This has been coming for years now and unfortunately it’s nearly happening.
Ads on jerseys.
Now I’ve seen advertisements on jerseys most of my life. Being English you get used to seeing the Samsung logo on Chelsea FC’s shirt or the Xbox logo on Seattle Sounders’ kit.
But when it comes to basketball. It makes me cringe. You see it all over European basketball and it just doesn’t seem right. And according to the New York Daily News, Knicks Forward Amar’e Stoudemire thinks this will be detrimental to NBA players and their business off the court.
“It all depends on the players,” Stoudemire said before Monday’s preseason home opener against the Toronto Raptors at Madison Square Garden. “A lot of players have endorsement deals. So it could be a conflict of interest, if you ask me. It depends on the company I’m in bed with. I could be endorsed by a company that’s not sponsored by the NBA, so that could be a conflict of interest.”
Stoudemire said he wasn’t aware of the league discussions, but didn’t sound too excited about it.
“Some guys got deals that are outside the NBA,” he said. “You have an exclusive deal, which means you have to stay exclusive to that particular company.”
This is a possible problem. But the solution is simple. The reason why football clubs do fine in terms of sponsorship is that they get sponsors not directly affiliated with the sport.
Do you see Real Madrid being sponsored by Adidas even though most of their players have a boot deal with Nike? No.
It’s not that hard. But don’t get this twisted. I don’t want this. I may be English. But I do believe in some sort of traditional values.
Imagine in 20 years. You see a classic ESPN montage. We see Michael Jordan dunk, Allen Iverson crosses somebody over, and then we see Jabari Parker shooting a three with “Chipotle” plastered on his jersey. It doesn’t work.
