Ads on Jerseys

Slightly more garish than usual Mets

Complaining about things like ads on sports jerseys is a great way to seem very old and crotchety... but there are moments when, well, the crotchety just overwhelms.

To wit, the notion that ads on sports jerseys are not just an atrocity, and an abomination, but also an inevitability.

What's the big deal, fans of the English Premier League might ask? After all, Arsenal makes over $46 million a year in a deal with Emirates, ad Manchester United makes $81.6 million a year from Chevrolet for their deal, which includes jersey-front sponsorship. People in the U.S. should just relax and accept the ads. You won't even notice them after a while.

And sure, the money is great, and they may be right. Heaven knows sports fans in the U.S. have gotten used to many terrible things. But there are a handful of critical differences that make all of the difference in the world. To wit:

1) Teams in leagues outside of the U.S. do not benefit from a closed market monopoly.

If your NFL, MLB, NHL or NBA team is just plain terrible, and doesn't even try very hard to get better, or pay to retain or attract the services of good players, they stay in the league. Forever and ever, really, and the level of derpery does not really matter. In fact, there's a very real chance that a team that does not try to win will make more profit than one that does, thanks to revenue sharing.

In other countries, the worst teams are relegated -- in other words, sent down to the minors. It makes for fantastic drama for a much wider number of clubs, and serious misery and joy for fans and haters of a specific laundry. But what it means, more than anything else, is that making hay while the sun shines is very, very important. As you might imagine, advertising revenue from jersey sales, not to mention tickets, TV ratings and all of the rest, is highly dependent on staying in the first division.

2) Teams in the U.S. benefit from corporate welfare around stadiums and broadcast rights.

Thanks to some highly questionable public service decisions based around the artificial monopoly of "major league" teams, local municipal governments in the U.S. are set up in a perennial game of chicken against other cities, especially when it comes to retaining at-risk franchises in stadiums that aren't quite as new and lucrative for corporate sponsors.

Other nations? Well, there's no artificial monopoly, thanks to relegation and promotion. So there are really no true "minor league" cities -- there are just ones that are at that status in the here and now. Once again, the sources of perpetual revenue just aren't as evergreen.

3) The non-viewing public does not, for the most part, subsidize sports outside of the U.S.

Everyone who pays a cable bill is, whether they ever watch the network or not, paying ESPN about $5 a month. Smaller, but still potent, amounts also apply to other networks that carry sports, including the ones that are actually ran by the leagues. If and when cable becomes unbundled, or enough of the paying public cuts the cord, maybe the math changes, but that's a great deal of inertia to overcome. Other countries, well, not so much.

So the plain and simple is that American leagues are literally awash in money, and simply have to decide whether if there is anything they can do that is so beyond the pale that it will kill the golden goose. Will it be ads on the front of jerseys?

Probably not.

But honestly, why risk it?

Especially when you've already got more money than you will probably ever be able to spend?

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