by Perri Williams ’23

Commercialization is the process of managing or running something principally for financial gain. Professional sports in the United States and around the world have always been about generating revenue for the leagues and the teams, but that has traditionally been secondary to providing thrills and entertainment to billions of sports fans. The balance between making money and respecting the fans is seriously out of whack when players wear jerseys adorned with advertisements.

Major League Soccer (MLS) was the first U.S. professional league to allow jersey ads in 2006. Within recent years MLS has added a second spot on jerseys where ads can be shown.

In 2009 the WNBA joined the trend, adding sponsors names where their own team names were. This practice has since changed, and ads are now on the bottom of the front of WNBA jerseys. The NBA was late to this, not adding jersey ads until the 2017-2018 season and thus far those ads are significantly smaller than other leagues. The NBA came up with patch ads which were small ads that were placed on the right side of jerseys.

In 2020 the NWSL added ads to their jerseys similarly to the way the WNBA started using them in 2009, where the ad sits where the team name used to be. Most recently, the NHL has announced that they will be adding jersey ads in the 2022-2023 season that will be about an inch larger than the NBA ads. The NFL has not tapped into this type of advertising yet, but it seems it’s only a matter of time.

Jersey ads have become an eyesore specifically on the jerseys of professional athletes and highlight the further commercialization of sports. This becomes a problem when there are different ads everywhere. It is notably annoying when an NFL team is playing and the program is interrupted by a half screen of a pizza ad during the game. Or when a soccer game is on and it is difficult to know who is playing because the players’ jerseys ads are larger than their team’s name.

Perhaps it was inevitable that advertisements would begin appearing on jerseys once teams began re-naming their stadiums and arenas after whichever corporate sponsors was willing to pay the most money.

Consider the professional sports teams in Washington D.C.: The Washington Football Team plays at FedEx Field; the Wizards in Capital One Arena (and before that the Verizon Center and before that the MCI Center); DC United on Audi Field. How long before Nationals Park gets rebranded as Booz Allen Field or as Lockheed Martin Stadium or how about Marriott International Park?

Leagues are constantly coming up with new practices to increase revenue. Most recently, the NBA has begun using a virtual signage on their teams’ courts where they change the advertisements each quarter for viewers who are watching the game on television.

Court ads reportedly put an extra 60,000 dollars per game in teams’ pockets. While commercialization practices are tremendously lucrative, they can also make consumers’ (of the actual sport) experiences less enjoyable and engaging.

So at the end of the day is the advertising all worth it? It is for those making the money. And what about for the rest of us? The leagues and the team owners don’t care about that. The leagues and the team owners don’t care about that.