We think Tube Station’s choice was in poor taste, but we have no more input over their marketing signage than we do over what they put on their pizzas. Like all our vendors, they pay for their space and create their own signage.
In many years of doing this I cannot recall ever having an incident of signage from any vendor being interpreted as offensive, so we have built no systems to regulate this.
I also don’t think that Tube Station genuinely thinks “Rome Sucks” and I think a sign featuring a cartoon superhero exclaiming this is not an attempt to smear the city of Rome; I see it as a ham-fisted attempt to make a joke promoting the fact that Tube Station markets itself as serving New York-style pizza at a festival clearly themed “Roman Holiday”. Obviously the joke misfired (as a good percentage of jokes always do) and ended up genuinely offending some people, and for that we apologize, as its never our goal with our festivals to make anyone feel bad.
Certainly in the future we will consider requiring each vendor to pass all of their event signage through our office for approval prior to the date of the event, or creating guidelines for content restrictions on signage.