Champagne cognac improves basketball performance

I noticed the above banner ad running on ESPN.com today. It depicts a bottle of Remy Martin (a champagne cognac) along with a basketball and the words "Step Up Your Game". I understand why beer and liquor companies advertise to sports fans, its a great demographic. I however, don't understand why companies force their message so often. Isn't it enough to run a Remy Martin ad on ESPN.com basketball pages to get the point across? Instead the ad creator tries to take that extra step to drive the point home and the ad just becomes weird. Are they trying to say that drinking Remy Martin will help me play better basketball? Does it work for football and luge too? This reminds me of the billboards off the highway outside of Philly. Half of them have pictures of Ben Franklin or the Liberty Bell along with an ad for a Wawa Hogie or something else completely non-specific to Philly. What message is the ad creator trying to convey? That you the traveller are so excited to be driving through Philadelphia that you'll pull over and buy our sandwich because we put a picture of a city icon next to it?