Really @NHL? Is It Necessary To Fill The Whole Background With Legalese?

from the read-the-fine-print dept

Wed, Sep 30th 2009 7:07am — Dennis Yang

So, with the NHL season now under way this week, the NHL is running a twitter promotion where you have to guess the winner of each of the games this Saturday. Tweet the correct winners to @NHL and you could win yourself a trip for two to a regular season game of your choosing. The promotion is fine and all, but what I was surprised at was the ridiculous background image that is on the NHL twitter page: an image of the entire legal "Official Rules" in both English and French.

Seriously? Whose idea was it to fill the entire background with legalese? It is barely even legible. A simple link would have sufficed, but it almost seems like a childish response to a lawyer's request to put these rules up on their twitter page. Then again, in reading through the extensive rules, I was reminded of my favorite part of any sweepstakes in which Canadians take part, the math question.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: contests, legalese, nhl, twitter

22 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Misanthropist (profile), 30 Sep 2009 @ 7:25am

Why?
Why are lawyers allowed to interfere with marketing?

The results can be catastrophic.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 30 Sep 2009 @ 7:25am

Hey there! NHL is using Twitter.
Is that even legally binding since it can't possibly be read and it took me two clicks to find the legible rules (when you click on the rules link you just get their news page and have to go to the bottom to get the real rules)?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dark Helmet (profile), 30 Sep 2009 @ 7:34am

Sorry, but
Squinting at the screen and attempting to decipher the rules is a violation of the TOS and you are now guilty of computer hacking.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Saragon, 30 Sep 2009 @ 7:43am

Actually this seems OK
This is actually relatively legible for me but I'm using a pretty good monitor and graphics card. I'm wondering if the legibility problem isn't just a "whoops, we didn't think about people with lower-quality equipment than our graphics department." Or just people using laptops. As for the use of the legalese itself -- by the very nature of one's Twitter page there's simply not any place to put a permanent link to the contest rules. This seems like a pretty clever way around that problem, although it isn't the best. Personally I'd set up a simple script to make sure that every 8-10 tweets was a link to the contest rules (well-labeled) and use the custom background for branding. But I don't have a huge problem with it as-is. (And hey, maybe it is a shot at lawyers.)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Greg, 30 Sep 2009 @ 7:46am

Error in link
the link to the NHL twitter feed has a typo: http://www.twitter.cm/nhl Sends you to some presumably nasty site that I quickly closed...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 30 Sep 2009 @ 8:00am

Re: Actually this seems OK
How big is your monitor and how high do you have your resolution that you don't have the twitters covering a large portion of the text? Mines 17" and 1280x1024. I can read the text that can be seen but I can't see enough to understand (if I spoke legalese). Any lower resolution would see even less text (1024x768 is considered standard and good web developers design for 800x600 as well).

If people are bitching that Google has it's privacy policy on their about page and not the main page, how douse it look that the NHL has their rules behind two clicks? That, and there's no indication that one has to scroll down to see the link to the rules after the first click. I got confused for a second clicking on the rules link and getting the news page.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
notjustthefontsize, 30 Sep 2009 @ 8:20am

Also
Half of fine print is obscured by the content anyway making the background not only ugly, but totally useless even legally.

"The rules were clea...um, well the rules were POSTED behind our tweets."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Saragon, 30 Sep 2009 @ 8:25am

Re: Re: Actually this seems OK
19" and 1600x1200. Which puts all the legalese at the "edges" of the actual Twitter section - i.e. what they wanted. But you're absolutely right that lower resolutions would make it much worse. Anyone on a laptop that isn't a widescreen would have real problems, and let's not even think about the poor netbook users. I think there's two problems here. The poor web design is one (again, I suspect a simple oversight), but the decision to put the legalese out to the side is another one. The former is worse than the latter IMHO (though neither is GOOD.)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
pat, 30 Sep 2009 @ 8:25am

not quite
this looks like they used the legal text as a background "gray" pattern, its a typography thing. I don't think it is meant as a actual legal document and more of a texture effect for the background
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Jimmy, 30 Sep 2009 @ 8:44am

Certainly cleans up the page a lot if you adblock the background image.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dennis Yang (profile), 30 Sep 2009 @ 8:50am

Re: Error in link
Oops..

Good catch, Greg.. The link has been fixed now. Sorry about that.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael DiLorenzo, 30 Sep 2009 @ 9:02am

NHL Twitter Background
Hi - Grateful to get your feedback concerning our temporary Twitter background. We continue to learn and evolve on social networks as we listen to fans and others talk about the NHL. We do intend to return to our normal background on Saturday.

Just as FYI, the purpose of temporarily changing our background was to: A) let everyone know that as easy as this is to play, there are a handful of rules and guidelines that need to be followed; and B) comply with US and Canadian regulations around contests of this sort (they require that rules be posted in the environment in which the contest is taking place).

