aawagner011

That last sentence is what is holding MLS clubs hostage. When adidas puts out a new kit for Real Madrid or Bayern, they have to put their best foot forward because they are directly paying the club. They also have 100+ years of history to respect and a fan base that expects the utmost care for team apparel. Anything less could result in a supporter protest. With MLS, they don’t pay the clubs, they pay the league who controls the clubs’ assets. Younger league with less responsibility for the manufacturer, and also less expectations from its fans, unfortunately. I am not opposed to a league wide contract. The NFL and NBA manage to figure it out. But we have seen some of the issues that come with such a deal (unwanted alternates, new alternates that must rotate every year, etc). MLS just needs to ask more from adidas going forward.

^ adidas has treated MLS replicas like garbage for years with many missing design elements. I wish MLS would hold their provider to a higher standard because that’s not how adidas treats their top flight global teams that they sponsor. Adidas should keep the differences to materials and fit, not critical design elements that change the feel of the shirt.

It’s a shame the St Louis away kit will be the one replaced next year because I actually think it’s the stronger of the two. Their home shirt tries to do way too much with color overload and an abstract generic pattern. The away shirt is much cleaner and something that I’d wear if I was a fan. Regarding Miami, I don’t mind the under arm panels since it gets a bit more pink in the design. Their black kits have felt a bit lifeless at times so I like having some more color involved.

St Louis City away

Nashville all black is official. Don’t think I like this growing trend of creating kits inspired by a local person that had nothing to do with the team or the sport.

I think red is actually coming back for Chicago next year and not this year. That makes sense because the kit they are releasing this year is an away shirt. But holy smokes, this year’s design is an absolute banger. This is up there as a shirt of the year nominee in my book. Edit - light blue shorts. Gorgeous.

A follow up to this, Dallas will have change shorts and socks.

SKC revealed theirs exclusively on the Apple TV app, so there hasn’t been too much content that I can post. Media Day showed us that the full kit will be light blue. LAFC is official according to MLSsoccer.com, though the team have not put out any additional posts themselves. You can see the MLS Cup winners badge, too. I need to see the rest of the kit to better judge this one. My color blind eyes aren’t even sure what color that is. I am really loving the diversity and colors this year. There’s a healthy balance of stripes, patterns, throwbacks, and especially the simplified crests that we have seen on LAFC and Philly.

FC Dallas: previously unseen to this point. Clearly inspired as a callback to their Dallas Burn days. The last tweet includes a photo of the full kit.

RSL is official. I really like this as it gives them a bit more flavor than their usual bland white alternates. I am getting tired of every MLS kit needing to have a name, though. Why not just say “we used yellow because it’s part of our color palette and has been criminally underused to this point”?

^ I like that SKC shirt. It’s perfectly fine and they do a nice job of sticking to their identity. For a primary kit, that’s much better than some of these clubs that try to reinvent the wheel every new design. Keep the home kits traditional and leave the alternates as the empty canvases, free to deviate with new ideas. ——— Atlanta debuted its kit in a preseason friendly tonight. A proper return to form. By now, Atlanta has firmly cemented its position as the club with the stripes. 3 of their 4 home kits have had the same basic idea (all were fairly standard affair, too) with only one radically different design, and even that still felt vaguely in their wheelhouse. My one criticism of the new design is that I don’t love the thick gold stripe down the side. It is very noticeable and I’d prefer a black stripe, which would blend in with the chest stripes and look more cohesive, especially with the under arm panel. This kit also bothers me since it’s on the World Cup template and adidas uses the thick side and rear hem stripes to frame the jersey and shorts. As we saw at the World Cup, most teams had matching trim on the jersey and shorts. It feels like an oversight to have gold on the jersey stripe but red on the shorts. That’s another reason I think a black stripe would have looked better. This issue was also seen when Argentina won in all white. Their shirt had a black stripe but their shorts had light blue. The template makes it feel like they go together and should match. Overall, that’s a minor complaint and I still rate this one highly. I’d say the best was the 17/18 original design, followed by this new 23/24 shirt, then 19/20, and 21/22 in last. Though none have been bad designs, by any means. Last note, while they’ve kept their design fairly consistent, they’ve played around with socks quite a bit. The original design had black socks with gold stripes (matched the jersey stripes), the follow up kit had red socks with black stripes (matched the jersey stripes), the all black kit had red stripes (shirt, shorts, and socks all had red stripes), while this new design brings back red socks but uses a black cuff with gold stripes.

Yeah, Colorado is a big let down. After all of the promotional material showed heavy use of yellow, the kit only has a thin yellow stripe down the side? Shame.

Looks like Atlanta will have the under armpit panels. I like the sleeve cuff details, too. Neither were seen on the replica. Also of note, they have finally fixed the Piedmont sleeve sponsor!!! For the last several years, it has been an unsightly patch when it really should have been just gold text. I somewhat understood it on this kit, which could possibly make it harder to read (I disagree but leagues also have weird rules about numbers on the shirt backs with stripes so whatever) on both red and black stripes. It was inexcusable on this shirt, which had zero legibility issues.

