John Sweeney is a distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina who heads the advertising sequence of the sports-communication program.
The presence of logos on uniforms depends on the culture of the sport. Any attempt to put logos on major league baseball uniforms, and fans go crazy. They are so reverential. In NASCAR, logos are the lifeblood of the sport. Drivers and their cars are known by their sponsors. In British soccer, the main image on Manchester United’s uniform is a commercial logo.
A company that buys logo space on a uniform is buying a significant association with leading athletes. Titleist on a billboard is not going to have much meaning. But if you see Titleist on the three or four top golfers, that’s a significant association. Logos can be very powerful messages when worn by major players.
What companies pay for logos has grown dramatically. The first shoe contract was probably $5,000 to $10,000 to lock up the coach. Now a university negotiates a shoe contract across all of its sports. Sponsorships have become a big poker game; if you want to play, you need a lot of money. The banks, airlines and car companies expect to be integrated into the sport, and that could mean the uniform. There’s a lot of back and forth about what stays sacred.
A player’s uniform is more narrow and complicated advertising than arena signage, for instance. Who they are and what they represent becomes larger to a sponsor. A player may be passionately liked or disliked, or stereotyped, and that meaning becomes linked to the logo sponsor.
It’s a risk signing a 22-year-old to a big logo contract. A young athlete who wins big and then struggles will still get lots of airtime in the 24/7 media world. If that athlete goes a little crazy, a company whose logo he wears is stuck with the fallout from him behaving badly.
On a golfer, the prime logo spot is the hat or front pocket. You see Jim Furyk, and Five Hour Energy is clearly paying him to be a walking billboard. It’s more powerful to have the logo integrated into the uniform in a more tasteful way.
This generation of sports fans is used to being pitched, and finding the right logo is like a game of chess. To stand out, you have to do something unusual in the environment. That may mean just talking straight.
It’s hard to believe, going back in time, how little advertising there was on athletes’ uniforms. Watch Muhammad Ali’s fights, and there were no logos per se.
