Future of NFL "Color Rush"

[BrandMooreArt]

2 hours ago, Pizzaman7294 said:

43 minutes ago, Pizzaman7294 said:

 

Can I ask what is wrong?

not trying to be coy, but i cant say anything specific. there are multiple things there i can assure you are wrong. 

[hockey week]

I haven't been following this thread THAT closely, but from that initial leak of colors through all the concepts and predictions, I realized something:

 

A project like this is meant to sell JERSEYS. They wouldn't do it if there wasn't financial incentive to it.

 

So the vast majority of these teams are not simply going to introduce a new color of pants, if anything, they're going to create new jerseys to match the pants. So Steelers in gold, 49ers in gold, Redskins in gold....wow, there are a lot of gold pants and not a lot of gold jerseys. Anyways, that's my hypothesis.

[Pizzaman7294]

1 minute ago, hockey week said:

I haven't been following this thread THAT closely, but from that initial leak of colors through all the concepts and predictions, I realized something:

 

A project like this is meant to sell JERSEYS. They wouldn't do it if there wasn't financial incentive to it.

 

So the vast majority of these teams are not simply going to introduce a new color of pants, if anything, they're going to create new jerseys to match the pants. So Steelers in gold, 49ers in gold, Redskins in gold....wow, there are a lot of gold pants and not a lot of gold jerseys. Anyways, that's my hypothesis.

 

Agree 100 percent.

1 hour ago, BrandMooreArt said:

 

Fair enough. Just curious if there were ridiculous outliers

[hockey week]

So, what are the more obscure pants colors that teams use (because there aren't that many jumping out at me just looking at last year's gridiron uniforms database), and what should we expect?

 

The Bears have worn orange pants in the past, correct? That has to be one of them, because all-blue has happened.

[BrandMooreArt]

16 minutes ago, hockey week said:

I haven't been following this thread THAT closely, but from that initial leak of colors through all the concepts and predictions, I realized something:

 

A project like this is meant to sell JERSEYS. They wouldn't do it if there wasn't financial incentive to it.

 

So the vast majority of these teams are not simply going to introduce a new color of pants, if anything, they're going to create new jerseys to match the pants. So Steelers in gold, 49ers in gold, Redskins in gold....wow, there are a lot of gold pants and not a lot of gold jerseys. Anyways, that's my hypothesis.

 

you're on to something there. yes obviously part of it is to sell apparel (t shirts and hats and such in addition to jerseys) but there is still more to it than that. the teams share revenue, so just doing something to "sell more jerseys" is just not worth the effort really. it has to be larger. that larger picture is to bring viewers to thursday night games. celebrating team colors is the vehicle for that. one thing that NFL/Nike never mentioned about Color Rush to my knowledge is that the 1st televised NFL game in color happened on a thursday Thanksgiving game. the specific year escapes me at the moment, but that "story" is part of what they're going for here. 

[guest23]

43 minutes ago, BrandMooreArt said:

 

you're on to something there. yes obviously part of it is to sell apparel (t shirts and hats and such in addition to jerseys) but there is still more to it than that. the teams share revenue, so just doing something to "sell more jerseys" is just not worth the effort really. it has to be larger. that larger picture is to bring viewers to thursday night games. celebrating team colors is the vehicle for that. one thing that NFL/Nike never mentioned about Color Rush to my knowledge is that the 1st televised NFL game in color happened on a thursday Thanksgiving game. the specific year escapes me at the moment, but that "story" is part of what they're going for here. 

 

Even if they keep the primary or existing alt jersey colors as a basis for the uniforms wouldn't it make sense at least to make a few tweaks like change the number color so you have something to sell in conjunction with the event? I think tampa's jersey was a perfect example of that while carolina was a missed opportunity where they could have at least changed the color of the numbers.

[hockey week]

45 minutes ago, BrandMooreArt said:

 

you're on to something there. yes obviously part of it is to sell apparel (t shirts and hats and such in addition to jerseys) but there is still more to it than that. the teams share revenue, so just doing something to "sell more jerseys" is just not worth the effort really. it has to be larger. that larger picture is to bring viewers to thursday night games. celebrating team colors is the vehicle for that. one thing that NFL/Nike never mentioned about Color Rush to my knowledge is that the 1st televised NFL game in color happened on a thursday Thanksgiving game. the specific year escapes me at the moment, but that "story" is part of what they're going for here. 

 

That's absolutely true, and it's certainly why they took on the Thursday games rather than Monday Night Football or a more typical Sunday game. It's something to talk about, and it's working, both here and in the mainstream news. 

