From Fair Pay, Fair Play pages 75-86.
In April 2016, the NBA announced teams could add a corporate logo to the front of their jerseys beginning with the 2017-18 season. As the 2015-16 season came to a close, the Philadelphia 76ers were completing an intentional three-year losing streak.
They were “tanking”—losing big today in hopes of getting high draft picks for a better team in some undefined future. No matter, they leveraged their status as Philadelphia’s only pro-basketball My Team to be the first NBA team to announce a jersey logo deal. Fans were not happy. “Can’t field a competitive team and barely make the salary cap floor but first to sell ads on the jerseys,” said an article commenter thehack: “Glad they got their priorities straight.” Another article commenter, JohnnyNite, noted that 76er CEO Scott O’Neil had told ABC he had always been jealous of the English Premier League and NASCAR for all the money they make from advertising on jerseys and equipment, then added: “HOW ABOUT BEING JEALOUS OF OTHER TEAMS WINNING…!!!Never have seen a ARTICLE ABOUT THAT..!!!”
And another article commenter, Scott Jacobs, voiced his concern about the likely spread to other leagues and teams. “You know what’s great about sports—the Yankees always look like the Yankees, the Red Wings look like the Red Wings, etc. … It happens slowly over time, until one day, the Yankees no longer look like the Yankees. It’s a first-world problem, but it’s yet another disconnect between owners and fans. No fan wants this, and the owners don’t care. Sports is a business, yes, but teams are also a civic trust. This just speaks to how little they care about Joe Fan.”
And it’s not just the spread of jersey logos to other leagues and teams that we should worry about (the NHL began adding logos in the 2022-23 season and MLB began adding logos in the 2023 season). When the NBA started discussing the possibility of jersey logos in 2005, Dean Bonham, the founder of The Bonham Group, a sports and entertainment marketing firm, described the strategy leagues will take to increase the logo presence on team jerseys “It definitely needs to be a crawl, walk, run strategy. You start with a small logo strategically placed. Over the next decade or so, you’ll see some fairly large corporate presence on uniforms.”
When the 76ers made their announcement one article commenter, DrachenFire, spoke of the (wholly undesired, yet expected) future: “Just rip the Bandaid off and sell the naming rights to the team, that’s where this is all heading anyway. How much money could be made turning professional athletes into billboards for an entire broadcast?”
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