MLB Changes 2017

[kroywen]

14 minutes ago, EddieJ1984 said:

Also don't forget to Photoshop it in place of the Nike logo on the undershirt,  yea no one thought of that, it's going to appear twice on the front.

Ironically, that would actually have been the least intrusive place for that logo to go on the front. If MLB wanted to go the faux button-down route, they could've attached a tab above the top button with the Under Armour logo on it, just like the NHL does for their own logo (which works perfectly fine in conjunction with a faux lace-up):

 

 

But UA probably saw an opportunity to have two logos visible on the front of player jerseys: one on the breast, one on the undershirt. I do wonder if players endorsed by Under Armour competitors will quietly wear non-branded undershirts.

[SilverBullet1929]

9 hours ago, Jt0323 said:

Really hope Yankees prevent this. 

Yeah me too, I'd hate to have them relying on Sabathia ever again.

[FGM13]

It would look a hell of a lot better on the right side. 

[Thomas]

3 hours ago, WSU151 said:

 

If it's that small it'll just look like a horsefly.

Everything looks like a fly on CC.

On the regular sized players the UA logo will look like  Seth Brundle

[DeFrank]

I'm honestly not that upset about this. I think it looks perfectly normal in our modern uniform age. For every team. 

[kroywen]

Those three mockups just reinforce what I said earlier: for jerseys using a team logo on the right breast (as those three do), the Under Armour logo should be on the left breast, vertically centered with the team logo.

 

Those mockups look terrible, thanks to the misalignment of the two logos. (Well, frankly they'd look terrible no matter what, but speaking in relative terms here.) They look like the UA logo was just tacked on randomly, without any regard to the design of the uniform. (Oh wait...)

[AnPheitseog]

4 hours ago, DeFrank said:

I'm honestly not that upset about this. I think it looks perfectly normal in our modern uniform age. For every team. 

There is a distinct difference between the aesthetics on different sports. The baseball uniform is understated and adding the logo on the chest would be terrible. 

 

Arm is bad enough, same with the mlb logo on the neck and pants. 

 

Other sports are different. Soccer jerseys are perfectly fine with the manufacturer logo on the chest, but doesnt work with baseball. 

[Thomas]

5 hours ago, DeFrank said:

I'm honestly not that upset about this. I think it looks perfectly normal in our modern uniform age. For every team. 

[BBTV]

different brands shouldn't be competing for attention on the same object.  The jersey is one of the primary identifying objects of a team's brand, and should be designed 100% to enhance their identity.  There should absolutely not be some representation of some other company's brand slapped right on top of theirs.  

 

It's not just the Cubs logo on the chest, or the Red Sox wordmark across the front, but it's the whole jersey that is important to the teams brand.  Placing some other logo on it infringes on it completely.  

 

I wonder if teams could argue that their jerseys are trademarks (if in fact they are) and adding another logo to the front would infringe on that.  Not sure how that works.

 

Of course, other than the Yankees (who should be applauded around here), the teams are probably excited about this.

[guest23]

3 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

different brands shouldn't be competing for attention on the same object.  The jersey is one of the primary identifying objects of a team's brand, and should be designed 100% to enhance their identity.  There should absolutely not be some representation of some other company's brand slapped right on top of theirs.  

 

It's not just the Cubs logo on the chest, or the Red Sox wordmark across the front, but it's the whole jersey that is important to the teams brand.  Placing some other logo on it infringes on it completely.  

 

I wonder if teams could argue that their jerseys are trademarks (if in fact they are) and adding another logo to the front would infringe on that.  Not sure how that works.

 

Of course, other than the Yankees (who should be applauded around here), the teams are probably excited about this.

 

I'm waiting to see the business case where a pro sports league or large ncaa school(s) decides to partner with a private label manufacturer and take their merchandising in house. Some of these brands like the yankees/cowboys have such a strong brand they could easily justify going at it alone. While you pocket 100% of the proceeds you add the costs of overhead, marketing, sales, and distribution of your product. The benefit appears to be in the efficiencies that the apparel companies can provide all of that infrastructure to get their product to market. Additionally in the case of premium brands like nike they could potentially drive more sales by co-branding.

 

On another note a front logo on a mlb jersey is just a horrible idea. It'll be a huge distraction like the fdl was on the expos unis.

[kroywen]

I really would love to know the reaction by the Yankees' FO to this. There was one quote going around in some articles from Under Armour's founder that really jumped out to me:

 

Quote

“Think of a Yankees fan who is standing in front of a shoe wall deciding what they want to buy,” said Plank, who’s also the founder of Under Armour. “They will think about the fact that there is an Under Armour logo on the front of their jersey.”

Bloomberg

 

I'm figuring there's two potential things going on here. The likely option is that UA got the Yanks to agree to a front logo. Alternatively, they could be trying to persuade the Yanks' FO to agree by mentioning the immense money-making opportunities for all involved parties.

 

But in all likelihood, this is their way of subtly signaling that they got the biggest fish in the tank. And I'd love to know what it took to get that to happen (up to and including MLB stepping in and telling the Yanks that they can't get an exemption).

[LMU]

[BBTV]

1 hour ago, guest23 said:

 

I'm waiting to see the business case where a pro sports league or large ncaa school(s) decides to partner with a private label manufacturer and take their merchandising in house. Some of these brands like the yankees/cowboys have such a strong brand they could easily justify going at it alone. While you pocket 100% of the proceeds you add the costs of overhead, marketing, sales, and distribution of your product. The benefit appears to be in the efficiencies that the apparel companies can provide all of that infrastructure to get their product to market. Additionally in the case of premium brands like nike they could potentially drive more sales by co-branding.

