The uniforms are another version of fracking the pie. Friend of mine is a VP in the NBA's data science department. When they first made the changes allowing all the variations on the different jerseys, I asked him about whether this made business sense. He told me that the new iterations of jerseys are huge moneymakers for the teams. It's kind of like always having new merch to release. But even then I was annoyed by the change, not because of brand identity per se, but just because it felt weird and annoying to not know what I could expect the teams to look like game to game. And it makes it worse knowing they are doing it for sales. But it might be another one of those things that makes money in the short term but contributes to the decline of the sport in the long run.
The Lakers butchered their away jerseys by adding black to them -- making them closer to the Sac Kings than their classic purple jerseys. It’s pissed me off for years as a lifelong LAL fan
They have a generational appeal that means that parents get to pass on the rooting interest to their children in a way that other franchises can't. Having a color scheme and look IS HAVING AN IDENTITY
yo check this out I did this series some time back:
So much of our culture today is about destroying long-standing norms and traditions, seemingly just for grins, without any understanding of why they existed for so long. Because any and all change must be good, and disagreeing gets you stamped as a troglodyte. This is just another example.
For once I emphatically disagree! First off, the entire premise of this article isn’t true - the problem with the fanatics jerseys is the quality, not the aesthetic. Team logos/designs have remained largely unchanged.
Secondly, a novelty jersey associated with a specific season or era is exactly the kind of thing fans become nostalgic for! Even the god-awful Mercury Mets jersey are getting a promo retro this year, and most long-time fans I know are excited to be reminded of that 1999 team that would make the World Series the following year (amid many decades of mediocrity). Do NHL fans complain about the speciality jerseys for the winter classic, or stadium series, or heritage classic? No way. Those designs are hotly debated, heavily coveted, and above all a fun remember of a great (or terrible) season.
Is there something to be said for over saturation? Of course, but imo we’re far from that. Total rebrands are rare, and teams get one or two new alts a year.
TL;DR: the problem is the quality, not the new designs.
Yeah I mostly agree with this. Some of them are cool, some are terrible, some are a little lame. There are a handful of teams with timeless uniforms. The rest? It's not bad to update with trends, experiment with alternates and have some nostalgia for throwbacks. Like is it so bad if the Grizzlies or Panthers or Mariners rebrand every 10 years? Or the Nuggets have jerseys that sat Mile High? It's an ok diversion
Plus we get to relive stuff like blue baseball jerseys, the rainbow Nuggets uniforms, the Islanders fish sticks, etc.
I'm a Bucks fan, and for the last few years they've been wearing royal blue uniforms (and playing on a blue court) on a consistent basis. It remains weird.
The Bucks absolutely nailed their logo/jersey/primary color redesign in 2015 and they did it at the perfect time: just before they were about the move into a new arena and become a top tier NBA franchise. It’s pretty annoying watching them play in their far inferior alternate uniforms since the redesign. Frustratingly, they were wearing an alternate jersey in Game 6 of the Finals in 2021.
It’s really a disaster in basketball. So many teams have changed things up so frequently that they have no visual brand to identify with whatsoever. Even franchises that have been around forever like the Jazz and Bucks have totally punted on this, seemingly undergoing a total rebrand every five years
Feel like this is the American leagues looking across the pond at how much soccer clubs change jerseys (every year) as another way to create/influence a revenue stream. Soccer clubs have done this long enough that fans expect it. Comes down to if you’re going to change it that often, at least make it look cool. Seems like after any of these jersey/brand revamps get released you have a fan-created version that is almost always better
The Dallas Mavericks Trash Bag Uniforms from 03-04 have to rank among the worst.
It's Dallas Cowboys lore that Tex Schramm selected their uniform pants color based on how they would look on television. Nobody did that test for the Mavericks "silver" alternates.
This strikes me as correct, and is reminding me of FdB’s recent rant on the misuse of the G.O.A.T. label. “It’s been three years already, we’re overdue to crown a new G.O.A.T.!” feels like a very similar sentiment to “It’s been three years already, we’re overdue to craft a new brand identity!”. The durable accomplishments and traditions overeager journalists and marketers are so eager to establish can’t attain their hoped-for value if the perpetual pursuit of the new destroys the stability that allows durable things to become established.
One other thing: adding advertisements to the jerseys solidified how all these changes are a shameless cash grab. The economics is simple: the more uniforms a team has, the more nike can sell, the more nike can sell, the more they give the NBA in the rights deal.