 

But sales is most certainly a segment, even if they all split the revenue (which is why it has to be a league-wide program. No team wants to dilute their brand any more than anybody else, no team wants to have a wildly successful alternate jersey that they don't get to reap the benefits of. Ergo everyone is in this together. Though I'm sure some teams will get away with jerseys similar to their current looks, I would think most of that is for the sake of contrast, or that the only option would be a much greater deviation from the norm than the rest of the series (like, say, a gold Cardinals jersey or a red Steelers jersey...both colors in their logos, but not colors associated with that team), but I would think, by and large, most of these decisions would be with the intent of jersey sales. 

[BrandMooreArt]

42 minutes ago, guest23 said:

 

Even if they keep the primary or existing alt jersey colors as a basis for the uniforms wouldn't it make sense at least to make a few tweaks like change the number color so you have something to sell in conjunction with the event? I think tampa's jersey was a perfect example of that while carolina was a missed opportunity where they could have at least changed the color of the numbers.

 

right, im sure the NFL/Nike would like for that to happen with all 32 teams. i believe NFL has tried to get every team an on-field 3rd (or 4th) option for some time now so i think Color Rush is their best attempt at that. for 2015, i would only assume it was market testing, and/or quick turn execution. now that every team has had a year or more to develop the 2016 uniform, we'll soon know the "real" intent of the offering. 

 

34 minutes ago, hockey week said:

 

That's absolutely true, and it's certainly why they took on the Thursday games rather than Monday Night Football or a more typical Sunday game. It's something to talk about, and it's working, both here and in the mainstream news. 

 

But sales is most certainly a segment, even if they all split the revenue (which is why it has to be a league-wide program. No team wants to dilute their brand any more than anybody else, no team wants to have a wildly successful alternate jersey that they don't get to reap the benefits of. Ergo everyone is in this together. Though I'm sure some teams will get away with jerseys similar to their current looks, I would think most of that is for the sake of contrast, or that the only option would be a much greater deviation from the norm than the rest of the series (like, say, a gold Cardinals jersey or a red Steelers jersey...both colors in their logos, but not colors associated with that team), but I would think, by and large, most of these decisions would be with the intent of jersey sales. 

 

definitely jerseys/apparel are on the list, but in my opinion it would be secondary to 1.) fans at the stadium 2.) viewers on TV. the financial benefits of those things are probably (i dont know exact numbers) better than pure jersey sales. fans at the stadium spend a lot of money while they're there on top of the ticket purchase and advertisers want to see their commercials being placed in front of large numbers. so Color Rush is an extra incentive to get fans to do those things. the apparel sales i imagine is just the cherry on top. The NFL can do whatever they want with apparel and move it. and there is another piece of evidence that supports Color Rush as an "apparel marketing move" though, and i hate playing the "i cant say anything" card, but i can't say anything as it would give away too much but as the season rolls along you'll probably pick up on the patterns that the teams/Nike is doing. again, i'm not suggesting its NOT about moving apparel, i just don't see it as the primary reason

[Pizzaman7294]

5 hours ago, BrandMooreArt said:

 

right, im sure the NFL/Nike would like for that to happen with all 32 teams. i believe NFL has tried to get every team an on-field 3rd (or 4th) option for some time now so i think Color Rush is their best attempt at that. for 2015, i would only assume it was market testing, and/or quick turn execution. now that every team has had a year or more to develop the 2016 uniform, we'll soon know the "real" intent of the offering. 

 

 

definitely jerseys/apparel are on the list, but in my opinion it would be secondary to 1.) fans at the stadium 2.) viewers on TV. the financial benefits of those things are probably (i dont know exact numbers) better than pure jersey sales. fans at the stadium spend a lot of money while they're there on top of the ticket purchase and advertisers want to see their commercials being placed in front of large numbers. so Color Rush is an extra incentive to get fans to do those things. the apparel sales i imagine is just the cherry on top. The NFL can do whatever they want with apparel and move it. and there is another piece of evidence that supports Color Rush as an "apparel marketing move" though, and i hate playing the "i cant say anything" card, but i can't say anything as it would give away too much but as the season rolls along you'll probably pick up on the patterns that the teams/Nike is doing. again, i'm not suggesting its NOT about moving apparel, i just don't see it as the primary reason

 

Pattern as far as merchandise?

[Gothamite]

8 hours ago, BrandMooreArt said:

definitely jerseys/apparel are on the list, but in my opinion it would be secondary to 1.) fans at the stadium 2.) viewers on TV. the financial benefits of those things are probably (i dont know exact numbers) better than pure jersey sales. fans at the stadium spend a lot of money while they're there on top of the ticket purchase and advertisers want to see their commercials being placed in front of large numbers. so Color Rush is an extra incentive to get fans to do those things. 

 

Is there any evidence that Color Rush has boosted ticket sales for those games? 

