Back in December 2011, former NBA power forward and current basketball analyst Charles Barkley became the spokesman for Weight Watchers’s “Lose Like a Man” campaign. A few weeks later, he called it a scam on TV.
It was during an Atlanta Hawks–Miami Heat game where Barkley was serving as announcer alongside Reggie Miller and Kevin Harlan. They thought they had gone to commercial (which they had on television), but everything they said could still be seen and heard on the “Eye on Basketball” stream on the NBA website. The guys started chatting about Barkley’s new endorsement deal, to which the former NBA player commented that it was the greatest scam going, even better than getting paid to watch sports.[
To clarify, Barkley called it a scam in the sense that it was an easy gig which paid lots of money, not that Weight Watchers didn’t work. However, several news outlets took the quote out of context, which caused a fair amount of confusion and embarrassment. However, Weight Watchers seemed to take it in stride and concurred with Sir Charles that the job was, indeed, a “great gig.”
