Brazil's 7-1 World Cup Humiliation Helps Sell TVs 4 Years Later

(Bloomberg) -- Four years haven't dulled the shame Brazilians feel over the last World Cup. But at least some are starting to laugh again -- and make a buck in the process.

“Do you have the courage,” electronics retailer Magazine Luiza SA asks would-be customers, "to watch the World Cup on your seven-to-one TV?”

Seven to one -- for all the non-Brazilians out there who may have forgotten -- was the final score in Brazil's loss to Germany in the semifinals of the 2014 World Cup in Belo Horizonte. It was a soul-crushing national tragedy. Newspapers called it a “massacre.” Children and grown men cried. Football legend Pele said he'd never seen anything like it.

Now, the Magazine Luiza ads urge fans to get rid of their old televisions -- and hopefully whatever jinxes they may carry -- by trading them in for new, fancier TVs to watch the games being played in Russia on. (Brazil's quest to win a record sixth World Cup title begins Sunday when it takes on Switzerland.)

“I'm not going to let any Brazilian watch the games on a seven-to-one TV,” Magazine Luiza CEO Frederico Trajano said.

The ad campaign, which aims to double TV sales in the first half of the year, seems to be working. “We're off to a good start and we're confident,” Vice President Fabricio Garcia said, declining to give further details.

And what will Magazine Luiza do with all those “jinxed” TVs? Send them to longtime rival Argentina, of course.

--With assistance from David Biller.

To contact the reporter on this story: Fabiola Moura in Sao Paulo at fdemoura@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, ;David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net, Jessica Brice

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