Well… the day has come.
After years of denying that the NHL would ever allow advertisements on team uniforms, commissioner Gary Bettman has conceded defeat and has allowed teams to display “corporate sponsor” logos on jerseys this upcoming season. Most teams, of course, have displayed some sort of corporate logo on their helmets the past few seasons, but now the ads are coming to jerseys. Pandora’s box has officially been opened and I personally don’t think it’ll be too long until teams look more like European soccer teams than NHL hockey teams.
I mean… what little boy doesn’t dream of donning the “JEEP” logo or having “Rakuten” across their chest?
The Washington Capitals, Pittsburgh Penguins and Arizona Coyotes all revealed their new looks at the NHL’s rookie showcase earlier today:
So gross… so wrong…
I’m old enough to remember when NHL games weren’t absolutely plastered with ads. The white boards, the white ice… just the colors of the teams on the ice. You could walk by a television and even with the old school standard definition TVs of the day, you could tell it was the Leafs facing the Red Wings at a glance. Now, there’s so much going on you don’t know who the hell is playing and what the hell is going on. But I digress…
Personally, I will never buy an NHL jersey with an ad on it. I like to support the team and the players, not some corporate sponsor. And frankly, I’ll take a closer look at each of these sponsors and determine whether or not I want to support them or not. To have the audacity to put your logo on an NHL jersey speaks volumes to me, so I think I need to re-think my monthly bills the Rogers, Bell and the likes. I bet I’m in the minority here, but I would absolutely love to see these sponsorships backfire on both the teams and the corporate sponsors. In fact, I’ll be curious to see jersey sale figures in a year’s time and compare them to previous years’ sales.
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