Los Angeles Clippers Got Free PS5s Before Game Against LA Lakers
Each member of the Los Angeles Clippers seems to have received a free PlayStation 5 prior to the team's recent victorious match against the LA Lakers. This continues a surprisingly intimate relationship between basketball and the video game industry. Such a relationship can also be seen in the recent schedule video released by the Utah Jazz, which references several classic video games as it lays out the opponents that the team will be facing off against.
The Clippers are certainly luckier than most video game fans. The PS5 is notoriously difficult to purchase. Retailers struggle to keep it in stock for more than a minute thanks to overwhelming demand and legions of unscrupulous scalpers. These merchants have programmed bots to buy PS5s en masse the instant they go on sale, leaving none for the fans. Worse, there have even been stories of consoles being stolen straight out of Amazon trucks, sometimes by the drivers themselves. As of the start of this month Amazon has finally started replacing these consoles, but it's still a shocking tale of how hard it is to actually own a PlayStation 5.
Unless one is a member of the LA Clippers, apparently. Beat writer Tomer Azarly shared a photo of the team's lockers on Twitter, revealing a boxed PlayStation 5 sitting in every cubby, along with a new pair of headphones. This is a pretty substantial perk; the consoles have an MSRP of $500 and Clippers who aren't video game fans can do as the scalpers do and resell them at absurdly high prices; those bandits have made a collective $60 million since the launch of the PS5 and the Xbox Series X/S. It is a bit frustrating for dedicated video game fans who've been foiled by bots and website crashes to see this basketball team kitted out with several of the devices.
It certainly isn't the first cross-promotion the console has received, though. Before release, the PS5 was offered as a prize in a Burger King giveaway, and earlier this month Mountain Dew announced the console as a reward for a sweepstakes system in its new digital storefront, dedicated to the sale of Gamer Fuel. And with the work Visual Concepts has been doing integrating the PS5's powerful new tech into NBA 2K21, it makes sense that the real NBA would have an in with Sony.
That doesn't make it any easier for the average customer to get a PS5, though. This scalper-driven shortage is beginning to impact the next-gen video game environment, and it's not getting any better. Restocks are still coming in steadily, though, and one has to hope that someday everyone will be able to get a PlayStation 5, NBA player or not.
Source: Tomer Azarly