When the NFL announced that it had banned its players from wearing non-Bose headphones during games, as well as televised pre- or post-game appearances, Beats by Dre would have been justified if they were upset. A lot of players have made a habit of wearing the popular headphones during warm-ups and at the podium after games. But it sounds like they’ve taken the news in another way.
“We didn’t do anything, and now the players are going out and putting black tape on our logo,” the company’s co-founder, Jimmy Iovine, said during a talk at University of Southern California’s Global Conversation, according to Business Insider. “It’s like, I can’t believe I’m this lucky. I feel like sending them the tape.”
After his San Francisco 49ers played against the St. Louis Rams on Monday night, quarterback Colin Kaepernick wore a pair of the headphones with a piece of tape over the logo. The previous week, he was fined $10,000 for wearing the headphonens in a post-game press conference — with the logo showing.
“What happened there, you have a tech company that’s culturally inept,” Iovine added, making reference to Bose. “There’s no one at the company that said, ‘If you ban these guys, you’re going to look bad to the young people, and they’re going to look like superheroes even though they’re just pure capitalists — well they’re not pure capitalists, but they’re real capitalists and [they] sold that company to Apple — but you’re going to make them look like the underdog.”
Last year, Kaepernick filmed a commercial with Beats.
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