So at the end of the day, we simply wanted to include as many fans that want to participate as possible. Hopefully, the 5 days of our temporary Twitter background won't overshadow the NHL giving away a trip for two.

Always feel free to reach out to me @umassdilo.

Thanks again,

Mike D.
Director of Social Media Marketing
NHL
[ link to this | view in thread ]
brent (profile), 30 Sep 2009 @ 9:11am

I appreciate the info on the math question that canadians have to perform in their sweepstakes. That is a hilarious thing they do up there! Will make good lunch table talk this afternoon
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PRMan, 30 Sep 2009 @ 9:16am

You should see it...
You should see it on my netbook...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Danny (profile), 30 Sep 2009 @ 9:20am

Even Archimedes had principles!
I am giving away $1,000,000 to a random reply to this comment. Oh, and you have to solve my math question correctly.

Question: trisect an angle using only a compass and straight edge, and prove your answer correct.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dark Helmet (profile), 30 Sep 2009 @ 9:21am

Re: NHL Twitter Background
Mike D., thanks for the response, though I do have a couple of questions:

1. If you wanted to let people know there were a handful of rules for the contest, did you really think that the best way to do so was to place barely legible text on the background, part of which was obscured by the tweets? Wouldn't it be better (assuming it complies with US/Canadian law) to just say so with a link to the rules page?

2. If the other purpose WAS to comply with US/Canadian law, and you indicate that my suggestion above doesn't do so, how does barely legible text that might be partially obscured accomplish compliance?

In any case, thanks for the direct response, I don't see enough of it on TechDirt, unfortunately (you there yet, Lily?). I'm looking forward to this season and will make a point to follow the NHL twitter accounts.

Go Hawks!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael DiLorenzo, 30 Sep 2009 @ 9:36am

Re: Re: NHL Twitter Background
You are welcome for the response.

You know, they say an airplane never crashes for just one reason. It's a sequence of events.

Here's how this came to pass.

First, the contest went live when the story and rules were posted to NHL.com, yesterday morning.

Next, I took the NHL.com link and pasted it into our Twitter bio - which is, as you suggest, seemingly sufficient in terms of directing people to the contest rules. However, Twitter kept refusing the updates to our page settings, so the link would not appear. No big deal, right? We'll just keep Tweeting out the link to the rules ...

Except, we discovered a technical issue with the link to the rules. The formatting of the rules in French somehow got garbled on NHL.com, and they needed to be reformatted and reposted.

So while our team was fixing the NHL.com link, the rules needed to be posted somewhere for fans to access. And as a "fix" I converted our Twitter background into a copy of the rules.

The NHL.com link was restored in short order, but I since decided that, just to be safe, I would leave the rules on our Twitter background through Saturday so we would be in complete compliance.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Comboman (profile), 30 Sep 2009 @ 9:57am

Re:
If Americans had to answer a math question to win a prize, half of them wouldn't get it (even fewer if it was a geography question).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dennis Yang (profile), 30 Sep 2009 @ 10:16am

Re: Re: Re: NHL Twitter Background
Michael,

Thanks so much for the response. Your explanation makes complete sense, and I was wondering why you keep on tweeting out the link to the rules. That said, the underlying absurdity still remains -- the legal tail is wagging the proverbial dog, much to the detriment of everyone.

Case in point, hidden in that huge bunch of unreadable legal text is perhaps the one rule that people should pay attention to:

Once you are a registered user of Twitter®, you must become a follower of the NHL by visiting www.twitter.com/nhl and clicking "Follow."

I completely missed that one. That said, kudos to you for individually replying to people who have entered to inform them of this rule.

Best of luck with the promotion. I hope my entry wins.. ;-)

Cheers,
Dennis.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
mertz, 30 Sep 2009 @ 10:40am

this is one of the worst background's i have ever seen. makes my eyes hurt. i bet they figured that people won't read the rules. there must have been other ways they could have done this.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 30 Sep 2009 @ 10:42am

Re: NHL Twitter Background
there are a handful of rules and guidelines that need to be followed;

handful - you keep using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Johnny Wrath, 30 Sep 2009 @ 1:29pm

Really botched
It is hard to interest casual sports fans in, for instance, the now 45-year-old current version of the Stanley Cup or the unrivaled athleticism and toughness of the NHL's players when there are almost comical stories breaking regarding the NHL's television woes and now bad publicity which, in both cases, are completely self inflicted. Add the Commissioner almost losing control of one of the League's teams over the summer and you have a very Mickey Mouse looking operation. Then again, I would rather bad twitter pub than, say, triple-gun-motorcycle or steroid-era bad pub. Just shows the respect the players have for their game. Go Pens.
[ link to this | view in thread ]