Better pics. The Austin and NYC shirts are replicas while the Seattle and NYRB shirts are authentics. These are currently posted on adidas.co.uk, so it may be worth keeping an eye there for future leaks.

NYC and Seattle are alright. That Austin kit is way too drastic of a departure from their standard stripes. A playful reinterpretation of stripes can be fun and is welcomed, but my gosh, the designer looks like they were on acid. The super thin stripes will just read as brown on TV when seen from any further than 15 feet.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a lot of kits announced tomorrow morning. Atlanta is doing a launch party at their exhibition cup game against Toluca tomorrow night, but have also said you can buy them at the team store as early as 11 AM tomorrow. Sounds like they’ll be revealed first thing in the morning.

I missed this, but apparently Kentucky ran a Super Bowl commercial in local markets that teased new uniforms. If you watch the last 10-20 seconds you’ll see them here. Of note: much simpler design on the new Nike template with the Kentucky chest wordmark, wildcat design on the sleeves, gray outline on numbers, simple double stripe on pants, standard helmets with contrasting facemasks, tonal checkerboard on the collar. No signs of black, anthracite, or chrome at this point.

I don’t think anyone is saying baseball or hockey jerseys would look better with a sponsor. I believe most people just hope that if the ads have to be there, that they be as unobtrusive as possible. But most people are also realistic enough to know that won’t always be the case and there will be a situation where a team that’s red and blue randomly has some green ad patch that totally clashes.

It is the sad reality of sports in 2023

So if your point wasn’t to do with the color palette of the small patch, then I’m honestly not sure what point you’re trying to make about the advertisement? I’m genuinely not trying to be rude. The last several posts related to T Mobile have all been about the colors and differences from one market compared to another.

This leak shows that Atlanta’s authentic shirt will have gold (and I think black) trim on the cuffs, whereas the leaked replica did not. Adidas always jacks up the MLS replicas. Cheap company.

I’m aware football clubs have been using sleeve sponsorships, but I still think this is an apples to oranges comparison. Your Austrian example has a sleeve sponsor in full color. The second one is a more minimalistic design like I mentioned, just text, which is adaptable to whatever color palette the team wants. That brand is likely flexible. For every neutral color example we see, I could just as easily post these which have full color sleeve sponsors (or colors that clash with the kit). The point of all this is that this isn’t a one size fits all solution and North America is an emerging market for on field sports advertising. What is the standard in one sport shouldn’t be indicative of what will happen in other sports. I am hopeful that we tend to see white text sponsors on dark color jerseys and dark text on white jerseys instead of big contrasting patches, but I am not hopeful that will be the case across the board. In the cases that the ads are minimalistic and mesh well with the jersey, we should be happy they didn’t make them worse than they did. As we have already seen with the NBA, many of these brands will force their full color logos. This is a good comparison since both are relatively small. There are a decent number of NBA teams that have basic ads, so hopefully we see some of that in MLB.

Like some of the other comments, I feel like the DC sports scene has been overwhelmed with cherry blossoms these last couple years, so I appreciate the level of restraint. This seems like a happy medium between using the blossoms as a theme while still being identifiable as a DCU shirt.

Also, another thought regarding these sponsorships and specifically T-Mobile: I highly doubt they would get involved with the Mariners. They already sponsor the ballpark. There are diminishing returns on investing further sponsorship into that team. I remember when Atlanta United (MLS) got off their feet and were seeking a shirt sponsor, so many folks wanted an Atlanta based company like Delta or Coca-Cola. That’s not how these things work. Those brands are already saturated in Atlanta. Who did they end up with? American Family Insurance, a company based out of the Midwest. That’s how these brands will grow their exposure and revenues, by opening themselves up into new markets, not continuing to sink their teeth into markets they already dominate. The only way I don’t think this applies is if the sponsoring company is a smaller player in the market and trying to gain market share.

Deutsche Telekom is not just a big German company, but is in fact the biggest cellular provider in all of Europe. I think @gosioux76 outlined great points on why the market comparisons are totally different in Europe versus American sports. Soccer has also been doing this for decades now where the standard practices may be a bit different from one sport to another. They have a larger space to work with across the whole chest versus trying to cram their logo into a small patch. I think the best we can hope for is there are a few brands with minimalistic logos compatible with a black or white design, or can even be swapped to team colors because they are simple in nature (think the Apple logo). However, there are going to be multiple companies that have logos with multiple colors or a signature color (like Home Depot’s orange) that are part of their identity and don’t quite read the same way when presented differently. While we may not like it, I think it is the unfortunate business side of things on where this is heading. If T-Mobile gets involved in US sports sponsorship, I wouldn’t be surprised with either way that they handle it, but there will other brands that stick with their brand identity and require it be presented in a specific way.