I would assume the four major American team-sports leagues will eventually put ads on the player uniforms, just like NASCAR and European football. I can’t say I have any problem with it. According to Michael Kruse article at Grantland, the NBA may be first to tap that windfall. An excerpt:
“It’s a good time to talk about ads on jerseys. NBA bigwigs are.
‘We told our owners that it was not something we were considering doing for next season,’ league deputy commissioner Adam Silver said a few weeks ago, ‘but that it was something we should at least discuss doing for the season after next.
‘We presented to our owners some mocked-up jerseys, mannequins, not models, that showed various iterations of logos, sizes of logos, placement of logos. We showed them some of the traditional soccer jerseys used in Europe and we showed them some of the valuations that soccer jerseys are getting and some estimates of ranges of values for logo rights on NBA jerseys.’
By not putting ads on jerseys, the four major sports leagues in this country are leaving on the table a total of more than $370 million a year, according to a study done by Horizon Media.
‘This is the ability for a brand to be literally woven into the fabric of the game,’ Michael Neuman said recently on the phone from New York. Neuman is a managing partner of Scout Sports and Entertainment, which is a division of Horizon.”