The reasons why NFL team jerseys do not have sponsorship on them
Sponsorship and sports. Two words which appear to go hand in hand but for some reason, a few in fact, the NFL has taken a decidedly different approach. Why?
From basketball to baseball, and from soccer to hockey sponsorship patches on the uniforms of our favorite professional teams are part and parcel of the game. Yet, when it comes to America’s favorite sport, they are nowhere to be seen. Just what are the reasons behind the NFL’s decision to abstain? Let’s dive in.
Why the NFL hasn’t budged on jersey patches
Before we get to the NFL and its stance on sponsors’ jersey patches, let’s first take a look at the phenomenon itself. To be clear, whether we’re talking about the NBA, MLB, or NHL, there are countless jerseys today across those leagues that carry the logos of various brands. These patches as you can probably guess, are the result of extremely lucrative deals that are negotiated, signed, and sealed much in the same way as stadium naming rights contracts. If we look at MLB specifically, there are presently 9 of the 30 teams in the league that have sold the 4-by-4-inch sleeve space that the league has allocated to the venture. Now, it’s important to note that the “justification” from those teams was largely based in budgetary constraints, something which you will soon learn does not apply to the NFL
There is no financial necessity for the NFL
Off the bat, that’s the simplest way to put it. The NFL, as the biggest revenue creator in American sports is not under any pressure to start allowing jersey patch sales. That’s not to say it will never happen, but if we consider the manner in which the NFL has always approached new methods of marketing, the tendency has quite clearly been to wait, learn and then use the position of power that it knows it has. “There’s no (NFL) revenue imperative pushing this” said Elizabeth Lindsey, president of brands and properties at Wasserman, an organization whose clients include NFL sponsors such as Diageo, Gallo, Microsoft and Nationwide. “Normally, they (the NFL) come in last to anything new in the market, does it better, and charges more. Still, they’ve been talking to us about ‘protecting the shield’ for so long, I could believe they’ll be the league that won’t sell space on their unforms.”
Could the NFL change its stance in the future?
If we take a look at Terry Lefton’s column over at Sports Business Journal, there could be change coming in the future but not soon. To be more specific, Lefton notes that the large majority of NFL TV deals expire in 2033. It’s reasonable to believe that at that point, “Teams and rights holders would have to be cut in, and one scenario proposed to us had the rightsholders themselves selling uniform signage. That would be one way to prevent the internecine battles that invariably develop between teams, rights holders, and the league over who controls any new camera-visible marketing assets.”
Not on Roger Goodell’s watch
Perhaps the single biggest roadblock when it comes to the possibility of NFL ad patches is not so much the idea of pricing or market value, but rather the fact that Commissioner Roger Goodell is diametrically opposed to the idea of allowing patches to be placed on the uniforms of teams in the league. “You tell me the year Roger Goodell’s contract ends and that’s the year ad patches will be allowed in this league,” said one longtime NFL team president. “So, not never, but close to that. The bigger question is when and if this does happen, will it be a league asset or a team asset?” In case you’re wondering, it is widely expected that Goodell’s contract will be renewed in the near future.
What about another form of product placement?
Interestingly, Lefton also notes that there is the distinct possibility that the NFL will forgo patches altogether and instead go for another means of highly visible branding, an idea supported by one NFL team president whom he surveyed. “The reality is that the starting point for any of this - whether it’s patches or virtual signage - will be the beginning of the league’s next broadcast deals,” said the NFL team president. “My sense now is that we’ll go to virtual signage, like the NHL has.” There was also Michael Neuman, founder of Horizon Sports & Entertainment who referred to the signage in NFL stadiums as “the lower bowl quagmire.”
Neuman expanded on his idea saying, “As a longtime buyer of sponsorship assets with significant media equivalency value, the ones that always jumped off the page were in the lower bowl at a handful of NFL stadiums that have them, even though they aren’t supposed to. Teams that have it are already generating substantial incremental revenue. It’s the most valuable real estate in sports that’s largely unused.” At this point, it remains unclear as to if/when the NFL will join the patch party, but what we can assume is that it’s only a matter of time before the league addresses the mass amounts of potential revenue that is untapped. As we always say, ‘watch this space.’