What do LeBron James and the Buffalo Bills have in common? At first glance, very little. The Los Angeles Lakers superstar has never distinguished himself by being a big fan of the NFL; despite this, the Bills decided to hang on to the King James’ fame to reveal their 2024 game schedule.
As the years went by, the reveal of the NFL game schedule stopped being just another date on the calendar and became an event in its own right.
Infected by this spirit, the teams do not want to be left behind, and every year, they put their communication departments to find the most original way to present their game calendars to their fans.
The Bills, for their part, have become one of the most original teams, although this year, they may have gone a little overboard. It’s not that the team’s campaign is offensive or in bad taste, but because of the “WTF” factor of mixing King James with its calendar reveal.
“Turned our 2024 opponents into @KingJames”
The name of the Bills’ social media campaign is self-descriptive enough. The franchise’s community managers took on the task of editing some images of LeBron to relate them in some way to their opponents for the following season.
The Bills’ schedule will begin with the visit of the Arizona Cardinals to Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park on September 8. For this image, Bills’ creatives imagined a young LeBron, apparently in his graduation photo, wearing an oversized white suit and a Cards cap.
Week 2 will take the Bills to visit the Miami Dolphins, and to make the announcement, they turned to Photoshop to place a rival’s cap on an image of James. One of the funniest is that of Week 3-when they will host the Jacksonville Jaguars-where they show a curious amalgamation of James with QB Trevor Lawrence, which they named Trebron.
The reaction of the fans
Despite the originality of the campaign, not all fans have agreed. Many question the purpose of the images or what motivated the team to make the unusual mix. Others, more forceful, have called for the team’s social media photos to be removed or the campaign to end immediately.
There has yet to be a reaction from “King James” on the images, but given his sense of humor, it could be that he rode the wave and decided to give them the go-ahead.