Years ago, back when I was still in high school, I was
really into Adbusters and Naomi Klein and signed up for a course called Media
Studies, taught by a new teacher called Ms. Bell, who was the kind of person
who used to reprimand people for buying shirts with logos on them: why would
you pay to be a billboard, she’d ask them, it’s supposed to go the other way
around.
I thought of her when I heard about the NBA’s plan to put
ads on jerseys.
The NBA’s plan is to out a small sponsor logo on the
uniform, a patch “inches above the heart”, as
a Bloomberg report so colorfully puts it. That report estimates these
patches will bring in something like $100 million a season, which is pretty
good money but nothing compared to some deals the NBA already has in place.
Both TNT and ESPN pay over $900 million a year for broadcasting rights, for
instance.
And it’s not exactly like the league is hemorrhaging money,
either: 15
teams lost money in the 2010-11 season, but the collective bargaining
agreement shifted revenue towards owners, meaning they’re not really out that much.
So it’s not exactly as if the league needs
this patch money, but who ever turned down free cash?
The reaction to this has been surprising to me: a blatantly
unscientific poll on Bleacher Report has over 75 per cent of people against it,
saying the NBA is “selling out,” a phrase I’m sure I understand in this
context: how can someone making mega amounts of cash be not selling out? And
the Bleacher Report article raises a good point: teams already play in
million-dollar arenas named after corporate sponsors.
But it goes a little deeper than that, and I’m not sure
people quite realize it.
Jack McCallum’s new history on the Dream Team repeats a
story about Michael Jordan I’ve been fascinated by since I first heard about it
years ago: when the team won gold, they were required to go to the podium
wearing a certain jacket, part of a sponsorship deal. Reebok made the jackets
and Jordan is a Nike guy. Jordan resolved this situation with an artfully
clever solution, draping a flag
over his shoulder and covering up the logo Reebok had so thoughtfully placed
in a prominent spot.
Anybody who thinks that jersey-making companies don’t place
their logo in a conspicuous spot is kidding nobody. The NBA has it’s logo on
one shoulder, in a spot where it’s sure to be in every photo. The NHL likewise
has one right at the neck of the jersey. If you buy a jersey, be it a Dream
Team throwback or a Tyreke
Evans road jersey, there’s a little logo on the other shoulder. You may not
notice it, but you’re already advertising a company when you wear one.
In advertising, there’s a concept called effective frequency.
Essentially, it expresses the number of times somebody needs to see an ad
before it takes effect. My favorite take is Thomas Smith’s from 1885, which
says it’ll take 20 views. Simply put, just seeing an ad once isn’t
effective.
The NBA isn’t the first league to put ads on jerseys. It’s a
staple in Europe, where ads on the field and on the players take the place of
commercial breaks. Here in North America, they’re just on players
in the CFL and sometimes
own entire soccer teams.
And here’s the rub: they didn’t mean the league sold out,
they didn’t ruin the play. Honestly, they’re something one doesn’t even notice:
last time I saw a CFL game in person, I couldn’t make out players nameplates,
let alone a small patch. It works better on TV (where everything is already
sponsored anyway) and even better in print, when a patch is immortalized in a
photograph.
It’s honestly a drop in the bucket of the exposure we all
get to advertising everyday. As a society, we’re bombarded with ads every day,
most of it unconsciously. From product placement to billboards on buses to a
Subway logo on the score ticker, they’re everywhere. Having a small patch on a
jersey is hardly a tipping point.
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