 

On another note a front logo on a mlb jersey is just a horrible idea. It'll be a huge distraction like the fdl was on the expos unis.

 

well that's how it used to be.  Some teams (Dallas, NYY for example) actually have tried (or succeeded) to cut their own deals in spite of league-wide deals.  I don't recall the Cowboys' situation exactly, but I vaguely recall that it had to do with Nike, before Nike was one of the licensed manufacturers (early/mid 90s... I think.)

 

One of the overlooked "benefits" to the league-wide deals is revenue sharing.  It's much easier to do the accounting and divy things up when you aren't relying on each team to report their revenue from their deals.

 

Also, exclusivity comes at a premium.  It's reasonable to assume that an exclusive contract with one company for 30 teams would be worth more than the sum of 5 contracts with 5 companies each servicing 6 teams.

[TheOldRoman]

On ‎12‎/‎5‎/‎2016 at 9:38 AM, OnWis97 said:

I'd never heard that.  It kinda screams "inferiority complex."

The marketing team is a bunch of dopes. They said they want to emphasize "the Sox brand." Apparently, they felt that people would see a Chicago jersey in black and gray, with a white sock on the sleeve, and assume it was a Cubs jersey. "Our primary logo doesn't appear anywhere on the road jersey." So? The only team with an iconic look who features their primary mark on the roads is the Cardinals, and that's dumb of them.

 

Basically, their marketing team is a bunch of George Constanzas, and every two or three years the high-ups catch them tossing pencils into the drop ceiling and ask, "What the hell have you guys been doing for the last year?" So, they did something like this, backed by no sound reasoning or evidence it would improve the brand. Just as stupid, the next year they suddenly changed the road pants to piping after 20 seasons, despite the fact that it drops a unique element (in which the team won a world championship) and creates an awful mismatch with the jersey.

[TheOldRoman]

The UA chest logo is bad. It's HORRIBLE. There's no excusing it. It doesn't matter if they do it at college. It looks bad and it's awful for the major leagues. The fact that "it happens elsewhere" is not reason enough to pretend it looks decent. The NFL, which has effectively whored itself out better than any other league, has refused to allow manufacturer logos on the fronts. And it would at least be a more natural place on a football jersey, by a seam instead of just awkwardly placed in the middle of the chest.

 

Also, you'll notice that the single color logo gets lost against the Yankees pinstripes. I'm guessing that against pinstripes, the logo will have a colored outline to make it stand out. It'll probably just be a white outline on the Yankees jersey, maybe silver on the White Sox'.

[Ray Lankford]

6 hours ago, DiePerske said:

Other sports are different. Soccer jerseys are perfectly fine with the manufacturer logo on the chest, but doesnt work with baseball. 

What's the difference? 

[bwburke94]

31 minutes ago, Ray Lankford said:

What's the difference? 

With soccer, you don't have mid-game advertisements (except at half) so jersey ads were the best way to advertise and became a tradition.

 

The American "Big Four" sports are a bit different in that regard.

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, TheOldRoman said:

The marketing team is a bunch of dopes. They said they want to emphasize "the Sox brand." Apparently, they felt that people would see a Chicago jersey in black and gray, with a white sock on the sleeve, and assume it was a Cubs jersey. "Our primary logo doesn't appear anywhere on the road jersey." So? The only team with an iconic look who features their primary mark on the roads is the Cardinals, and that's dumb of them.

 

The only devil's-advocate case I can make is not that it'd be mistaken for a Cubs jersey, but that people may have seen the road jersey with a fairly plain cursive "Chicago" and a white sock on it and thought because THE Sox logo wasn't on it, it was one of those unlicensed ripoffs you buy in the last aisle of the Jewel (or is it the first aisle of the Osco? Seasonal candy and grey-market Chicago sports merchandise compose kind of the DMZ of the Jewel-Osco). Problems with this argument:

 

1) This jersey has been around for circa 25 years. If you've ever been at all cognizant of Chicago baseball, you recognize it as a White Sox jersey. Furthermore, they won a World Series, as in "recorded the final out of it," wearing that exact jersey.

2) While everyone, thank goodness, is not us, I think most folks can spot the uncanny valley of generic, team-implying sports apparel, and an otherwise MLB-quality Majestic jersey passes the eye test in a way that lesser merchandise does not. I mean, surely the batter logo, the tags at the bottom, and lack of poor craftsmanship show that it's what it is and not what it merely suggests.

3) Even if, for the sake of argument, there were a scourge of grey-market Sox apparel, I mean, lots of that stuff still has an unlicensed primary logo on it anyway! You're not foiling bootleggers with this.

 

So like you said, yeah, it's just looking busy. There is something to be said for a primary logo with the team name occurring on a road jersey (I think the traditional Cubs logo would make a better sleeve patch on the road than the bear looking for garbage to eat), but in this case, it doesn't improve anything and, unlike the case of the Cubs, essentially doubles the cap logo. 

 

Ass for the Cardinals, it's not their primary on the road, because their primary just has one bird on a bat, not two. You know, they could stand to drop the one-bird version and not miss a beat.

[bwburke94]

The Cardinals could move the "St. Louis" script to the roads if they really wanted to, but it would just look "wrong" to long-time fans.

 

Sort of like if the Yankees added red to their jerseys - it's a part of their logo, but not their identity.

[DAKINS24]

So now MLB uniforms will look even more Minor League/College uniforms.  Fantastic......