LAFC is the only team that has announced a jersey sleeve sponsorship.getty images
Major League Soccer’s four-year pilot program in which teams can secure jersey sleeve sponsorships begins this season, but so far just one club has announced a deal — LAFC, which came to terms with Target last fall. Jean-Paul Dardenne, senior vice president of corporate partnerships for the Philadelphia Union, is among the executives who thought the sales process would move quicker than it has.
“We’re walking before we’re running,” said Dardenne, who added that the team has three to six proposals in companies’ hands. “When this first came out, we all felt like it could be a quick sell.”
Both Dardenne and Sporting KC President and CEO Jake Reid said that with the lone deal, there isn’t much benchmarking for clubs. The amount of data is scarce beyond teams’ research around media value and online exposure.
GumGum Sports, a sponsorship valuation platform, conducted a white space analysis of the sleeve patch’s potential value during the 2019 regular season across more than five teams that had varying degrees of performance and market size. General Manager Brian Kim emphasized that the media value between social and broadcast is just one data point as teams also factor in audience size, social media presence and future broadcast deals, among other elements.
The results project a media valuation of roughly $185,000 per season for an average team. A full-season value could be as high as $785,000 for a club within a mid-to-large market size, a strong regular-season performance and a playoff appearance.
Each club will have to pay $100,000 annually to MLS from the sleeve jersey patch deal, sources said, meaning any deal has an additional threshold to meet before it can be considered a worthwhile strategy.
Among the factors clubs have to weigh before making a deal are: Do they have the ability to execute a deal based on the current contract language with their existing main kit sponsor? Do they have both internal and third-party research to support their expectations? And do they have enough other inventory to create a package around? Those are important questions to consider, according to Jason Miller, senior vice president and head of sports properties at talent representation and marketing agency Excel Sports Management.
“It’s been a perfect storm of a very difficult situation,” said Miller. “It’s not front of shirt, it’s not nearly as valuable. It’s tough. You really have to build it out as part of a platform.”
The patch is the focal point, the Union’s Dardenne said, but brands are interested in a bigger platform, whether it’s tied to the league’s and clubs’ increased investment in esports or possibly a team’s training facility.
Sporting KC’s Reid, who agreed that the asset has to be part of a larger, fully integrated sponsorship, said the club has turned down multiple sleeve offers, characterizing the decisions as “mostly financially related.” Teams have one chance to set the going rate, he said, and while it’s easy to cave under pressure when there’s a sizable six-figure offer on the table, thinking long term is the right move, he said.
“The brand literally lives with your brand on the jersey, so it’s a little bit different than some of the other relationships, so we’ve been maybe a bit pickier,” he added.
