In case you haven't heard, online gambling is now legal in the state of New Jersey. So New Jersey residents are free to bet their entire paychecks on a game of blackjack, roulette, or poker right from the privacy of their own homes. The only problem is that it's impossible to pick which online gambling site to use, because over the course of the last few weeks, there have been, like, 4,629,108 new gambling sites that have popped up on the Internet. But one of them is trying to differentiate itself from all of the others right now by pulling one of the craziest publicity stunts in recent memory.
The site 888.com just offered to give New York Giants wide receiver Hakeem Nicks—who wears the No. 88—a grand total of $88,800 dollars if he agrees to legally change his name to 888.com. The site has also agreed to help pay for him to change his name. But in order to collect the money, he must change his name from Hakeem Nicks to 888.com on his driver's license, social security card, passport, bank statements, etc. for one full year. And he also has to convince the NFL to allow him to play with 888.com on the back of his jersey and tell the league that they must refer to him as 888.com at all times (good luck with that!).
As we said, this is obviously a clever publicity stunt drummed up by 888.com to get some press. But still, doesn't $88,800 seem like an awfully small amount of money to offer someone to change their name legally in order to promote your company? Hell, even $888,000 would seem low. So nice try, guys, but we don't see 888.com playing for the Giants anytime soon.
RELATED: A History of Athlete Name Changes
[via Meadowlands Matters]
