walby2

That would be weird if they came back to Winnipeg. The Moose had strong support by AHL standards, but a lot of that was attributable to the fact that it was the top game in town at the time. The 6,500-ish crowds that they used to get would probably end up half as large, at best, if the Moose came back to Winnipeg. Obviously a strike/lockout situation would be totally different, but that isn't in the offing at all. I guess it only makes sense in the context of Winnipeg being an interim parking lot for the team for one or two seasons tops while the new TB rink gets built.

Are the people who buy this stuff typically under the impression that it's legit? Given how much of it you see around, I'm guessing that many if not most of the people who buy this stuff must think they just scored a really good deal on a legit jersey as opposed to having knowingly bought a bootleg.

There are good reasons not to buy knockoff jerseys (the quality of said product being #1), but potentially infringing on the legal rights of Nike, Reebok or their subsidiaries is near the bottom of that list.

o rly?

Speaking personally, I am annoyed that this embarrassing chitshow is coming to an end just as I have planned a trip to Phoenix for the first time this fall, thereby depriving me of the chance to at least get dirt cheap tickets to a NHL game next season. Screw you, Coyotes.

Note that the prices for music didn't come down until the recording industry started feeling the heat on their absurd prices with the rise of file sharing ($22 for a 25 cent CD? Really?). Hopefully the same thing will happen with the absurd prices for jerseys soon enough as the jersey makers feel the heat on their own absurd prices with the rise of offshore counterfeit manufacturing.

This photo appeared in the Sun media series on the 40th anniversary of the World Hockey Association... I have to admit it caught me a little off guard.

^ Just for the sake of clarity, I agree completely. As far as the NHL is concerned, replicas of today look like the authentics of 1992.

No surprise that the rise of fakes coincided with the dramatic price increases in authentics. When I was a kid in the early/mid 90s, you could get a NHL replica (admittedly not as good as the ones you can buy today) for about $50. Authentics were about $125. Now it's more than double that. Has polyester gone up that much in price over 15 years? What's more, the old jerseys were made in Canada with pricy unionized labour. Now Chinese children make them for peanuts. Yet the price has doubled. I guess all that R&D costs big money.

I saw my first known fakes during my first trip to China in 2002. Then as now they varied wildly in quality. The only fake jerseys you'd ever see people wearing at the time were teenage boys in soccer jerseys - usually either EPL or international kits. Those ones were typically well done and resembled the real thing, presumably because people actually knew what they were supposed to look like. The markets I frequented didn't have many jerseys from the North American leagues and the few that they did have were absolutely horrendous. The NHL jerseys could only have been made by people who had never actually seen a real hockey jersey before. The fakes started popping up around home much later than in other cities, mainly because there really weren't any available for the home teams (CFL/AHL). With the Jets being back in Winnipeg the fakes are abundant, and I've even seen a few at CFL games lately (although I understand they've been common in Saskatchewan for a few years now).

Exactly. The IP rights crowd is 100% dead on right when it comes to the law. However, the law and reality are two different things... after all, if they weren't, couldn't you shut down the drug trade by reminding organized crime elements that they are actually in violation of various statutes pertaining to controlled substances? The world doesn't work that way. Economics is the REAL law that affects how people behave in this situation. It's clear that manufacturers are hoping to make this problem go away, but of course the higher and higher their prices get the more incentive there is for counterfeiters to produce fakes and for consumers to buy them. One of three things will likely happen here: the Nikes and Reeboks of the world will have to really get good at persuading governments to clamp down on this activity far harder than they have been up to now, the big licensees will have to reduce their prices to wipe out the appeal of fakes to consumers, or the licensees will lose more and more market share to the counterfeiters.

The thinking appears to be that if enough people mock and castigate counterfeit jerseys in a nasty "Mean Girls" way, that the makers and buyers of said products will change their ways and respect American intellectual property laws. I'm sure it will work as well as the recording industry's anti-piracy efforts. At first they refused to change their business model too...

^ Apart from the issues with the accuracy of the logo, it looks like it was photoshopped into the jersey. I have my doubts as to whether the product is exactly like what is shown in the picture. Whether the actual thing is better or worse than what is shown, who knows.

The issues are not really all that subtle. To wit: Looks like the jersey above just uses an italic Times New Roman!

I see that some sites are starting to sell fake CFL jerseys: http://www.jerseystock88.com/products/Saskatchewan-Roughriders--s574_p1.html There are others as well. Saskatchewan seems to be the most commonly offered team on Chinese websites, probably because their merch sells in NHL-like volumes across Canada. However, unlike NHL jerseys which are a dime a dozen, I have never seen a fake CFL jersey in the wild. Are these things actually for real? Anyone seen them out there?

LOL Where was quality control on that one? But srsly, when I've visited markets in China, any reasonable facsimiles of NHL jerseys without glaring errors have jumped out at me, whereas the soccer kits are usually well done. In my experience, at least.

In my experience the knockoff soccer jerseys are generally of a much higher quality than the ones for US leagues. I presume this is because people in China are familiar with soccer and will occasionally see the real thing in shops and on the streets, whereas you would never see a Calgary Flames jersey anywhere in China (unless someone from Calgary happened to be on vacation). From being in China I can tell you that soccer knockoffs are commonly seen on young guys whereas I would imagine 99.99% of fake NHL jerseys are exported. In other words, an upside down Arsenal crest would never go unnoticed.

The part where he talks about the horrors of Chinese sweatshops is a good point. Seeing that most Chinese factories would, by North American standards at least, be considered sweatshops, I trust that Jeff at LeafsHQ has thrown out his phone and anything he has that was acquired at a mall or big-box store seeing that those things were most likely made in a Chinese sweatshop too. Seriously, anyone who thinks that licensed sports merchandise is made by happy unionized Chinese employees working 37.5 hour weeks with regular coffee breaks is downright deluded. If you're that concerned about sweatshops, there is an awful lot of stuff you'll have to give up besides counterfeit jerseys...

One half of the highest-scoring pair of brothers in NHL history! (That's 2857 for Wayner, and 4 for Brent.)

Despite all of the advances in Chinese manufacturing technology, there is something about the simple American block font that just eludes them. Seriously, is it THAT hard? ...but notwithstanding the LOL-inducing jerseys posted here, a lot of the websites linked to from here manage to produce replicas that appear bang-on to about 99% of the sports-watching population.

Ever shopped at a mall or a big box store? If so, you have without doubt supported at least three of the four things that you mentioned above.

This is the first AHL fake I've seen. I wonder why they put Byfuglien's name and number on the jersey, though? Why not someone who has actually played there? These Chinese fake manufacturers need to hire me as their hockey consultant to nip these things in the bud

Re: the Bruins jerseys above Leaving aside the various issues regarding the sale of counterfeit jerseys for a moment, I will say how surprised I am that the counterfeiters have such a hard time getting the details right. Considering what a big business fake jerseys seem to be, you'd think they could come up with a more accurate copy.

Heh heh heh. Good luck with that. Let me repeat for clarity: the problem will not be solved through legal means.

FYP Nice try, but the problem will not be solved through legal means. That will only happen through economics. Either prices for authentics drop or demand fizzles for sports jerseys across the board - both scenarios would deprive the counterfeiters of their market. No court in the world has the power to strike down the basic laws of economics. It's that simple. You can cast aspersions on counterfeit buyers as much as you want, but it isn't going to stop anything. It's simple economics at work.