These iconic playoff moments (jokic 2023, curry g4 2022) being watered down by alt jerseys we'll never see again is such a bummer. I think you're totally right that this is a REAL issue.
New car, caviar, four star, daydream, Think I'll buy me a football team
Money, Get back
I'm alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack
Money, it's a hit
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit
I'm in the high-fidelity first-class traveling set, and I think I need a Lear jet
Money, it's a crime
Share it fairly, but don't take a slice of my pie
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're giving none away
It is just about money and the idiot superfans and spoiled kids who gobble these stupid alternate jerseys up. If you want it to stop, next time you see someone in one tell them they look stupid. You need to attack this problem on the demand side.
in a micro sense, I think it's basically a Nike strategy. They did it with Oregon football in the late 2010s and spearheaded it in soccer overseas... they're behind the NBA and MLB jersey strategies now.
in a macro sense, the leagues acquiescing to this is basically shoveling old growth brand equity into the furnace in pursuit of jersey sales. And I'm sure I'm sure they have some marketing data that shows that jersey sales increase year over year when a jersey is new as well. In the long term, it seems like this is a bad strategy, and I would like this to be true. But it's a strategy that makes sense in the long term if you're NOT stewarding an institution that you expect to last indefinitely, but instead managing the decline of your industry. In that case it's rational to behave like the hedge fund that acquires a mall anchoring retailer or a local newspaper -- maximize profit over the short term, because in the long term profit is zero.
Ugh… don’t even get me started on the City jersey. As a Celts fan, the bulk of them haven’t even been based on iconography any Bostonians recognize! It’s an irony that Nike’s efforts to connect with NBA cities all end up being such crass, irrelevant cash grabs.
The uniforms are another version of fracking the pie. Friend of mine is a VP in the NBA's data science department. When they first made the changes allowing all the variations on the different jerseys, I asked him about whether this made business sense. He told me that the new iterations of jerseys are huge moneymakers for the teams. It's kind of like always having new merch to release. But even then I was annoyed by the change, not because of brand identity per se, but just because it felt weird and annoying to not know what I could expect the teams to look like game to game. And it makes it worse knowing they are doing it for sales. But it might be another one of those things that makes money in the short term but contributes to the decline of the sport in the long run.
can you try to get Paul Lukas on the pod?
Yankees. Cowboys. Steelers. Packers. Cubs. 49ers. Celtics. Lakers.
Most of those are high self esteem franchises who have mostly kept their threads intact.
Even the Lakers have futzed with their gold - it's more of a highlighter yellow these days. Why they would do that, I have no idea.
The Lakers butchered their away jerseys by adding black to them -- making them closer to the Sac Kings than their classic purple jerseys. It’s pissed me off for years as a lifelong LAL fan
100% I hate the away jerseys so much now it pisses me off every time they wear them
And now they sometimes wear white not on Sundays, it’s infuriating. (Also a lifelong lakers fan)
They have a generational appeal that means that parents get to pass on the rooting interest to their children in a way that other franchises can't. Having a color scheme and look IS HAVING AN IDENTITY
yo check this out I did this series some time back:
https://youtu.be/ojp2bEpmuO8
they've also won at a high level. it's easier to keep things the same if you keep winning i guess
So much of our culture today is about destroying long-standing norms and traditions, seemingly just for grins, without any understanding of why they existed for so long. Because any and all change must be good, and disagreeing gets you stamped as a troglodyte. This is just another example.
Very well said. I was also sensing the over arching larger theme of all those new ideas out there that don’t mean they’re also good.
For once I emphatically disagree! First off, the entire premise of this article isn’t true - the problem with the fanatics jerseys is the quality, not the aesthetic. Team logos/designs have remained largely unchanged.
Secondly, a novelty jersey associated with a specific season or era is exactly the kind of thing fans become nostalgic for! Even the god-awful Mercury Mets jersey are getting a promo retro this year, and most long-time fans I know are excited to be reminded of that 1999 team that would make the World Series the following year (amid many decades of mediocrity). Do NHL fans complain about the speciality jerseys for the winter classic, or stadium series, or heritage classic? No way. Those designs are hotly debated, heavily coveted, and above all a fun remember of a great (or terrible) season.
Is there something to be said for over saturation? Of course, but imo we’re far from that. Total rebrands are rare, and teams get one or two new alts a year.
TL;DR: the problem is the quality, not the new designs.
