What do you do if you’re a sports team looking to fill the seats in your stadium which would normally be filled with fans? Some teams have opted for tarps, whether real or virtual. One South Korean soccer team was criticized for using sex dolls to fill empty seats. Season ticketholders were represented, in cardboard cutout form, at soccer games in Germany. But it may be the Denver Broncos who have raised the art of filling necessarily empty seats to a high art.
For the Broncos’ game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the home team decided to populate their stands with the residents of an entire Colorado town — albeit a fictional one. CBS Sports reports that hundreds of South Park characters were represented in the stands for the game.
There were some actual human fans there as well — around 5,000, with social distancing measures in effect. But the presence of giant cartoon characters in the stands makes for a gloriously surreal visual — and one in keeping with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s own Broncos fandom.
As Jordan Dajani writes for CBS Sports, the cardboard characters aren’t just there for purposes of amusement — they’re also raising money for a good cause. Dajani notes that “the cost of production of the cutouts will be matched and donated to The Broncos Foundation.”
Unfortunately for the home team, the presence of beloved cartoon characters wasn’t enough to help the Broncos emerge victorious. At the end of the day, it was Tampa Bay who won, 28-10, with Tom Brady responsible for 3 touchdowns. Will all of this end up being worked in to an episode of South Park? It’s entirely possible.
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