Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine addressed the NFL banning players from wearing Beats headphones due to Bose being the league's official sponsor.
"We didn’t do anything, and now the players are going out and putting black tape on our logo," Iovine said during a talk at University of Southern California's Global Conversation.
"It’s like, I can’t believe I’m this lucky," he said, laughing. "I feel like sending them the tape."
Iovine was likely referring to San Francisco 49er Colin Kaepernick, who placed masking tape over the Beats logo on his headphones after receiving a $10,000 fine from the NFL.
Iovine talked further about the issue, saying that the unexpected fallout of increased brand exposure for Beats was due to Sony and Bose's lack of touch with pop culture.
"What happened there, you have a tech company that’s culturally inept," Iovine said. "There’s no one at the company that said, 'If you ban these guys, you’re going to look bad to the young people, and they’re going to look like superheros even though they’re just pure capitalists — well they’re not pure capitalists, but they’re real capitalists and [they] sold that company to Apple — but you’re going to make them look like the underdog."
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