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The Boston Red Sox cable station stopped airing a Graham Platner campaign ad that criticized the team’s ownership during Friday night’s game because it violated the network’s intellectual property rules, a representative said.
The 15-second television spot, which blamed private equity for the team’s recent slump, “included unauthorized use of third-party intellectual property and did not comply with NESN’s advertising standards,” a spokesperson for the New England Sports Network said in a statement to the Bangor Daily News. Red Sox owner John Henry’s sports and entertainment conglomerate has a majority ownership stake in the network.
The spokesperson did not specify which components of the ad broke the station’s rules, although it featured text closely resembling the Red Sox font. On Saturday, the Platner campaign released a statement implying that the ad’s messaging influenced the network’s decision to take it down.
“We ran an ad during last night’s Red Sox game exposing how private equity is making everything in our lives worse, and it got pulled midway through the game by a station owned by Red Sox ownership,” the Saturday statement read. “And of course, the Red Sox blew a 4-0 lead to lose the game.”
Platner, a progressive oyster farmer from Sullivan and the presumptive Democratic nominee to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins this fall in a race that will help decide control of the U.S. Senate, has made attacks on billionaires central to his insurgent campaign.
In the ad, the lines of text and the candidate’s deep voiceover casts private equity as a destructive force in American life, ruining everything from the housing market to beloved sports franchises like the Sox. Boston has gone from one of the best to worst teams in the league, fueling fan frustration that its billionaire owner is a better steward of his business portfolio than the team’s success.