Yeah I mostly agree with this. Some of them are cool, some are terrible, some are a little lame. There are a handful of teams with timeless uniforms. The rest? It's not bad to update with trends, experiment with alternates and have some nostalgia for throwbacks. Like is it so bad if the Grizzlies or Panthers or Mariners rebrand every 10 years? Or the Nuggets have jerseys that sat Mile High? It's an ok diversion
Plus we get to relive stuff like blue baseball jerseys, the rainbow Nuggets uniforms, the Islanders fish sticks, etc.
I'm a Bucks fan, and for the last few years they've been wearing royal blue uniforms (and playing on a blue court) on a consistent basis. It remains weird.
The Bucks absolutely nailed their logo/jersey/primary color redesign in 2015 and they did it at the perfect time: just before they were about the move into a new arena and become a top tier NBA franchise. It’s pretty annoying watching them play in their far inferior alternate uniforms since the redesign. Frustratingly, they were wearing an alternate jersey in Game 6 of the Finals in 2021.
It’s really a disaster in basketball. So many teams have changed things up so frequently that they have no visual brand to identify with whatsoever. Even franchises that have been around forever like the Jazz and Bucks have totally punted on this, seemingly undergoing a total rebrand every five years
Feel like this is the American leagues looking across the pond at how much soccer clubs change jerseys (every year) as another way to create/influence a revenue stream. Soccer clubs have done this long enough that fans expect it. Comes down to if you’re going to change it that often, at least make it look cool. Seems like after any of these jersey/brand revamps get released you have a fan-created version that is almost always better
The Dallas Mavericks Trash Bag Uniforms from 03-04 have to rank among the worst.
It's Dallas Cowboys lore that Tex Schramm selected their uniform pants color based on how they would look on television. Nobody did that test for the Mavericks "silver" alternates.
This is mostly true, but the Miami Vice uniforms are awesome for a few times per year.
This strikes me as correct, and is reminding me of FdB’s recent rant on the misuse of the G.O.A.T. label. “It’s been three years already, we’re overdue to crown a new G.O.A.T.!” feels like a very similar sentiment to “It’s been three years already, we’re overdue to craft a new brand identity!”. The durable accomplishments and traditions overeager journalists and marketers are so eager to establish can’t attain their hoped-for value if the perpetual pursuit of the new destroys the stability that allows durable things to become established.
One other thing: adding advertisements to the jerseys solidified how all these changes are a shameless cash grab. The economics is simple: the more uniforms a team has, the more nike can sell, the more nike can sell, the more they give the NBA in the rights deal.
These iconic playoff moments (jokic 2023, curry g4 2022) being watered down by alt jerseys we'll never see again is such a bummer. I think you're totally right that this is a REAL issue.
Money, it's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star, daydream, Think I'll buy me a football team
Money, Get back
I'm alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack
Money, it's a hit
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit
I'm in the high-fidelity first-class traveling set, and I think I need a Lear jet
Money, it's a crime
Share it fairly, but don't take a slice of my pie
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're giving none away
It is just about money and the idiot superfans and spoiled kids who gobble these stupid alternate jerseys up. If you want it to stop, next time you see someone in one tell them they look stupid. You need to attack this problem on the demand side.
in a micro sense, I think it's basically a Nike strategy. They did it with Oregon football in the late 2010s and spearheaded it in soccer overseas... they're behind the NBA and MLB jersey strategies now.
in a macro sense, the leagues acquiescing to this is basically shoveling old growth brand equity into the furnace in pursuit of jersey sales. And I'm sure I'm sure they have some marketing data that shows that jersey sales increase year over year when a jersey is new as well. In the long term, it seems like this is a bad strategy, and I would like this to be true. But it's a strategy that makes sense in the long term if you're NOT stewarding an institution that you expect to last indefinitely, but instead managing the decline of your industry. In that case it's rational to behave like the hedge fund that acquires a mall anchoring retailer or a local newspaper -- maximize profit over the short term, because in the long term profit is zero.
But with Oregon it worked and still works because that is their identity
Ugh… don’t even get me started on the City jersey. As a Celts fan, the bulk of them haven’t even been based on iconography any Bostonians recognize! It’s an irony that Nike’s efforts to connect with NBA cities all end up being such crass, irrelevant cash grabs.
I would argue it’s whatever the opposite of “irony” is.
Apropos?
We'll let Ethan chime in. He's the wordsmith.
I once had sex at the top of the Bunker Hill monument! It was great.
Can confirm.
Ethan, can you do a deep dive / expose fanatics? If you look at “fanaticssucks” on Twitter there are 100s of complaints
There seems to be some underhanded dealing how they got exclusives with these leagues while making such a shitty product