Without Beer, People are Going to Find Out

[John Brown]

The good old english language, two words **** and pawn both sound the same with multiple different meanings !

Not in all regional dialects. In Scotland, I have heard, the words "floor" and "flaw" are not homophones. Nor are they for my wife, who is from Washington State. She, however, pronounces "Mary", "merry" and "marry" identically.
Luckily, I can usually work out the intended meaning from the context.
Fats Waller exploits the "merry" "Mary" thing in his song about Mr Christopher Columbus.

 

[John Brown]

When I was in the video game business, many moons ago, Taito(IIRC) produced an arcade/pub video game called Field Goal, which was based on American football. It was a resounding flop in the UK, and we bought a number of the PCBs for next to nothing, and wrote some code to repurpose them as RTTY (Radio Teletype) and Morse decoder/displays.
I really can't remember what sort of beer I drank at the time, but I'm 100% certain it wasn't Budweiser. Probably Fuller's London Pride.

 

[D_W]

When I was in the video game business, many moons ago, Taito(IIRC) produced an arcade/pub video game called Field Goal, which was based on American football. It was a resounding flop in the UK, and we bought a number of the PCBs for next to nothing, and wrote some code to repurpose them as RTTY (Radio Teletype) and Morse decoder/displays.
I really can't remember what sort of beer I drank at the time, but I'm 100% certain it wasn't Budweiser. Probably Fuller's London Pride.

Can you translate what fuller's london pride is for an American?

I can't imagine that anything football would've gone over well in the UK. I know there have been a sparse few american football fans over there, but talk about trying to make market share make sense in a place where nobody would be interested!!

We did have fifa soccer...I think. Maybe not.

Tecmo bowl was the nintendo football dominator over here and there were a couple of baseball games that did well - the original Nintendo one did OK, and then RBI baseball also did well.

Selling football over there would be like selling Cricket here. Nobody would know what the rules are except people in academia from asia and england.

 

[D_W]

(though I wouldn't be surprised if the NFL itself paid video game distributors to try to introduce its product there. There have been more NFL games broadcast from europe and England lately than I can remember. Maybe you can make some laws about 10% advertisement time or something so that the games would actually be watchable here).

 

[D_W]

Side comment while waiting for "london pride's" description - in the US, anything that has the words "pride" or "deluxe" is not usually well named.

Unless they mean for people who have "no pride" and who on the deluxe side of things, wouldn't know what deluxe is. Car makers started pretty early on calling the really cheap stripped models "custom" or "custom deluxe" to try to make people think they weren't entry level, or make it feel better "well sir, we really don't have an entry level. We only sell nice things - the custom deluxe is the lowest priced model we have".

 

[John Brown]

https://www.fullers.co.uk/explore-our-beers/london-pride

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The good old english language, two words **** and pawn both sound the same with multiple different meanings !

They both sound the same? Not where I live they don't. Ooh arrrr ...

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I don't find it at all odd that American football, basketball and baseball have virtually no following anywhere else in the world. I am surprised, though, that soccer and cricket have any following at all - I'd sooner stuff bees up my nose than watch either.

 

[D_W]

I don't find it at all odd that American football, basketball and baseball have virtually no following anywhere else in the world. I am surprised, though, that soccer and cricket have any following at all - I'd sooner stuff bees up my nose than watch either.

basketball is fun to play - makes you feel like you're doing something. baseball, also fun to play, and fun to watch in person if you played it. But I get enough of it with a game every couple of years - it's more a spectacle of unusual elite athleticism, like some guy picking a ball up near a fence and throwing it 300 feet in the air. but I think the real purpose of it is to have something to put between commercials on cable TV, too. I can't imagine that even as expensive as tickets are now, they are a large share of the total revenue.

To watch basketball on TV for me is intolerable, same with hockey (look away Tony Z if you ever venture down here!) and maybe it's the phone thing, but baseball has gone all to cable TV local sports channels now, anyway, that I refuse to pay for. By the phone thing, I mean where I grew up, I could get three different MLB markets over the air (literal aerial) and there probably was a little less commercial time and more between inning commentary, but also, I hadn't been exposed to smart phones to make a 2 minute break an instant mental demand for something else to do.

With cricket, the automatic reaction here is "why don't they just play baseball", and for cricket fans, probably the same about baseball players who would be better off playing cricket.

 

[Blackswanwood]

They claim they are independent

https://budweiserbudvar.com/uk/#

There were two local Czech breweries wrapped up in the dispute over the name. AB InBev own only one of them. The other was state owned and I think still is.

Basically if it’s in a green bottle it’s proper Czech beer either called Budvar or Budweiser Budvar and okay to drink. If it’s in a brown bottle it’s the US recipe of fizzy watered down urine that in the UK is produced in Enfield, Lancashire and South Wales.

 

[D_W]

untappd (a site I've admittedly never heard of before) puts it around the same as yuengling lager here in terms of score, which is solid middle of the road.

Something like average 3.5 of 5 stars.

budweiser is 2.6.

there's a whole lot of territory to get down to that low.

