OT: NBA to put ads on uniforms.
So how long until NBA players look like a NASCAR?
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/8182973/nba-adds-three-additional-use…
Hm, hopefully this doesn't become a trend in other sports. Imagining Michigan with ads on their home uniform or the Tigers with ads on their all white uniform is awful.
The Yankees would do it first and honestly i'm surprised they already haven't started
Not gonna happen...
It's easy to be "very traditional" when you have the same owner for 40 straight years. It remains to be seen how his sons will handle it tho. Tho i'm sure money is not an issue for the yankees in a world dominated by greed above all else , a few extra million dollars won't hurt
Well, for over a hundred years, they haven't put names on any of their jerseys, they've had pinstripes and grays, and have still maintained the "no facial hair, other than moustaches" rule.
I think tradition with the Yankees is here to stay, no matter who the owner is.
I'm hoping that the outrage is so loud that it won't survive. Just like when they tried to change the ball. I know that was more a player issue then a fan one but this bothers me and other fans a lot. I don't want my Bulls jersey graced with a fat big boy logo on it.
That would be great if there was enough outrage that they decided not to do it. However, I feel NBA fans would be more tolerant to this than college football fans.
I've seen a few online suveys that are 80-90% against this idea. NBA fans are no more into selling out than anyone else.
Seriously, this is ridiculous. Just look at how awful a lot of European team jerseys look - a lot of them are totally unwearable. The whole idea is just embarassing. Of course, it would be America's worst pro sports league that suggests it.
I think it works for soccer. I used to also think it was dumb, but you come to identify a team with a sponsor. And note, in soccer the sponsor's logo isn't just slapped on the jersey like a bumper sticker (ala NASCAR), but rather it is somewhat done in a reasonable manner.
However, Euro football teams also don't have the big gaudy logos of the NBA. Instead they have team crests, which fashionably are on the left chest for most teams. It works really well for soccer I think. I agree I'd hate to see it in baseball (and couldn't care less about basketball), but it's not that crazy of an idea.
Well the NBA is a business and if your not maximising your profits as a business owner, you're doing something wrong. I don't see it as any different than professional Soccer where they also have ads on their jerseys. God forbid some of you ever have to deal with any real change in life, the way you freak out over something as trivial as a teams jersey.
Is nothing sacred to you man?
Yes, Winged helmets!
I'm a cavs fan so as far as i am concerned they could set fire to the NBA and I would be ok with that.
Honestly tho I don't see the problem with it. It's not like tradition means much of anything in the NBA or even the NFL or else teams would stay in their origanal city for starters.
Yes no one cares about the original clean celtic jerseys or the purple and gold of the lakers or those diamond bulls shorts. No tradition what so ever with the jerseys.
I can't stand advertising(if you can tell from my MS paint) and to just screw up classic jerseys for some money makes me sick.
I can understand your point. you named 3 of the biggest franchises in basketball tho and one of the biggest in American sports ( Lakers). Do you think smaller market team will share in the sentiment? If you throw the Pistons and knicks on the list you'ld prolly have the only 5 teams who would be against advertising on jerseys.
There are 30 teams in the nba and I'm sorry but 5 teams with any vague sense of tradition is a minority. As far as the adveritising goes , I'd rather have a patch on the uniform than change the name of the stadium..
Well the NBA is a business and if your not maximising your profits as a business owner, you're doing something wrong.This assumes no downside to putting ads on the uniforms. You have to consider the customer reaction. What if they offend a portion of the customer base, who decides to no longer buy jerseys? That can end up costing your business.
It doesn't appear that you're even a casual fan. This won't affect you.
"Stern met with the media after the Board of Governors held their annual summer meeting, and said the league is looking to add possibly $100 million in revenue by permitting small advertising patches on uniforms starting in the 2013-14 season." - from the article
I don't think $100 million will get them quite to NASCAR levels when it comes to advertising clutter, but still, I am not really a fan of the notion that, for example, the Pistons jersey could have #PalaceNet or whatever, or that the Orlando Magic and their red ink would advertise GreenPath Solutions. I understand the league wanting to do things like this when two-thirds of their teams are losing money, but it is irritating that it comes at the price of aesthetics. I have to wonder if this would begin to affect merchandising - I can't see as many people willing to purchase ad-laden uniforms.
If two-thirds of franchises are losing money (which I highly doubt is true, BTW), the league should be thinking about cost containment. Adding $3.3 million per team ($100M divided by 30 teams) is no magic elixir.
North American franchises should steer clear of following the European soccer business model. Despite massively whoring themselves out, the big soccer clubs are pretty much all drowning in red ink.
The other factor is the distribution of revenue from team to team: 17 of the 30 N.B.A. teams lost money in 2009-10, according to the Forbes data. Most of the losses were small, and the league was still profitable as a whole because of profits made by successful franchises like the New York Knicks, Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, who together netted about $150 million by themselves. But there are a sizable number of owners who have reason to be unhappy.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/calling-foul-on-n-b…
It does look like they're having problems financially, but it's not that bad.
I suspect that a lot of those losses come down to bookkeeping issues. I don't know if the Pistons make money, for instance, but I know that the Palace (which is owned by the same person but is technically a separate business) makes a ton. If franchises were truly losing as much money as Stern suggests, why do their values continue to escalate?
accounting issues pointed out in that article, which the author says account for significant chunks of money. My statement about there being problems basically stems from their operating margin being the lowest of the four majors with labor costs significantly above the other three majors, especially pre-2009 (which the NBA is probably still feeling effects from). Also the NHL winning the attendance and ticket revenue battle can't be good for the NBA, whether it actually hurts revenue and franchise valuation or not.
