This past season for sports was unlike any that teams, players, and fans had ever experienced. A pandemic wreaked havoc on the country, and fans, by in large, were unable to be on hand to watch their favorite teams play. Something clever came into play. And something unique transpired. Enter cardboard cutouts.
Cutouts for Sporting Events:
If you’ve ever watched or attended a sporting event, you may have seen a fan or a few with a cardboard cutout called a headsicle (a head on a stick). The image on them might have been of a fan’s favorite player or coach. Designed mostly to intimidate the visiting team, it’s quite funny. This year, the headsicle fad turned into a phenomenon of far greater significance. Teams began selling big head cardboard cutouts and nearly full-body ones to fans. The fans sent in their images to the teams who then hired companies (like ours) to produce them. The custom cutouts were placed in seats where the fans normally sat. Crowd noise was pumped into the stadiums, and even in one case with the Oakland A’s baseball team, they got actor Tom Hanks (an Oakland native) to voice himself selling hot dogs. They made a cardboard cutout of Hanks doing what was actually his first real job…a hot dog vendor.
Sports are competitive by nature, and that competitive spirit came out, as teams tried to one-up the others. In Los Angeles, where celebrities commonly have season tickets, teams were getting the stars’ cardboard cutouts and placing them in their normal seats. In the case of the Tampa Rays baseball team, they made custom cutouts of three of the most famous athletes in the city, and shipped them out to San Diego for a playoff game.
Cardboard cutouts of pets, mascots, and former players of certain teams made their way into the stands. Not only did it help fans to feel as if they were still part of the sporting event experience, it also allowed players to feel some sense of normalcy.
The sporting world in 2020 has been an odd one to say the least. However, where one would normally see a headsicle or two at a game, cardboard cutouts have been rampant, and sports kind of feels like sports again. Who knew that a little piece of cardboard with a person’s image on it could mean so much.
