As if the Sacramento Kings weren’t nutty enough, the team just announced Blue Diamond Growers (“the world’s leading almond brand”) as its jersey sponsor. This will be the second agreed-upon partnership for jersey ads since the NBA legalized it for teams; the Sixers were the first team to take advantage.
The jersey ads will not be implemented until the 2017 season. This year, however, the Kings will have Blue Diamond logos on their new home court at the Golden 1 Center.
According to Darren Heitner of Forbes, Blue Diamond Growers will pay about $5 million per year for the new sponsorship. This is equal to the amount Stubhub is reportedly paying for ads on Philadelphia 76ers’ jerseys.
This is big news for the Kings, but may be even bigger for the rest of the league. Like Philadelphia, the Kings are not a highly visible team. They do not have many national TV games and they have effectively been a laughing stock in the league for several years.
That Sacramento is able to get this large of a sum of money for its ad bodes well for the rest of the league. The Warriors, for example, have reportedly been looking for a sponsorship between $15 and $20 million. They could absolutely get it and the rest of the league could follow suit:
Kings & 76ers getting $5M each for their jersey ads, means league could pull in more than $190M+ in a single year off this program.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) October 10, 2016
