From Milan-Cortina to Swansea, from one sporting epicentre to another, it’s all the same to Snoop Dogg, it’s all about the love of the game. No, really. Well, yes and no.
The erstwhile honorary coach of the US Winter Olympic team has become the great aggregator of sports brand-building. Audience figures are flying at NBC and now at football matches, Swansea City are drawing record crowds for the visit of Preston North End. Snoop is the man.
You guessed it, they weren’t there for Paul Heckingbottom’s Lilywhite Army. Snoop, real name Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr, was ordained into the Swansea church only last July, one of a group of investors seeking to profit from the billowing association of private equity and sport.
What Snoop knew of the Jacks before that could be written on a tiny corner of the towel he gifted to the fans before the game on Tuesday. The spectacle of a global rap scion circumnavigating the pitch perimeter, receiving the adulation of towel-waving fans, is among the most surreal events witnessed in this corner of West Wales.
You can be sure a good number in the audience were as ignorant of him as he was of them before he assumed minority ownership. Rap culture does not have the biggest following among the ageing Valleys diaspora or Gower residents, still less could Snoop find Swansea on a map. Yet here he was parading about the parish in Swansea City kit, Ron Manager coat and shades as if he were the son of Richard Burton.
Snoop’s brand can work wonders for the Swans (Photo: Reuters)Cynics scream blue murder, or more accurately bullshit. Which of course it is if you are bound to a traditional understanding of authenticity. However, in case you haven’t noticed, sport has moved on. It is no longer a community project ringed by narrow boundaries but a global phenomenon connecting through myriad networks serving all manner of designs.
The digital age has shrunk the 5,000 miles that separate Pittsburgh, home of Snoop’s beloved Steelers NFL team, and Swansea Bay to zip. In the digital space we are all next-door neighbours and if you want to gain a foothold in the new world where sport and entertainment merge, you need to be a player in the attention economy.
Few get our attention like Snoop, who mined the seem from underground rebel to mainstream artiste as successfully as any. Molly Solomon, NBC’s executive producer of the Olympics, describes him as an “ambassador of happiness”, no less.
It is into this populist energy that Swansea City have bought. “We’re operating at a level we haven’t done probably ever before, even in the Premier League days, in terms of our commercial swing and the brands we’re speaking to,” gushed chief executive Tom Gorringe.
Less convincing was the frothy claim made to BBC Wales. “It’s not just a gimmick, he buys into what the club means and what it means to the wider city.” Sure he does, Tom, as he will when the consortium sells its stake the moment Swansea ride the Wrexham train to greater renown on the coat tails of his celebrity.
This is essentially a deal and can only be understood as such. The frivolity of Tuesday night is precisely that, something not to be taken too seriously, even if Heckingbottom’s remarks about the smell of weed in the tunnel risked negative interpretations given the racist stereotyping of African Americans and cannabis use in the United States.
Snoop Dogg is a win for the new ownership seeking to build the Swansea brand and thus grow the fan base according to the Hollywood model introduced by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, under whose ownership Wrexham have rocketed from the National League to Premier League contention in five years. More significantly for them, a club they bought for £2m in 2021 was valued at £350m when Apollo Sports Capital bought a share at the end of last year.
That’s what I’m talking about, says Snoop, and a part of which the long suffering supporters of Swansea want a piece. Thanks to Snoop and his 100m social media devotees, the Swans have become a thing beyond Swansea, seen, recognised, talked of and written about.
Bullshit or not, the phenomena is real. Of course, Snoop had quit his seat in the stand for the warmth of the hospitality box when Swansea hit their late equaliser. He’s not here for love but for the money to be made. The ambassador for happiness indeed.
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