Freakonomics had a podcast regarding jerseys on NFL uniforms a couple years back. Those projections of up $10M annually per team are what's pushing this. One of the points that was brought up in the podcast though was that it would take some sponsorship away from individual players.
I don't think we'll see them on college football uniforms until we start to notice them:
Hopefully they don't do anything that meses with the player's individual endorsement deals... I mean, what if the Bulls went with Reebok when Michael Jordan was playing.
/ s
I really don't care about this at all.
I am pretty sure it is the owners choice. I won't buy a jersey regardless because I am a grown ass man, but you know, that's just my opinion.
that the owners and players can fight about in their negotiations during the next round of contract talks. And by fight about, I mean about who gets what cut of the revenue, not what goes on the uniforms.
I had a terrible feeling thing like this would happen soon. As a business major you always here Maximize profit... F*#k that..When Budwieser sold out to the germans I puked.. How about stop paying these players 20 mill a year and lower ticket prices..No, Lets look like the WNBA... CORPO BLOWS
Uhhh... as a business major I know the difference between here and hear.
Also as a business major I know that my job makes certain that my company has the resources to create jobs so that people like you and I can buy things and make sure that the company which makes that product can create jobs as well and so on. If i have to outsource or "sell out" to make sure my company remains competitive (see: viable) then that is exactly what I will do because I owe it to the thousands of people who depend on me to do what is best for the company in the long term.
What a joke! I know the NBA has been struggling in popularity in the recent years, but I'm not sure how they think this is going to help public perception of the league! Wake me up when the Pistons don't suck again...
I know the NBA has been struggling in popularity in the recent years, but I'm not sure how they think this is going to help public perception of the league!Uh can I have what you're smoking? The NBA is probably the 2nd biggest sport around right now
It's on the upswing, but it's not bigger than the NFL or MLB.
It's probably about equal to the MLB right now, and the NBA has more stars and is easier to market. That's why I put it as second
No, MLB is bigger, and it's not close. In 2011, over 73 million people went to a regular-season baseball game. (12 million people went to an NBA game in 2010-11.) Average attendance was over 30,000 per game - and this for a sport in which teams play 81 home games and it's much harder to make the playoffs than basketball.
Here's the MLB attendance data for this year:
http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance
29 of the 30 teams draw over 20,000 a game, and the 30th is drawing over 19K. Baseball's surge in attendance has gone unnoticed by a lot of people, but it's pretty dramatic. Its attendance has been growing steadily for a good decade now.
The NBA has a handful of extremely successful franchises, but there's a growing perception that most teams can't compete for the championship, and it's hurting its bottom line. Quite a few NBA teams have trouble at the gate. In fact, MLS currently is outdrawing the NBA (based on 2012 and 2011-12 per-game averages, respectively).
Man, fuck this.
I'd like to think fans could get together and organize a boycott of companies that advertise on uniforms, but there's a reason this is starting in the NBA: it's the place where fans will least care about it.
My guess is that when David Brandon sees the story, the first thought that goes through his head is, "Why didn't I think of this?" Players at most schools already have ads on their uniforms in the form of logs by whichever manufaturer makes them.
Can I add this to my argument that college sports are better than pro sports?
It'd be cool if they'd wear them like EPL jerseys. NASCAR however is overkill.
...if they played 45 minutes straight (i.e., without television breaks) like soccer does.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I always figured that the reason that soccer teams wore such prominent sponsor logos was because of the lack of television advertising breaks that are commonplace during American sport broadcasts.
Times change. Money talks. Add those two together....
Soccer/futbol has been doing this forever. I recognize EPL teams mostly by the advertising on the jersyes (AON, Etihad, etc.), not so much the colors b/c teams there don't have consistent color schemes (between home, away, and alternate kits).
So it's just a different mindset. If your team had a huge "VW" on the chest (e.g., DC United), the team could be freed to make whatever color changes it wants, regularly, or have totally different colors for home and away. And why does that matter? It's just part of the jersey. Ignore it. You'll get used to it. No biggie. Seriously, when I watch DC United, it's not like I suddenly want to buy a VW. Nor does it change how you watch the game. So... get over it.
I think the big thing is that if you don't like it, don't buy their product. I agree with others that it is sad that our society is so commercialized, but as many have put it, it is a business. They'll make money anyway that they can, and as long as people are supporting it, they'll continue exploiting it.
Excuse my Johnnie Cochran moment at the end there.
If your team had a huge "VW" on the chest (e.g., DC United), the team could be freed to make whatever color changes it wants, regularly, or have totally different colors for home and away.
Is that supposed to be a good thing? I don't think Piston fans enjoyed it when the team dropped its traditional colors for teal and burgundy.
I follow soccer, but I've never gotten used to ads on the jerseys. It's a cheap moneygrab, nothing else. I'm glad that the national teams' jerseys don't have them.
If your team had a huge "VW" on the chest (e.g., DC United), the team could be freed to make whatever color changes it wants, regularly, or have totally different colors for home and away.And if your team has a huge AIG on its chest in the middle of the global recession, you look like a bunch of fucking assholes for promoting one of the recession's catalysts. It ain't always such a great idea. P.S. nobody thought caller ID was a bad idea.