Poor Taylor Swift! She didn’t do anything wrong, but to hear it from a bunch of hockey fans, it seems like she’s the cause of their team’s recent bad seasons!
The STAPLES Center is a huge arena in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, and home to two NBA teams — the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers — and an NHL team — the Los Angeles Kings — in addition to hosting dozens of concerts and plenty of other special events every year.
Related: Re-Live Taylor’s Most Recent ‘SNL’ Performances HERE!
And as is the case with most arenas, the STAPLES Center puts up banners when one of their home teams wins something: a conference championship, a league title, you know… stuff like that. And this being Los Angeles, the indoor arena also opted to put up another banner, too, and this one REALLY doesn’t sit well with Kings fans!
Back in 2015, the arena presented Swift with a banner hanging from the rafters, right next to all the sports banners, celebrating how she’d sold out 16 straight shows in the massive venue! That’s quite the feat — and a big enough deal that Kobe Bryant was in the building to personally present the special award and banner to the pop music songstress! Wow!
Fast forward to today…
After more than four years of Taylor’s banner proudly hanging in the rafters with no controversy, the Kings hockey team announced this weekend that they were officially going to begin covering it up during games, because their fans don’t like it. WTF?! It’s a banner!! Who cares???
Michael Altieri, a marketing rep for the NHL team, said in a statement, per TMZ (below):
“The connection to our fans is our highest priority and through our engagement they have made it clear that the banner shouldn’t be part of their Kings game experience. We didn’t see an issue in covering it for our games and in fact see it as an opportunity to show our fans that we hear them.”
Hmmm…
We get it if the fans don’t like seeing it (but again… it’s just a banner…) but the real problem here is apparently Kings fans believe Swift’s celebratory achievement has actually brought them bad luck! The thought process goes that the team was really good until about 2015, and after the banner was erected they became not-so-good, and they have never won a playoff series since.
So now… if they cover it up… the team will win? LOLz! Sports fans are so weird!
Related: Justin Bieber Mocks Taylor Swift!
As for the Clippers basketball team, it turns out they’ve already been covering up Swift’s banner when they play in the venue — and they’ve been doing it the entire time! Well then! In the words of Stephanie Tanner… how rude!
The Lakers are the arena’s only tenants that don’t seem to have any problem with the banner, confirming to TMZ this weekend that they don’t currently cover it up, and they have no plans to do so in the future. Good for them!
As for all the rest of ’em… these big powerful sports men sure are sensitive as hell when it comes to a tiny banner celebrating the success of a female pop superstar! Just saying!!!
[Image via WENN/Avalon]
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