Budvar is 3.3

Gives me a good idea.

 

[D_W]

following up that post, which was saved in my text box and I forgot to post earlier - come to find out, getting much above 3.5 isn't so easy.

The bad beers are in the 2s.

Budweiser carefully curates their "american" red label beer and such stuff, and they are just outright (my opinion on this word) predatory in distribution in the US - a nasty example - my opinion again - of practicing "we have the bigger wallet" and requesting other beers to be moved around on shelves out of the line of sight, etc.

And they are not an american company. They're belgian owned - it looks like they long ago absorbed miller, but none of those are a threat to drain energy from my fridge.

 

[MikeJhn]

but I think the real purpose of it is to have something to put between commercials on cable TV

Meant to say above, that's funny.

 

[Jester129]

@Spectric most of the Premiership big team players apparently have their wages paid into offshore accounts so that they pay zero tax!
No wonder Ronaldo et al are so rich, eh?

 

[Johnwa]

I wouldnt think it was Budvar, if the morons drank real beer like that then the Quatari's would have some trouble on their hands!

 

[PhilipL]

It wouldn’t surprise me if it had always been the plan, just leave it till it’s too late to do anything about it. I also very much doubt Budweiser would have invested $75 million if they’d been told that at the start

They have had plenty of global PR now.

 

[Doug B]

Read this this morning by Mark Steel, made me smile
https://apple.news/Al-PClgTxTJi7iaJv4wy2GQ

 

[John Brown]

I don't find it at all odd that American football, basketball and baseball have virtually no following anywhere else in the world. I am surprised, though, that soccer and cricket have any following at all - I'd sooner stuff bees up my nose than watch either.

I'd pay to watch that. With a pint or two of Mena Dhu.

Not if there were commercials, though.

 

[MrBear]

I held back making a comment on american football, which is a sport itself that i like, but again, the broadcast product is nothing but commercials.

I actually thought about saying "I haven't sat through a whole football game in a long time, either, and really can't remember any where I stopped paying attention at commercials, and then the next time I remembered I was still watching a game, I looked up and it was on commercial again".

Sports have been so chopped up to maximize TV revenue, or in europe, just to try to get bets from people who don't have a brain and understand how gambling works (if you bet even odds over and over and the house keeps a share, you'll lose)

As a lapsed American Football fan, I'd like to stand up and defend the sport and it's use of commercials.

I'd like to but I just can't, well maybe I can a little. Having sat through a live game in Leeds (Leeds Cougars I think, but can't remember who against, it was back in the 80s) that the commercials would have been a blessing. It was 10 seconds of action followed by a minute or 2 of faffing around then another 10 seconds of action. It was quite frankly torturous in it's pacing. So having adverts pop up for Shackleton's high seat chairs, seeing Darth Vader stop children from running out into the street, and having Charley the cat telling us not to take sweets from strangers would have nicely broken things up between plays.

So after that I stuck to watching the coverage on Channel 4 which was great as they cut out all the boring stuff and showed us the action and then it become something not only watchable but enjoyable. However after Channel 4 lost the rights, I think it either vanished from mortal TV or it went to Channel 5, I know it ended up there at some point where it was shown at randoms times, generally when normal people were asleep so they could show live games to people who didn't have work the next day or who didn't mind having their sleep pattern messed up and then they would have a highlights show at some awkward time in the morning where they imported not only the games but also some of the tacky American style of presenting that doesn't really work over here. And so I gave up. Still I was a Raiders fan so I haven't really missed anything.

 

[Kinz]

As a lapsed American Football fan, I'd like to stand up and defend the sport and it's use of commercials.

I'd like to but I just can't, well maybe I can a little. Having sat through a live game in Leeds (Leeds Cougars I think, but can't remember who against, it was back in the 80s) that the commercials would have been a blessing. It was 10 seconds of action followed by a minute or 2 of faffing around then another 10 seconds of action. It was quite frankly torturous in it's pacing. So having adverts pop up for Shackleton's high seat chairs, seeing Darth Vader stop children from running out into the street, and having Charley the cat telling us not to take sweets from strangers would have nicely broken things up between plays.

So after that I stuck to watching the coverage on Channel 4 which was great as they cut out all the boring stuff and showed us the action and then it become something not only watchable but enjoyable. However after Channel 4 lost the rights, I think it either vanished from mortal TV or it went to Channel 5, I know it ended up there at some point where it was shown at randoms times, generally when normal people were asleep so they could show live games to people who didn't have work the next day or who didn't mind having their sleep pattern messed up and then they would have a highlights show at some awkward time in the morning where they imported not only the games but also some of the tacky American style of presenting that doesn't really work over here. And so I gave up. Still I was a Raiders fan so I haven't really missed anything.

I agree that the Channel 4 coverage was really good during the early years, as they cut out all the boring bits, explained the rules, and showed highlights of multiple games. However, as usual, some TV ‘expert’ interfered & changed the format to live games in the middle of the night & killed it for anyone even vaguely interested. I liked the SF49ers with Joe Montana ’back in the day’ but I don’t watch any sport on tv these days !