The NBA has been expanding and diversifying its clothing inventory for years now, introducing everything from alternate unis, to retro throwbacks, to green St. Patrick's Day duds, to army fatigues, to sleeved jerseys. Now, it looks as though new commissioner Adam Silver is preparing to incorporate sponsor logos in NBA uniforms, reports ESPN's Darren Rovell.
Giving corporate sponsors that kind of showcase is not unprecedented in pro sports. It's a major feature of the NASCAR circuit, and is something the WNBA, as well as professional soccer, have been doing for a long time.
"It just creates that much more of an opportunity for our marketing partners to get that much closer to our fans and to our players," says Silver. "It gives us an opportunity just to have deeper integration when it comes those forms of sponsorship."
None of that will matter much to the basketball purists, who care far more about the integrity of the game that they do the NBA brand, and who will no doubt see this as a compromising cash-grab. Which, of course, it is. But the NBA is still a business at the end of the day, and Silver has estimated that putting logos on jerseys will be worth about $100 million a year.
Tough to imagine any amount of purist sentiment being worth that much to him.