 

Television numbers I can see, in the short term, but banking on novelty is a loser's game; the longer they do it the less impact it will have.  The people who tuned in last year to see the Bills and Jets in "those weird uniforms" won't necessarily feel the need to watch the Chargers or Browns in theirs. 

[Jezus_Ghoti]

The idea that Color Rush leads to increased ticket sales for games that were already in rare primetime property seems insane to me. 

[VikWings]

12 hours ago, hockey week said:

I haven't been following this thread THAT closely, but from that initial leak of colors through all the concepts and predictions, I realized something:

 

A project like this is meant to sell JERSEYS. They wouldn't do it if there wasn't financial incentive to it.

 

So the vast majority of these teams are not simply going to introduce a new color of pants, if anything, they're going to create new jerseys to match the pants. So Steelers in gold, 49ers in gold, Redskins in gold....wow, there are a lot of gold pants and not a lot of gold jerseys. Anyways, that's my hypothesis.

 

The Panthers and Titans just used their current alts last year. The Panthers just introduced new pants and the Titans didn't introduce new anything unless you count the bottom part of the socks.

[VikWings]

1 hour ago, Gothamite said:

 

Is there any evidence that Color Rush has boosted ticket sales for those games? 

 

Television numbers I can see, in the short term, but banking on novelty is a loser's game; the longer they do it the less impact it will have.  The people who tuned in last year to see the Bills and Jets in "those weird uniforms" won't necessarily feel the need to watch the Chargers or Browns in theirs. 

 

And once people turned it on and noticed it was horrible (and that color blind people couldn't tell who's who) it gave them less reason to watch the future ones. Not including the Cowboys-Panthers game because that's the exception because it was Thanksgiving (and coincidentally it was the best looking one) the other matchups were "ketchup vs. mustard" and "puke vs. smurfs" and were mostly hated by everyone. Those were 4 bad teams no one wants to watch as is and then you add in the eye sore of uniforms and it makes it worse.

 

I'm all for alternate uniforms and being a little different for a game or two but head to toe is mono is atrocious, I don't even like mono when you have the white sock bottom to break it up a smidgen. If jersey and pants match the socks need to contrast, then you actually have a solid looking uniform.

 

The Panthers are one of, if not the only, team to do it right.

 

[BBTV]

1 hour ago, Gothamite said:

 

Is there any evidence that Color Rush has boosted ticket sales for those games? 

 

Television numbers I can see, in the short term, but banking on novelty is a loser's game; the longer they do it the less impact it will have.  The people who tuned in last year to see the Bills and Jets in "those weird uniforms" won't necessarily feel the need to watch the Chargers or Browns in theirs. 

 

Do they care that much about ticket sales? Also now that all teams have a TNF game, the ones that don't need sales help will be playing. It's got to be all about TV since that's the major revenue stream, and they want to sell the package higher next time (though didn't they just sell it for a ton?)

 

for me, I'm not even watching my own team on TNF, unless I have nothing better to do. I'm usually out at a social event or playing sports on Thursday and I'm not going to sacrifice that for a NFL game. 

 

When the Jets and Bills played their ridiculous looking game last year, it was on in the background of a place I was at and I will admit I stared at the screen for around 90-seconds longer than I normally would have, so I guess their plan worked (if you can convert that 90-seconds in to dollars, which of course you can't). 

 

I'd have to see numbers to know if they're really selling jerseys based on this. I can't imagine they're really making an impact, just because the market is already so saturated with alt and special jerseys as is. I fully expect the Eagles to be in gray, and I think it will look great - but will people who already have green, white, or (*ugh*) black run out to buy a gray one that may never be worn more than once?

[VikWings]

As an addendum to my previous post; a few more teams used to do it right but instead recently switched to the awful leotard look for some ungodly reason.

 

 

 

 

The leotard look is awful even when the jersey is a different color than the pants, and REALLY awful when there's no stripes on the pants (looking at you Ravens and Saints), but it's even worse when teams go mono and the leotard becomes a unitard.

[BrandMooreArt]

1 hour ago, Gothamite said:

 

Is there any evidence that Color Rush has boosted ticket sales for those games? 

 

Television numbers I can see, in the short term, but banking on novelty is a loser's game; the longer they do it the less impact it will have.  The people who tuned in last year to see the Bills and Jets in "those weird uniforms" won't necessarily feel the need to watch the Chargers or Browns in theirs. 

 

i dont know the numbers, but so much the NFL does is about selling tickets. so when it comes to the game day experience, theres going to be some extra incentive to go to "that" game. fan appreciation day, service appreciation, breast cancer awareness, Play 60, Back to Football, half time shows, new uniforms. there is always something driving that ticket sale. and although these are primetime matchups, its still on a thursday night and you're giving up 3-4 hours of it to watch the Bills and Jets. not exactly a hot ticket. or what about primetime TV shows? thats competition too. 

