With Nike about to sign a billion-dollar sponsorship deal with Manchester United, experts say cash-hungry North American leagues can’t hold out much longer.
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Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney sports the team's Nike jersey. The sportswear giant is about to ink a new 10-year, $1-billion deal with the Premier League club, according to U.K. media reports.
Sports apparel titan Nike is about to sign a 10-year, $1-billion extension on its deal to provide uniforms for English soccer superclub Manchester United, according to media reports from England.
Add that cash to the $79 million (U.S.) per year that Chevrolet will pay Man U to place its logo on jerseys starting next season, and the club is poised to collect at least $179 million annually from rights to its uniform alone.
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While the big four North American sports leagues — the NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball — all make money from deals with uniform outfitters, none allows teams to sell ad space on their jerseys the way soccer teams do. But with jersey sponsorship becoming an increasingly lucrative revenue stream, how long can the continent’s biggest leagues afford to keep uniforms ad-free?
Only for a few years longer, experts say.
“They’ve all been talking about it a lot, and some of them are closer than others,” said Norm O’Reilly, professor and chair of the sports administration department at Ohio University. “That would be a big culture shift and there would be some backlash from fans, but you can be sure they’re talking about it because that’s a lot of money on the table.”
Several North American sports outfits have already turned athletes into moving billboards, advertising everything from themselves to their teams’ corporate benefactors.
Two of Major League Soccer’s Canadian franchises — Toronto FC and the Montreal Impact — sport the Bank of Montreal logo on their uniforms, while the third, the Vancouver Whitecaps, wears the Bell logo.
And in the CFL, corporate signage has appeared on team jerseys since the late 1990s.
Meanwhile, major sports leagues make money selling outfitting rights to apparel manufacturers. The NFL’s contract with Nike will bring in a reported $1.1 billion over five years, while the NBA’s 11-year deal with Adidas is worth a reported total of $400 million.
The NBA has already experimented with altering uniforms to enhance marketing without being blatantly commercial.
Earlier this year, the Miami Heat and Brooklyn Nets played a game wearing jerseys adorned with players’ nicknames in place of surnames. And to reach out to Spanish-speaking fans, the league’s Noche Latina promotions have included teams playing in jerseys with Spanish-sounding versions of their names, such as El Heat and Los Spurs.
Schulich School of Business marketing instructor Vijay Setlur points out that major sports leagues in North America have aggressive revenue goals that will soon prompt them to seek out every available source of cash — including jerseys.
“(It will happen) once they balance the sanctity of the jersey with the fact that they can’t avoid the extra revenue,” Setlur said. “To turn down jersey sponsorships is something I don’t see them denying too much longer. It’s a matter of what the effect will be on the purity of the game, and how fans would react.”
The sums of money at stake are tough to ignore: jersey sponsorship revenue for Premier League soccer teams totalled more than $300 million this season.
And the NBA’s limited introduction of jerseys with sleeves this season was seen asanother step toward sponsored uniforms.
But leagues can’t ignore fans’ tastes, either.
While teams that alter their uniforms often see a spike in apparel sales as fans buy redesigned gear, experts warn that too much tinkering can discourage people from making purchases.
And the more recognizable a team’s logo, the harder it will be for a club to sell fans a jersey festooned with sponsor patches. O’Reilly said a fairly young franchise such as the Oklahoma City Thunder could make a smooth transition since the club’s logo isn’t ingrained in the sporting public’s consciousness.
But a team such as the Toronto Maple Leafs or Boston Celtics would struggle to sell fans a sponsored jersey.
“I’m the Los Angeles Lakers or the Celtics; my logo earns me piles of money,” O’Reilly said. “Can you imagine the New York Yankees and you slap a Ford logo on the jersey? It’s a big shift … but if someone came to the table with enough resources, who knows what might happen?”
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