How the Hard Rock Hotel is promoting the Big Game

When a local reporter gets tapped to cover a professional sports championship, its a plum of an assignment that makes up for all those miserable quarters of high school football in the sleet, or the mind-numbing innings of a pitching dual.

What makes covering the championship of the National Football League unique, is that depending on your lawyers’ interpretation of copyright and trademark laws, these reporters may not be able to specifically name the event they are covering. That’s the case of Mike Ruzzi and Jay Puskar, whose station WICU will broadcast the Pro Football Championship Sunday evening. In a spot promoting their coverage from Indianapolis, the talk is all about the Championship and the Big Game.

In a Chicago Tribune article Wednesday, the paper quotes an NFL spokesman regarding protecting their trademarked phrase “Super Bowl”, “When we become aware of a potential violation, we will be very aggressive, and sending a cease and desist letter would be the first step.”

In a 2008 newsletter to its clients, broadcast law firm Leventhal, Senter & Lerman warned that:

Without express permission from the NFL or the teams, you may not use the following, or related protected
words or logos in marketing or promotions:

• “Super Bowl”
• “Super Sunday”
• The Super Bowl logo
• “NFL”, “AFC”, or “NFC”
• “National Football League”
• “American Football Conference”
• “National Football Conference”
• Any team name (e.g., “Patriots”) or nickname (“Pats”)

The law firm goes on to indicate that stations can’t even give away tickets to the game in a promotion, even if they paid for them; it’s one of the terms and conditions on the ticket itself.

I’m quite sure that the verbal gymnastics Mike and Jay might occasionally enter into won’t diminish the coolness of one of the best assignments of their careers…at the big game in Indianapolis.