The San Francisco Giants’ first at-bats of the season made for a tough viewing experience thanks to some aggressive marketing tactics.
Starting with the Giants batters in the bottom of the first, Netflix decided to digitally insert a bright red Adobe advertisement on one of the boards behind home plate. This created a glitchy effect where if a player stood in front of the ad, it looked like they stepped in front of a cheap green-screen setup. It was particularly bad with left-handed batter Rafael Devers and Jung Hoo-Lee, whose stances were directly in front of the digital ad. Right-handed batters like Matt Chapman weren’t a reprieve, however, as Yankees catcher Austin Wells would also trigger the glitchiness whenever his head would go over the ad.
There was a fair amount of outrage about this on social media from fans trying to watch this highly touted game. It’s not clear whether it was the angry outline mob that triggered a switch, but eventually the broadcast did switch off the bright red Adobe ad to ones with less saturated colors.
That wasn’t the only complaint viewers had for the Netflix game. Viewers took issue with the tiny text that named the pitcher and batter on the score bug, and complained about the hazy look of the main camera angle — although that’s a natural product of the sun shining down on Oracle Park at this time of day.
To make matters worse for Giants fans, those watching at home had to deal with all of these problems as their team gave up five runs in the second inning.