DOD spending millions for sports teams to honor soldiers

American sports teams have raked in US$6.8 million (HK$53.04 million) over nearly four years from the USA government as part of a multi-million taxpayer-funded program to promote military events, says a Senate report.

According to the report released Wednesday, the DOD underwrote “enlistment and re-enlistment ceremonies, performances of the national anthem, full-field flag details, ceremonial first pitches and puck drops”.

According to the report, the National Football League has told teams to stop accepting payment for patriotic salutes.

The Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots received the most from the Department of Defense, coming in at $879,000 and $700,000 respectively.

The Post reports that the findings stemmed from the discovery that the New Jersey National Guard paid $115,000 to the New York Jets to honor soldiers at home games.

Dubbing the practice “paid patriotism”, the Republican senators found that the Department of Defense had entered into at least 72 contracts with the professional teams to pay for ceremonies in packed stadiums. The senators say they will introduce legislation to ban this type of marketing.

The DOD said the paid events are meant to boost military recruitment, but McCain or Flake said there was no evidence to show the idea worked.

“Despite our success curbing this inappropriate use of taxpayer funds, DoD still can not fully account for the nature and extent of paid patriotism activities”, according to the report.

Three Wisconsin teams were mentioned in the report.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that the league would refund any money that teams took for paid patriotism.

It seems, that contrary to popular belief, pre-game displays of patriotism during sporting events in the USA were not done out of sheer love for the country.

Senator McCain said this crosses the line between heartfelt gestures of good will and paid advertisements.

“The Department of Defense is always saying we’re strapped for funds, then we find out that in a few cases they’re paying for these paid tributes on the field”, Flake said.

“Although DOD has indicated the goal of these contracts is to support recruiting, the Department doesn’t uniformly measure how and whether the activities under contract are actually contributing to recruiting”, said Senator McCain and Senator Flake in a statement.

A team spokesman said Wednesday that “the Army National Guard approached us to find a way to increase its enlistment and we provided numerous visible marketing tactics to help them accomplish that goal”.