‘House of the Dragon’ Promo During MLB Playoff Game Mocked as ‘Cringe’

MLB fans were not happy when they saw a promo for the HBO series House of the Dragon during the playoff game between the Cleveland Guardians and New York Yankees on Tuesday. The promo began with play-by-play announcer Bob Costas introducing the 40-second promo by saying that it’s a sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium and he wasn’t sure the game was going to be played. He then went to his colleague Lauren Shehadi to share more information about a “special guest” arriving at the game. 

“Apparently, one of the stars of HBO‘s House of the Dragon has decided to take in a ball game here in the Bronx,” she said, as a CGI Dragon flew over the stadium, per Deadline. “Officials are hopeful the dragon won’t breathe fire during gameplay, but we’ll see if he complies.” The game was being aired on TBS, and with HBO and TBS being part of the Warner Bros. family, Warner Bros. used the opportunity to promote one of the biggest shows on television. But fans had a big problem with this and expressed their frustrations on social media. 

‘That was cringe’

One Twitter reacted to the promo perfectly by saying, “That was cringe.” The person is not the only one who thought the promo was a little strange. 

‘It’s incredible really’

One person wrote: “Discovery bought turner and is gonna manage to ruin both sports turner owns and hbo programming, it’s incredible really.”

‘Glad I’m not the only one who thought that’

One fan responded: “Glad I’m not the only one who thought that was a bit cringey.”

‘Fake 3D dragon’

Will Brinson added: “They really made 70 year old broadcasting HOFer Bob Costas act like an MLB playoff game almost got cancelled only to show off five seconds of a shoddily constructed fake 3D dragon over Yankee Stadium.”

‘Gets funnier and funnier’

One person tweeted: “What MLB intern made that dragon animation?! I swear I’ve seen that Dragon on the asset store.”

‘Ridiculous’

One fan responded: “That promo for a series with 29M viewers/episode, shown during a Minor League Boysclub playoff game, with barely 6M viewers?Crazy waste of money.BTW: It wasn’t cute or funny–if you’d any idea about the fantasy genre, you’d know that’s the exact opposite of the intent.”

‘This is a thing that happened live on air’

And this Twitter user said: “Whatever that was that TBS just did with the House of the Dragon reference during Guardians-Yankees should be grounds for TBS to lose MLB rights.”