it back.
Maybe that’s just me, but I don’t see Michael Scott as a character that would knowingly choose to do something immoral. He’d do a bad deed, but without realizing it.
Mike Scott’s more the “We’re taking away free tampons on the women’s room, because we just don’t have the money for luxury goods.” type, who’s then baffled when he’s called sexist because he legitimately believed tampons were a luxury. Not the “Promote a woman? Are you insane? This is a man’s office sweetheart!” type.
I could totally see Dwight taking the PS5 for himself and mocking the kid over it though. Even then he’d do it out of Chaos, not Evil.
Top tier analysis. Thank you.
I’ve been playing as Michael Scott in that Funko Fusion game, I’ve been doing “The Thing” stages as him, because it’s the funniest thing I can imagine happening.
It has gotten me thinking a lot about the character and how he’d behave.
Ah so you are classically trained.
Season 1 Michael was a bit more of a jackass though. Maybe he could’ve done it.
Michael kidnapped a pizza delivery boy because he didn’t want to pay full prize. This fits right in.
I bet the price of that console was going to break their bank.
I guess I’ll continue not watching basketball or football or whatever
“Did you see that ludicrous display last night?”
The thing about Arsenal is they always try to walk it in!
Yeah. Fuck this noise. I’m boycotting the Hornets. You won’t catch me at a Hornets Football match!
The only conceivable explanation is that the person who planned this sees audience members as less than human.
Psych!
Reminds me of the time some asshole tried to switch some kid who was meant to walk out on the field with Zlatan with his own and got caught Link: https://youtu.be/NFYN3bY0kc8