 

i agree partially with the 2nd part. i dont like the idea of novelty like this either, but a lot of people have told me how much they like the Color Rush uniforms because "it's something different" so if its stupid but it works. . . . i think if this were only about apparel sales, they'd put all the teams in a throwback uniform because there is so much nostalgia tied to those things where something new like Color Rush is about a new shiny object - and that seems to me to be a driving factor for the gameday experience, at home or at the stadium. 

[Sec19Row53]

34 minutes ago, BrandMooreArt said:

 

i dont know the numbers, but so much the NFL does is about selling tickets. so when it comes to the game day experience, theres going to be some extra incentive to go to "that" game. fan appreciation day, service appreciation, breast cancer awareness, Play 60, Back to Football, half time shows, new uniforms. there is always something driving that ticket sale. and although these are primetime matchups, its still on a thursday night and you're giving up 3-4 hours of it to watch the Bills and Jets. not exactly a hot ticket. or what about primetime TV shows? thats competition too. 

 

i agree partially with the 2nd part. i dont like the idea of novelty like this either, but a lot of people have told me how much they like the Color Rush uniforms because "it's something different" so if its stupid but it works. . . . i think if this were only about apparel sales, they'd put all the teams in a throwback uniform because there is so much nostalgia tied to those things where something new like Color Rush is about a new shiny object - and that seems to me to be a driving factor for the gameday experience, at home or at the stadium. 

I disagree that it's about selling tickets.  Ticket sales aren't the driver for NFL finances -- broadcast revenue is.  In 2014, each NFL team received $226 million in shared revenue from the NFL.  Lambeau Field, as an example, holds about 80000.  If the average ticket price is $100 (which is close), at 10 games that is $80,000,000 in revenue,

 

BUT - you are saying that this is based on selling more tickets.  You can't sell any more at Lambeau.  You can at other places, but not to the extent that you will reach even HALF of $80,000,000 since (1) it's only one game, and (2) there aren't stadia that have half of their game day tickets available on a routine basis.

[BrandMooreArt]

2 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

I disagree that it's about selling tickets.  Ticket sales aren't the driver for NFL finances -- broadcast revenue is.  In 2014, each NFL team received $226 million in shared revenue from the NFL.  Lambeau Field, as an example, holds about 80000.  If the average ticket price is $100 (which is close), at 10 games that is $80,000,000 in revenue,

 

BUT - you are saying that this is based on selling more tickets.  You can't sell any more at Lambeau.  You can at other places, but not to the extent that you will reach even HALF of $80,000,000 since (1) it's only one game, and (2) there aren't stadia that have half of their game day tickets available on a routine basis.

yes, im including viewership as a part of this as well. you're right about Green Bay but thats a special case and most teams have available tickets for most games leading right up to that week (be it a $55 nosebleed). so why would all 32 owners buy into this? obviously for more revenue. but that cant come from apparel sales alone (from the color rush angle) i think its about butts in seats at games (add to this the money people spend at the stadium) and eyes on the tv

[Pizzaman7294]

3 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

Do they care that much about ticket sales? Also now that all teams have a TNF game, the ones that don't need sales help will be playing. It's got to be all about TV since that's the major revenue stream, and they want to sell the package higher next time (though didn't they just sell it for a ton?)

 

for me, I'm not even watching my own team on TNF, unless I have nothing better to do. I'm usually out at a social event or playing sports on Thursday and I'm not going to sacrifice that for a NFL game. 

 

When the Jets and Bills played their ridiculous looking game last year, it was on in the background of a place I was at and I will admit I stared at the screen for around 90-seconds longer than I normally would have, so I guess their plan worked (if you can convert that 90-seconds in to dollars, which of course you can't). 

 

I'd have to see numbers to know if they're really selling jerseys based on this. I can't imagine they're really making an impact, just because the market is already so saturated with alt and special jerseys as is. I fully expect the Eagles to be in gray, and I think it will look great - but will people who already have green, white, or (*ugh*) black run out to buy a gray one that may never be worn more than once?

You might be one of the few people in America to not change their schedule around football. 

 

[BBTV]

19 minutes ago, Pizzaman7294 said:

You might be one of the few people in America to not change their schedule around football. 

 

 

It's more like the things that I do don't change their schedule for football.  When it's personal things that I can control that don't impact anyone else, then sure I'll try to watch as many eagles games as I can.  I just happen to be involved in things that occur on Mondays and Thursdays, so I often only catch the second half of their MNF games and none of their TNF games.  SatNF is 50/50 - I had asked a girl out last December and she said she was free the Saturday that they were playing WAS in the game that ultimately eliminated them from playoff contention, but I went with her and missed the entire thing.  Don't regret it one bit (especially because they got killed!)