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Why has the level of mainstream interest in sports aesthetics increased in recent years?


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 (Note: I’m using my time here on the boards as a frame of reference. Many of you have been here longer, and many others have been here for a shorter time.)

 

 Sports aesthetics are a niche interest, and probably always will be. However, I know that since I joined CCSLC back in March 2009, many collegiate and professional sports teams and leagues have dedicated more time, money, and effort specifically towards highlighting their uniforms. In recent years, we’ve seen the likes of Color Rush, Earned, City Series, Stadium Series, and even the old Pro Combat series from earlier in the decade. Teams hype up uniform unveilings several months in advance, or, as in the 2019 NY Jets instance, an entire YEAR of teases, marked with the slogan of #NewJetsUnis. We see clubs like the Saints and Panthers in the NFL, despite having some of the more reserved looks, dedicating posts and videos to their weekly uniform combos in the days leading up to their games. None of them would do any of this, if people didn’t give notable attention to such details. But obviously they do, and presumably in growing numbers. So I wanted to ask the Community: Why do you think the level of mainstream interest in sports aesthetics has increased in recent years? 

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ESPN, Fox and others are partly responsible. Gameday has routinely shown one off football uniforms the last two years. The NBA no longer even has home and away uniforms so fans that may only see games at the stadium would be able to see every team uniform if they go to enough home games. Instagram and Behance allow artists to show off their uniform ideas as well. 

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People have extremely short attention spans now, and you need to constantly flash shiny objects in front of them to keep them entertained. Also marketing. Gotta sell those jerseys.

 

The mainstream interest in sports uniforms is extremely shallow. It basically boils down to, "Oh sh!t, new uniforms! These are 🔥!!!!!!" With no real further discussion.

 

Although it is nice that now I can talk about uniforms without being immediately told to shut up. Now I can talk about the colors of the uniform before being told nobody cares.

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I feel like it started with collegiate sports and moved into professional sports -- namely with Oregon and their billions of uniform options. That caught fire with other colleges as a recruitment tool -- and now you're seeing Color Rush, so many pant and uniform options in the NFL that it KINDA feels like collegiate sports about a decade prior. I feel like if the NFL didn't have a one helmet rule, we'd start seeing 1-2 other helmet color options.

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Money.

 

If you have the same design forever, there is no reason for someone who bought a jersey 5 years ago to update. Release new jerseys every few years and you sell a lot more. For big teams, it's about keeping the balance between keeping things fresh and keeping the merch wheel turning and staying true to tradition.

 

The extra hype in the lead up to a release is just marketing to sell more.

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1 hour ago, El Scorcho said:

Money.

 

If you have the same design forever, there is no reason for someone who bought a jersey 5 years ago to update. Release new jerseys every few years and you sell a lot more. For big teams, it's about keeping the balance between keeping things fresh and keeping the merch wheel turning and staying true to tradition.

 

The extra hype in the lead up to a release is just marketing to sell more.

I disagree with the OP's assessment that mainstream interest in aesthetics has increased. I agree with El Scorcho's assessment that organizations realize that there is money to be made by going down the path of The Nike University at Oregon.

It's where I sit.

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The rise of a social media a big reason for the newfound focus on sports design. We live in a time where everyone has a virtual megaphone and is competing all-at-once for attention and followers, so teams and schools will use every resource at their disposal to put themselves at the forefront of the public eye.

 

Just look at the shift in minor league baseball identities over the last decade to see the effect that social media has had... we’re smack dab in the “Boaty McBoatface” era of attention and absurdity.

 

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I never really cared about uniforms outside of "my teams" until a few years ago.   I started liking the Charlotte Hornets then the Columbia Fireflies based on their uniforms and colors and it snowballed from there.  For me it's eye candy.  I don't care about watching a red and blue team play, but give me neon yellow or pink and light blue and I'm glued to it.  And with social media, those colors are incorporated into the posts, so that's fun to see.

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3 hours ago, GFB said:

The rise of a social media a big reason for the newfound focus on sports design. We live in a time where everyone has a virtual megaphone and is competing all-at-once for attention and followers, so teams and schools will use every resource at their disposal to put themselves at the forefront of the public eye.

 

Just look at the shift in minor league baseball identities over the last decade to see the effect that social media has had... we’re smack dab in the “Boaty McBoatface” era of attention and absurdity.

 


Yeah i think social media and the different platforms we have at our disposal now are the biggest reason. 

In effect, teams and brands are constantly trying to create content on these platforms thus marketing uniforms. 

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Depending on how you look at it, we (the CCSLC community) are either the ones to take credit for it or the ones to blame for it. It didn't take a marketing genius to see places like this, the mothership, the response to Paul Lukas and the Uni-Watch articles, etc., and figure out that there are a lot of people who are into the "athletic aesthetic." Social media came along and suddenly we were able to "carry the message" beyond the walls of our little community. Then it became "cool" to own all the latest jerseys, so on and so forth...and here we are. Long story short, I honestly believe that it started with us and took off from there. 

 

But I could be wrong...

 

 

 

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I tend to think @infrared41 is right in saying we, at least in part, had a hand in this. 

