Everything Wrong With “The Andersons Got Tickets to the Game”

An in-depth analysis of America's favorite family

How are there so many (53, to be exact) L’s present in just one 30-second commercial?

Anyone who has watched an NBA game in the past season has seen the commercial from NBATickets.com “The Andersons got tickets to the game?” If you’re an avid NBA fan, you have likely seen more of this commercial than most of your family members have seen of you. Some people really like it:

Most don’t. The commercial tries desperately to persuade us to go to NBATickets.com. And I’ve had enough. I have made it my own personal responsibility to make sure that never again shall people be coaxed into believing in a single aspect from the now infamous commercial.

Grizzlies Head Coach Dave Fitzdale describing the commercial

1. To begin our advertisement, we find a father and son watching the game on the couch. We hear the announcer remark that all the tickets to the game have been sold out. He then concludes that the game could be “An NBA classic.” However, we find that of the 30 NBA teams, only eight of them did not have their ticket sales eclipse 90% in the 2016–2017 season.
2. A third of the teams had a perfect attendance record throughout the season. Therefore, the statement that “sold out game” means “NBA classic” not only misleads the father, but the audience.
3. Basically, we know the dad is about to be finessed before we even watch the commercial (Although given the commercial's airtime, we know the dad is about to be finessed because we have all seen it at least 100 times before).
4. In the opening to the commercial the father, played by K.J. Middlebrooks, receives a Snapchat from the commercial’s antagonist, Mr. Anderson. However, in looking into the demographics of Snapchat, we see only 12% of Snapchat users are between 35–54 years of age.
5. We can estimate that both Middlebrooks and Mr. Anderson are roughly 40 years old. Therefore, the likelihood that both adults own a Snapchat account is around 1.44%.
6. This is poor casting done by NBATickets.com.
7. Neither the Andersons nor the fans around them are wearing any sort of NBA memorabilia. The Andersons display clear lack of dedication to whatever team it is they claim to root for. But, to be fair, this probably should have been expected out of the incompetent Anderson family.
8. The Andersons arrogantly gloat that they are “At the game!” This is clearly a malicious move used by the Andersons not to express their enjoyment of the game, but instead to improve their position in the social hierarchy that undoubtedly consumes the two households.
9. The father likely wasn’t even trying to get tickets to the game until evil Mr. Anderson decided to stunt on him.
10. Basically, all the Andersons do is flex.
11. Now, the father is heated.
12. The father poses a question to the son: “How did [The Anderson family] get tickets to the game?”
13. However, the father should have reasoned, as any person could have, that the Andersons bought the tickets to the game.
14. He expects a clear-cut answer from his son to this question.
15. The father should have instead asked “Where did the Andersons get their tickets to the game?”
16. The son, who is visibly rattled by his father’s question responds that he should “Try NBATickets.com.”
17. This response does not directly answer the question that his father proposed — however we must also commend him for replying to the questions his father should have asked.
18. Good job unnamed son.
19. Despite the appraisal we have given to the son, he has NBATickets.com inexplicably open on his iPad, surely an unlikely scenario. Unless, that is, he was ready for the off-chance that his father would glance at his iPad and ask him whether he wanted tickets to an upcoming NBA game.
20. However, given the father’s lack of knowledge surrounding the existence of NBATickets.com, as well as no obvious motivational factor that would lead him to purchase tickets to the ongoing game, it’s unlikely that even if the father had seen his son’s screen he would have purchased tickets to said game.
21. There remains, however, the underlying possibility that the son and father are not on the best of terms, thus leading the son to work in collusion with the Andersons (in order to get tickets to the game). This would explain the snapchat from Mr. Anderson in conjunction with NBATickets.com being open on the son’s iPad. While this is an unlikely scenario, given the assumed tension between the two families, I must applaud the son in the off-chance he developed such a scheme. He executed it perfectly.
22. The son is clearly well-adapted to NBATickets.com, as he quickly responds to his father’s notion that the tickets are sold out, proclaiming “The tickets are never sold out on NBATickets.com.”
23. It seems unlikely that the father has never heard of NBATickets.com, as he has a son with such apt knowledge of the site.
24. Or maybe he’s just an inattentive father.
25. The father’s ticket purchase questions where he acquired the wealth to throw his money around on expensive NBA tickets, given his lack of intelligence and inability to understand that he can still get tickets on a league-sponsored ticket sale and resale site.
26. Our protagonist father is shady af.
27. The egotistical father brags “Your dad’s a genius” despite clear evidence otherwise.
28. In fact, all the father managed to do was blatantly steal the idea from his young son to impress his wife (or maybe this is just what you have kids for).
29. This is lame.
30. At the 20 second mark, the son is clearly upset with the boasting done by his father, appearing less than thrilled the discovery was not attributed to him.
31. The father makes an impulse buy, purchasing tickets to the game, and the family is upbeat. However —
32. The family quickly departs without any indication that they have managed to turn off the lights, turn off the television, and put away the food prepared by the mother.
33. These are all careless financial and environmental decisions made by the family, on top of their impulsive ticket purchase.
34. It is clear that neither the Andersons nor the protagonist family are not people I’d want to be around.
35. Best case Scenario: The game had just begun.
36. Best case Scenario: It takes our protagonist family about five minutes to get out the door, to head to the game. Possible under the assumption this family eliminates time spent changing into team apparel and instead choose to remain in their everyday clothes (the Andersonian method). However, this scenario makes it likely at least one family member would be upset they didn’t get to rep their favorite team.
37. Best case Scenario: It takes about ten minutes to find a parking spot. Many potential spaces would already have be filled by the (almost) sold-out crowd.
38. Best case Scenario: It takes 15 minutes to get from the parking lot to the stadium, pay for their tickets, and identify their seats.
39. At this point, it has taken the Andersons about 40 minutes to arrive at their seats, and so in their Best-Case Scenario they arrive with little time left in the second quarter and have already missed a decent portion of the game. (If they did leave in the first quarter, how could the announcer know the game has the potential to be a classic? That’s one bold prediction.)
40. The average cost of an NBA Game is around $80. In other words, it’s about 20 Big Macs.
41. Multiply this by three people and that is $240. 60 Big Macs.
42. Parking for the game is likely about $24, or six Big Macs.
43. The average length of an NBA game is about 2 hours and 15 minutes (or about six sit-down visits to McDonald’s). The Andersons will likely spend only an hour and a half at the game.
44. That means that they paid roughly $2.93 (75% of a Big Mac) per minute, or about $176 (44 Big Macs) per hour.
45. The family, as mentioned before, is wearing no team gear.
46. No one around them are wearing team gear ether.
47. There are way too many fans with lazy amounts of face-paint on. This is an NBA game, not a birthday party.
48. Someone in the stands actually has a pom-pom.
49. There is confetti that falls after the game, which only happens after playoff games.
50. This makes little sense, given that the indifferent family likely follows a sub-par NBA team.
51. The dad goes up to high-five his son, but sees that his son isn’t looking, unsurprising given our knowledge that nothing really functions correctly in this family. The father instead chooses to to avoid(?) embarrassment, and pats his son on the head.
52. Nothing in the commercial makes any sense.

The commercial’s biggest mistake, however, its most glaring fault, still remains:

1. We never do figure out how the Andersons got tickets to the game.

Awfully smug for a guy that doesn’t know how to get tickets to the game