Offensive message displayed at Sharks game

Editor’s note: Staff writer Jordan Soto contributed to this report.

San José Sharks fans who visited the SAP Center on Saturday for the ninth annual “Los Tiburones night” to celebrate Hispanic heritage were met with an offensive message displayed on the video board during the first intermission.

The message read “SJ SHARKS FANS LOVE ICE !! GET’EM BOYZ !” seemingly referencing United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to a Saturday article from CNN. 

ICE raids have been conducted in the city as recently as Sept. when a plainclothes officer detained a man at the nonprofit ConXión to Community, according to an article published on Sept. 24 by NBC Bay Area. 

The Sharks published a statement Saturday night on X explaining this was a mistake and that the organization does not agree with the statement’s message.

“During the first intermission of tonight’s game, an offensively worded message which had been externally submitted was inadvertently displayed on the in-arena scoreboard,” the statement reads. “Sharks Sports & Entertainment deeply regrets that this message, which does not meet our organization’s values, was not detected during our standard review process. The Sharks organization sincerely apologizes for this oversight, and we are actively working to determine the origin of the message.”

The Spartan Daily reached out to the San José Sharks for a comment in which they declined to speak further about this matter and referred the Daily to the statement on X. 

Vicente Caro, a Sharks fan who was in attendance on Saturday night, said they questioned how a message of this sort slipped through the cracks for thousands to see. 

“The whole quote was just wild to me that someone would want to display that opinion,” Caro said. “I hope it wasn’t on purpose.”

San José District 5 Councilmember Peter Ortiz was also in attendance and participated in the ceremonial puck drop, according to a Saturday post on the Sharks Facebook page. 

Ortiz has been critical of ICE enforcements in San José and is one of the authors of an ordinance unmasking agents in the city that is in the process of adoption, according to an Oct. 1 article published by the Spartan Daily.

The Spartan Daily reached out to Ortiz for a comment on the incident but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Jayeun Tungol, a third-year mathematics student, said she and her friends got distracted by a wedding proposal that happened at the game around the same time and that she had to explain the messages’ meaning to her friends the next day.

“For me, it was a bit shocking considering it’s San José,” Tungol said. “I think it just further supports the idea that individuals take advantage of anonymous platforms and abuse it by expressing malicious statements.” 

A similar incident with the video screen occurred in 2022 when a message with a string of random words that spelled out “FUCK THE KNIGHTS”,  according to an April 28, 2022 article published by the Mercury News.

The same article highlights that the Sharks issued an apology for this incident as well.

A fourth-year business student who wishes to remain anonymous because of his job working directly with the Sharks said he was shocked when he read about the message because in 2022 when he attended a Sharks’ “Paint The Ice” event, he was told to stop painting “Vegas Missed The Playoffs LOL.” 

Paint The Ice is an annual event for season ticket holders to come and decorate the ice before they melt it, according to an April 22 Instagram post by the Sharks.

“I was like ‘oh wow you guys are really kinda taking this situation pretty seriously,’ ” he said. “So that was another reason I was just surprised that like, this kind of thing would happen again… It was very clearly intentionally done because Saturday night was Latin-American heritage night.”

There were 17,435 fans in attendance on Saturday.

The game was nearly at full capacity as the SAP center can seat 17,500 for hockey games, according to its website.