 

Not to say that everyone is secretly lurking on the CCSLC, but this place does prove there is a not-insignificant audience for this kind of stuff. 

 

Hell, I’ve seen the way this stuff is presented evolve through the years. I remember when I first joined. Alternate uniforms would debut the night of. 

Complete redesigns would get a press conference with a blown up view of the new logo and a player or two modelling the new set. 

 

Compare that to now where teams announce the unveiling months out, tease us the entire way there, and then unveil everything in as dramatic a way as possible. You don’t put effort into upping your presentation like that if you’re not sure it’s going to resonate with people. And this place proved even niche communities can make a lot of noise in an online space. 

 

Another recent-ish trend I’ve noticed is an emphasis on stitching. 

For the longest time you showed off a new jersey and that was that. Now even a full unveiling is accompanied by a mini photo album’s worth of closeups of every aspect of design, showing off the stitching in the stripes, wordmarks, logos, and other design elements. It’s a tactile thing, and it also gets the “craftsmanship” angle across. 

 

 

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i think @infrared41 is on the right track. i think this place and Uni Watch made a lot of people realize they wern’t the only weird ones into this stuff. then, along the football timeline, time it with social media, the Oregon/Nike uniforms and Pro Combat and all the schools who think they need to do that too and there was an explosion. uniforms became a canvas for telling graphical stories, and suddenly you dont have to rely on a throwback or simple alternate colored jersey as that special fashion option. a whole new world full of possibilities opened up, carried over into other sports and here we are. oh, and look at all the new tools there ate to play with. different finishes for helmets, printing and construction techniques, and with these latest Notre Dame unis, we’ve even got TPU numbers.

 

its kind of like when photoshop came out. we can print gradients now! theres been a lot of bad and good stuff come out of this era but i think this moment of exploration has captured a wider interest as well. 

 

 

 

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13 hours ago, kimball said:

I feel like if the NFL didn't have a one helmet rule, we'd start seeing 1-2 other helmet color options.

 

That would be a huge mistake.  The NFL has promoted its easily-identifiable set of league helmets on merchandise dating back to the 60s.  That finite set of team brands has served it well, and a big something would be lost if it were to be diluted.  At one time, I had thoughts of assembling a mini helmet collection of every version Kentucky had ever worn, but with them wearing 17 variations each season now, it would be too unwieldy to even try to keep up with it all, so I didn't even start.

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I'm going way back than just 'recent years', but as a kid in the early 80s, the only place I ever could see other jerseys and hats in person was the store across the street from Fenway Park. The sports store (which I think was pushed out by the team and became the team's official shop). There was very little access to other teams' highlights besides games of the week, even the USA Today didn't exist with color pictures until 1984! Sure, you could occasionally get your hands on a catalog with all the teams, sports, etc, but that seemed rare.

 

Then (I'm not sure which came first) but Ebbets/Mitchell Ness would start making throwbacks and old uniforms and hats (the Brooklyn Dodgers again!) Throwback games started hitting the majors, and the frequency of them increased from the late 80s into the 90s. Then Negro Leagues throwbacks started happening as well, expanding the visual landscape of the history of the games. (I know this is more baseball, but the NFL also had that one crazy throwbacks in the early 90s). The growth of cable TV and ESPN really exposed people to a lot more designs than they were previously used to seeing on a regular basis.

 

But I think it was a Madden game that allowed players to pick uniforms when it really hit 'mainstream'. I think with the trickling of throwback games, throwback merchandise, and the realization that people wanted to buy other team's stuff beside their local team really changed things a lot.

 

Once those doors of merchandising were opened, teams found a new revenue source and most leagues would start to flood the markets with throwback shirts, jackets, etc. All the while, the exposure of old logos and designs grew in the regular fan's minds, and teams continued to pocket the funds.

 

I think the next big leap was 'branding' as a thing. Yes, it has always existed, but it's only exponentially grown the internet, I remember one of the first times I came across Chris Creamer online was finding and forwarding a pdf of the Patriots navy Flying Elvis jerseys, and I also remember the hubbub over the Rams losing the gold stripe on their jerseys - I think a Kurt Warner figure without the stripe proved to be the leak!

So, yeah, I do think these boards, this site, Paul Lukas, all helped grow the amont of people who follow uniforms, and also exposing the general public to a wealth of information and visual reserves about them. The leagues, already acclimated with making money off jerseys, and more cognizant of branding, and the power of the viral social media landscape, bought into all of this and really push every unveiling, third/fourth /fifth jersey bigger and bigger each year, because, why not.

So in summary, exposure/throwback games, money, internet, branding, more money.

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I’m surprised this hasn’t been mentioned much yet, but I think the rise of high definition TV broadcasts has added to the importance of all of this quite a bit. A lot of those smaller details were seen as cool back before the mid 2000s, but most people didn’t realize they were there because you didn’t have the crystal clarity we have today.

Considering you can see every single scuff and scratch mark on helmets and equipment now, branding it’s sort of essential in a way it really wasn’t before the turn of the century. This is the first era where you can really turn a uniform into a marketing tool in a subtle manner without anything getting lost in translation. 

 

Now, of course, I think a lot of these elements are way OVER done now, but the trend definitely makes sense. 

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