The NBA is set to become the first major U.S. sport to allow advertising directly on team jerseys. According to ESPN, a vote by the owners is expected to pass by the end of the week and the jersey ads will go into effect beginning in the 2017-18 season. Be careful sports fans, heads are about to explode.
Sports fans are already starting to take to Twitter and other social media avenues to bash the decision. Empty threats of never watching NBA basketball again and demands that the NBA owners stop being greedy are being made left and right. The owners will approve 2.5-by-2.5-inch patches to be allowed for placement on the left shoulder of your favorite team’s jersey. To some, this represents the natural evolution of sports marketing. To others, it’s the trigger of the sportspocalypse. Jersey ads represent the final straw that will drag U.S. sports franchises into a fantastic, fiery, greed-riddled death.
Then, those fans will wake up.
My belief is that the NBA will not lose a single fan, nor a single viewer in response to the ads. I’m not exactly sure what rock these outraged individuals have been living under, but the period of purity for professional sports teams has been long gone. Having a Kia, Coca-Cola or McDonald’s patch is far from the end of the world. It amazes me people can stomach spending $200 on a ticket, $50 for parking, $40 for a t-shirt, $15 for a beer and $10 for a hot dog, but putting an advertisement on a jersey is simply going too far.
I’m genuinely surprised that it has taken a major U.S. sports league this long to hop onboard the sponsored jersey train. Overseas, soccer teams began seeing advertisements on club jerseys kits as early as the 1950s. The practice didn’t really take off though until the 1970s when the German soccer club Eintracht Braunschweig put a giant Jägermeister stag front and center on its kits. Fast-forward to 2016, and now it looks like the Samsungs versus the Chevrolets whenever Chelsea squares off against Manchester United in England’s Premier League. Team names are often nowhere to be seen on the uniforms of European soccer teams. If they are present, they’re hidden on the shoulder, in the precise spot where the NBA will place its new money-making patches.
Sure, international soccer is one of the most corrupt sports on the planet, but it’s also the most popular. As often is the case, when it comes to corruption, U.S. moneymakers are not that far behind. We’ve learned the harsh realities of the ‘money > everything’ approach in sports by watching the Rams and the NFL fleece the city of St. Louis coming and going.
The league has already had plenty of time to watch the practice migrate to the States. Everything is NASCAR is jam-packed with ads. Boxers routinely have sponsorship logos stitched into their shorts. The NBA has also launched test cases. Both the D-League and the WNBA already allow large sponsorship logos on player jerseys.
Instead of banning advertisements on NBA jerseys, I think the league should allow two sponsor patches. One side should be reserved for the gigantic, gazillionaire international companies. The other side should be saved for local businesses. How else will we see Russell Westbrook rock an Uncle Louie’s Auto Salvage patch or Joakim Noah wearing a Wanda’s Wig House patch?
Bye Bye Manny
Former multi-division boxing champion Manny “Pac Man” Pacquiao stated that he will retire from the sport of boxing. If true (never trust boxing retirements), Pacquiao’s final fight against Timothy Bradley was a nice bout to walk away with. The 37-year-old Pacquiao (58-6-2, 38 KO) outboxed and punished Bradley, knocking down the former champ twice en route to a comfortable decision victory.
Pacquiao intends to retire to a career of politics and charitable work in the Philippines. Though he earned a cool $20 million for the fight (compared to Bradley’s $4 million), PPV numbers were a big disappointment for HBO and Top Rank Promotions. According to ESPN’s Dan Rafael, Bob Arum expects the final PPV numbers to come in between 400k and 500k. There should no surprise by the low numbers though. This was a fight that nobody outside of Bradley and Arum wanted. Pacquiao comfortably beat Bradley twice already, although he was robbed on the scorecards by the judges in the first fight. After all, you can’t talk about corruption without boxing.
A matchup versus super lightweight champion Terence Crawford would have been a huge PPV event. Instead, Arum wanted to keep the money in-house and Pacquiao obliged. Still, there are already rumors that Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. will both come out of retirement to dance once again. However, since Arum is on record saying there’s a 50/50 chance of Mayweather-Pacquiao II, I’ll use my Pinocchio translator to interpret that as a 99% chance that it won’t happen. If Pacquiao truly is finished, I salute him. He had one heck of a career.
Heavyweight title departs STL
St. Louis-native Charles Martin (21-1-1, 21 KO) won the vacant IBF title back in January after a bizarre injury to his opponent Vyacheslav Glazkov. Martin’s first attempt at a title defense failed miserably after he was knocked out in just two rounds by UK heavyweight Anthony Joshua. Joshua (16-0-0, 16 KO) was a heavy favorite despite being the challenger and did not disappoint.
Though the title is bogus, an explosive fighter like Joshua having a belt sets up some interesting things in the heavyweight division. Joshua is a powerful but flawed heavyweight, much like WBC champion Deontay Wilder. If Wilder gets past Alexander Povetkin in May, he and Joshua may be on the fast-track to a unification bout. If that fight happens, I guarantee that it won’t last anywhere near 12 rounds.
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