Corporate logos are finally coming to NBA jerseys. The league announced a three-year pilot program for jersey sponsorships on Friday morning, with a small patch in the left shoulder of NBA uniforms coming for the 2017-18 season.
Corporate logos are coming to NBA uniforms in 2017-18
The patch will be featured on the left shoulder of jerseys.
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Ricky O'Donnell has covered basketball at all levels for more than a decade at SB Nation. He’s currently the Associate Director of Programming.
The patch will be 2½ x 2½ inches. The sponsor patch will not appear on the retail versions of the jerseys but teams will have the option to sell the jerseys with sponsor patches in their own retail outlets. The announcement comes after the league experimented with ads on jerseys at the 2016 NBA All-Star Game, where a KIA logo appeared on the left shoulder.
Each team will be responsible for selling its own jersey sponsorship. The timing of this ‘pilot program’ coincides with the league’s deal with Nike to become the NBA’s new on-court apparel provider.
The ads are expected to generate about $150 million for the league, according to Bloomberg Sports. The WNBA has had ads on its uniforms for years. NBA commissioner Adam Silver has long been a proponent of experimenting with this idea, and it’s finally coming to fruition.
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