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NBA Owners Have Just Agreed To Put Ads On Jerseys

Written by on April 15, 2016

jersey

The NBA announced Friday that the Board of Governors has approved a three-year pilot program to allow teams to sell a corporate logo on their jerseys.

Teams can now start pitching companies on buying a 2.5-by-2.5-inch space as the NBA becomes the first of the four major U.S. sports leagues to put ads on regular game-day jerseys.

The first year of the program will be for 2017-18, which also will be the first season that Nike makes the uniforms after taking over from Adidas, which currently doesn’t have its logo on game jersey.

“It’s my hope, independent of whatever additional revenues are generated through this patch program, that the greatest impact will be in this amplifying effect of companies choosing to associate directly with a team jersey, then going out and promoting that the relationship to the largest market,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said.

Silver said the league had calculated that the program will be worth about $100 million a year. It’s a small opportunity relative to the league’s overall revenues, which Silver said is projected to be $7 billion in the 2017-18 season.

Silver said Friday that the Nike swoosh will appear on every jersey for 29 teams, but that the Charlotte Hornets will likely have the logo of the Nike-owned subsidiary Brand Jordan as they are owned by Michael Jordan.

The money will be counted as basketball-related income and, therefore, split with the players. What isn’t yet clear is how a team will resolve a conflict if the company it sells a patch to is a competitor to a company that endorses that team’s star player.

Silver said there will be other conversations that need to be had with the league’s TV partners, ESPN and Turner, as well as the league’s top sponsors, based on who the jersey ad sponsors will be.

Silver said there is “enormous uncertainty” around the patch program, which is one of the reasons why the initial idea is to restrict sales to a three-year period. Some of the backlash has come from fans who want to see the jerseys commercial-free.

“There’s a reason this is a pilot program,” Silver said. “We listen very closely to our fans.”

Part of a compromise will be that the jerseys sold at retail when the program starts will not include the corporate logo, though teams will have the option to sell a version that includes the logo.

Silver does, however, say he believes that the logo on jersey opportunity is one that makes more sense today than it did even five years ago, when the idea of selling the spot was broached.

“The media landscape is changing,” Silver said. “People are watching less live television outside of sports. People are watching fewer commercials. This will become an important opportunity for companies for connecting directly with their consumers.”

Source: ESPN.com


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