University Bans Soccer Team From Wearing PornHub Jerseys
England's University of Kent has dashed an intramural soccer team's dream of a sponsorship from PornHub, one of the biggest streaming porn sites in the many-tentacled MindGeek empire, and ordered the players to stop wearing their PornHub jerseys immediately.
The Rutherford Raiders' plan to have PornHub take care of both their masturbatory and soccer-sartorial needs started as a joke: They printed up unofficial jerseys after they couldn't drum up local sponsorship, and then posted a photo online for laughs.
PornHub saw it and offered to become a real sponsor, but the relationship was not to be.
A University spokesman issued this statement after putting the kibosh on the team's new branding:
The University of Kent sports department would never sanction sponsorship of this type – it is totally inappropriate.
The team has been spoken with and will not be allowed to wear the shirts in question at any time.
We take this issue very seriously and inter-college sports teams, which are the responsibility of Kent Sport, must present any potential sponsorship and/or logos for approval.
A member of the Raiders told Kent newspaper The Tab the team felt victimized by a double standard: The school's official cricket team is sponsored by Kingfisher beer, which is "also an age-restricted product."
The team may have lost, but PornHub is winning: this is their second recent publicity stunt to benefit from the Streisand Effect. The company got to double-dip on press coverage earlier this month when its huge (safe-for-work) billboard went up in Times Square and was then taken down for mysterious reasons 2 days later.