Imagine seeing the Target bulls-eye slapped on the middle of the Minnesota Wild jersey. Now, imagine it on the Timberwolves jersey. Twins jersey. Vikings jersey. You get the point. It’s a frightening image to some. Unfortunately, this frightening image could become reality sooner than we might like.
With the recent news of Adidas winning a contract to being the official provider of jerseys to the NHL, (you can do some damage with $70 million), hockey fans all around America fear that Adidas will convert their favorite team’s jersey to a billboard. Minnesota native and NHL star Blake Wheeler took to Twitter with his thoughts on the subject (hit the link if you want to see what he had to say… personally I agree with him completely).
With KicksOneTwo mainly being a sneaker website, I completely understand the fact that a lot of you may not be familiar with the world of hockey at all. One fact about hockey, which Wheeler mentioned in his tweet, is that an NHL jersey is a sacred object. Many teams even go so far as to not step on the logo placed in the center of their locker room. I’ve never seen this type of team loyalty in any other sport. Placing advertisements on these jerseys such as European hockey teams do absolutely ruins the sacredness of the jersey.
Another problem I have with placing advertisements on jerseys for any sport is that it looks tacky. Plain and simple. (Note – as I’m writing this, I’m thinking about how sweet it would be to have Supreme plaster a bunch of box logos on an NBA jersey. But that’s besides the point.) European hockey jerseys have so much stuff going on that it’s hard to look at. I’m not a fan.
You could be asking yourself, “What about pro soccer jerseys? Those aren’t tacky or have clashing logos!” I agree with that statement, but the problem I have with those jerseys is that you can hardly tell what team the jersey is for. Obviously the majority of you could recall what a Barcelona jersey looks like, (Some of you only due to the shoes. Hypebeasts.), but when it comes to less recognizable teams, you have no clue who they are. Neither do I! Having some company’s name and logo pasted on the chest of your team’s jersey is ridiculous.
When it boils down to it, we probably won’t have much say in the matter anyways. If the NHL converts to jerseys with advertisements in 2017, I would not be surprised if other sports follow suit. This won’t cause me to stop watching pro sports, but it will definitely change the way I view them. Until then, put some of your retro jerseys on ice. You’ll be breaking necks everywhere by being the only one rocking a jersey without ads on it.
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I don’t think that there will be corporate logos on the jerseys, Adidas has owned reebok(the prior jersey provider) for over 10 years and they never had ads. I think people that heard Adidas got the rights to the jerseys and someone started a rumor and it spread like wildfire. When it comes down to it I don’t even think it is Adidas that makes the call on whether or not ads are included it’s more the NHL’s decision.
There’s definitely a chance that there will never be ad’s on jerseys in the NHL or any other pro sport. However, Adidas is paying twice what Reebok did for the NHL jersey contract. In essence, they’re paying twice of what they paid last year with Reebok. Looking at it from a business standpoint, it would be smart for Adidas to push for getting advertisements on jerseys in order to recoup some of that money. Like you said, it isn’t only Adidas’s decision as the NHL has a huge say in the matter, but if the NHL can make big money off of it as well, it becomes an even bigger possibility. Also, there have been actual talks between league executives on the matter of selling spots on jerseys to companies so there’s more than just rumors to this whole deal.