Atari's involvement with sports teams

[JayAre]

In 1982, Atari sponsored a Bill Madlock "signed" Pittsburgh Pirates promotional baseball bat.  There was also an Atari 1983 Pirates pocket schedule.  There are a couple of online videos for TV ads from 1982 featuring Chuck Tanner, the Pirates manager at that time.  One ad is for an Atari Fireworks Night promotion at a Pirates home game, while the other is an ad for 2600 Pac-Man; the ad takes place in the Pirates clubhouse.  I thought all this Atari/Pirates cross-marketing was really interesting, so I did a little research, and I see that Warner Communications (which owned Atari at that time) had 48% ownership of the team from 1982-1986.  Atari's involvement with the Pirates now makes sense, considering the relationship between the two brands.  Also in 1982, Atari partnered with another Pittsburgh sports team, this time the Penguins.  And the result was the Atari Street Hockey Stick.

 

Atari also sponsored a trio of promotional baseball bats with the names of Jack Clark, Joe Morgan and Chili Davis of the San Francisco Giants.  And there's also a 45rmp record from 1982 with the Atari logo featuring the Giants version of the song "Talkin' Baseball".  I assume these two Giants promotions came about due to the proximity of San Francisco to Atari's headquarters in Sunnyvale; the two cities are about 41 miles apart.  It seems that all the promotional items mentioned above were giveaways at games.

 

I've also seen a New York Cosmos duffle bag with the Atari logo.  And finally, in 1983, Atari ran a centerfold ad in magazines promoting a sweepstakes.  Each ad featured the 1983 season schedule for either one or two MLB teams.  I've seen several of these ads, each with different teams, so it's possible that every major league club was represented in the ads.

 

Based on the items above, Atari ran promotions with MLB, NHL and even a pro soccer team.  But, that I know of, no involvement with the NFL or NBA, interestingly enough.

 

I don't know if Atari partnered with any other sports teams, but it's possible.  Has anyone seen any other Atari promotions/merchandise featuring specific sports teams?  Thanks.

[jhd]

On 7/22/2019 at 2:13 PM, JayAre said:

I thought all this Atari/Pirates cross-marketing was really interesting, so I did a little research, and I see that Warner Communications (which owned Atari at that time) had 48% ownership of the team from 1982-1986.

 

Between this and all of the entities involved with the Swordquest contest, Warner was seemingly really involved with cross-promoting all of their various properties! 

[Shawn]

They got Pele to sign off on his likeness for Soccer (football) for a while.

[davyK]

In the 80s Atari sponsored a "Soccer Six" tournament that was televised for a few years in the UK.

 

It was an indoor 6 a side variation.  5 a side indoor is very popular here in the UK as a participant sport but the Atari event was supported by professional soccer/football 11-a-side league teams who put teams together just for the event. The matches were sellouts and the TV audiences were in the millions.

 

It worked until UK teams were allowed back into European mainland competitions - the ban had been put in place because of English supporter violence in Europe.

Edited July 27, 2019 by davyK

[Flojomojo]

Pete Rose Baseball comes to mind. I would assume the Phillies would have had something to say about that. 

 

I wasn't aware of those other promotions and partnerships. Seemed to me that only Mattel Intellivision was interested in licensing the official sport league names at the time. Maybe they tied things up with some kind of exclusivity arrangement?

[+KaeruYojimbo]

4 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

Pete Rose Baseball comes to mind. I would assume the Phillies would have had something to say about that.

Pete Rose Baseball was released by Absolute in December 1988 (according to Random Terrain), when Rose was managing the Reds and just a few months before the investigation into his gambling began. He also, of course, appeared in this early Atari TV commercial. I'm no expert on sports endorsements, but I feel fairly comfortable saying teams have pretty minimal input if any when it comes to an individual player's sponsorship deals. Generally those are agreements made between the player and the company, going back to the days when pro athletes weren't bazillionaires and had to find ways to make ends meet during the off season.

[Flojomojo]

Oops! Wrong company, wrong team, wrong game!! I was conflating this with Super Baseball from Atari or maybe the fancier baseball title for Intellivision. I stand corrected. And now I'll sit down. 

[JayAre]

On 7/26/2019 at 3:24 PM, jhd said:

 

Between this and all of the entities involved with the Swordquest contest, Warner was seemingly really involved with cross-promoting all of their various properties! 

Great point.  Warner owned (and still owns) DC Comics, which produced the comic books for the Swordquest series.  And, at the time, Warner also owned the Franklin Mint, which produced the prizes for the contest.

 

16 hours ago, Shawn said:

They got Pele to sign off on his likeness for Soccer (football) for a while.

Maybe Atari's sponsorship of the New York Cosmos duffle bag came about due to Pele having played with the Cosmos and Atari's previous commercial relationship with him through the release of the Pele's Soccer game.

 

7 hours ago, davyK said:

In the 80s Atari sponsored a "Soccer Six" tournament that was televised for a few years in the UK.

 

It was an indoor 6 a side variation.  5 a side indoor is very popular here in the UK as a participant sport but the Atari event was supported by professional soccer/football 11-a-side league teams who put teams together just for the event. The matches were sellouts and the TV audiences were in the millions.

 

It worked until UK teams were allowed back into European mainland competitions - the ban had been put in place because of English supporter violence in Europe.

I had forgotten all about this one.  Really interesting.  Thanks for the details on the tournament.

Edited July 27, 2019 by JayAre

[JayAre]

This isn't exactly what my original post was about, but it's pretty close, so I decided to update the thread.  Below is a magazine ad that recently appeared on eBay.  As I mentioned before in the thread, Atari ran promotions with MLB and the NHL.  But from I've seen, nothing with the NFL or NBA.  The attached ad is the result of some partnership between Atari and the USFL.  Maybe Atari tried to strike a deal with the NFL but was unable to, and decided to go with the USFL instead.

 

I had never seen this before and thought it was pretty interesting.  I thought you guys might want to see it.

 

Go Maulers!

 

 

 

Edited April 2, 2020 by JayAre

[carlsson]

It appears that Algavision (Swedish agent for Atari) sponsored the division 2 team Djurgårdens IF Fotboll in the 1983 season (spring to fall).

 

This was a rough year even over here. Bonnier owned the board game company Alga and its sibling Algavision which handled Atari video games and computers. These businesses made a lot of losses so Bonnier had to sell both: Alga to Brio later in 1983 and Vasatronic (Algavision after renaming it) to Proventus in early 1984. From there it quickly went downhill and Atari as a brand was almost eradicted from the Swedish market for at least 2 years.

Edited May 11, 2020 by carlsson

[JayAre]

Carlsson, thank you so much for this information.  The details you provided were very interesting.

[fultonbot]

Warner boss Steve Ross had a financial interest in the Cosmos and PELE, which is probably why PELE's name showed-up on the VCS soccer game. Probably another example of Ross using Atari resources to further other parts of business.

[devwebcl]

http://manillismo.blogspot.com/2016/04/camisetas-de-futbol.html

 

French team