The US National Football League (NFL) labeled Taiwan as a part of China in its latest global marketing plan, igniting protests by a Taiwanese civic group in the US on Friday.
The controversy erupted after the NFL announced in a statement on Wednesday that it awarded 18 teams marketing rights to 26 regions across eight countries.
The statement included a color-coded world map that identified Taiwan as part of China, with both colored in red under the market for the Los Angeles Rams.
Photo: screen grab from the National Football League Communications’ Twitter account
“This groundbreaking, new initiative grants clubs access to international territories for marketing, fan engagement and commercialization as part of an important, long term, strategic effort to enable clubs to build their global brands while driving NFL fan growth internationally,” the statement said.
Ken Wu (吳兆峰), deputy head of the Los Angeles chapter of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, disagreed with the NFL’s decision.
“The existence of the 23 million people in Taiwan cannot be ignored in this way. We ask the NFL to make corrections and apologize,” Wu said. “The NFL should harden up and not kowtow to China.”
US-style football is one of the most complex sports in the world, and it is the sport that Americans are most proud of, Wu said.
Many Taiwanese immigrants and international students living in the US also love to watch football, Wu said, urging the NFL not to disappoint hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese fans.
Wu, a fan of the Seattle Seahawks for 25 years, said he was happy to see football expand overseas and welcomed the NFL to the Taiwanese market so that more people could enjoy the annual championship game Super Bowl, but he has hopes of letting the league’s officials know that “Taiwan is not part of China.”
The Web site of the US television news program The National Desk compared the controversy to the White House cutting the video feed of Minister Without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳) when she displayed a map of Taiwan that differentiated it from China during her presentation at the US Summit for Democracy last week.
The White House offered no formal comment, but the US Department of State said “confusion” over screen-sharing resulted in Tang’s video feed being dropped, and called it “an honest mistake.”
US-based Fox News also reported on the NFL incident.
“The National Football League raised eyebrows on Wednesday by labeling Taiwan as being part of mainland China,” it reported.
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