Paul here, pinch-hitting for Phil to let you know that the Giants today announced that they’ve sold space on their uniform to a driverless-car company (which could definitely lead to an interesting bullpen buggy). The sleeve advertisement, which is MLB’s most visually obnoxious uni ad so far, is making its on-field debut today and will continue to appear on the Giants’ uniforms through 2025. Terms were not disclosed.
Like most of MLB’s other ad-clad teams, the Giants will position the ad on the player’s front-facing sleeve to maximize TV exposure. It looks just as bad on the left sleeve as it does on the right:
The Giants were already wearing memorial patches this year for former pitchers Vida Blue and Gaylord Perry. Those patches have now been lumped together with the team’s logo patch on the non-front-facing sleeve:
When former manager Roger Craig died in June, they memorialized him with a sign on the outfield wall instead of adding yet another jersey patch, presumably because the one sleeve was “full” and they wanted to keep the other sleeve open for the eventual ad.
San Francisco is the 15th MLB team so far to whore out their uniform to an advertiser, meaning that half of MLB’s 30 team’s are now ad-clad. The other 14 such teams are the Padres, Red Sox, D-backs, Angels, Astros, Reds, Marlins, Mets, Cardinals, Tigers, Guardians, Yankees, Blue Jays, and Atlanta.
If it was smaller and the car wasn’t so cartoony, the colours might actually look great with the Giants uniform. But in reality it’s pretty bad.
I was just going to say, from a purely graphic design standpoint, it’s the most visually interesting/pleasing to the eye. But from a uni lovers perspective it’s the most obnoxious (and it’s YUGE. I mean biggly ginormous). Swap the cruise car with a cable car and the “cruise”wordmark for a “giants” one and they’d have a halfway decent sleeve patch. Unfortunately it’s an ad for a rent-a-car company. At least it’s not an ad for another startup “that disrupts the industry by revolutionizing the way food is delivered to your house”.
Or replace Cruise with Santa Cruz and people would be buying these in the souvenir shops on the Boardwalk.
The worst part is that everyone in SF absolutely despises these cars
In a way, Met fans are lucky their advertiser name is so long, they can’t use a large font and you can’t really read the name most of the time. Poor Giant fans.
Damn.
I think it’s a toss-up, actually, between this big-ass patch and the GIANT HONKING SACK OF CONCRETE on Atlanta’s sleeves. Because I will never not be distracted by the GIANT HONKING SACK OF CONCRETE. And, yes, I must shout it. Every time. Because it’s so absurd.
I have to agree. I hate all uni ads, and am most outraged by the desecration of the Yankees pinstripes, but the Braves ad is objectively the most obnoxious.
This one looks to be 5” high. I thought the absurd 4” was the limit.
When I first saw the image, I thought they were advertising for the cops. Did this “Cruise” company think about what they were doing? At all?
Unlike the actual Cruise cars here, you unfortunately can’t disable this ad by putting a cone on it link
Cruisin’ and San Francisco go hand-in-hand.
Total Recall Johnny-Cabs are real???
The ad aside, driverless bullpen carts would be a lot of fun.
Something just occurred to me: the CC unis have a bridge design on the sleeve, and i think it’s too tall to not interfere with this huge patch. The patch will either have to be super high on the sleeve or cover the precious CC design.
Indeed…and it’s on both sleeves, so something’s gotta give. I’d imagine it will be the bridge
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Yeah I’d guess this patch is just going to thwomp the bridge tower until the Golden Gate looks more like a freeway overpass. As a Bay Area native, a lifelong Giants fan, and a lover of fog, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the color orange, I can comfortably say, “let this clash of the ad vs the sleeve design be the end of this CC jersey” I know some people have grown to like this CC, but knowing many fans personally, I can say that it is because they like the idea of an orange hat, the idea of a pure white uni (the giants haven’t had much in the way of white unis since they adopted the “French vanilla” over 20 years ago, I believe), and the idea of including the Golden Gate in their identity. But by no means do these fans outright like the hats or unis, just that they can, say, have an orange giants hat with the bridge on it and it’s also an on-field piece of attire. It’s not an admission that any of those elements were done well.
Agreed. As patches are wretched but if it knocks off a terrible CC design as a casualty of this war, well, war is hell.
The Giants already messed up their home unis with the NOBs. They had one of the best-looking uniforms in MLB (I am Giants-neutral) with the dream, the subtle drop shadow and no NOB. This doesn’t help.
I read on sportslogo.net that they tried to blend the ad in with the team identity by putting an arch on top and doing a sunset in team colors. Sickening storytelling. This ad is so huge and in your face. A disgrace.
Why is it bad that a company would try to match the team’s colours?
Because it’s insulting for the company to pretend this is about anything other than advertising their product and for the team to pretend this is about anything other than stuffing more cash in their pockets.
And yet one of the most common complaints is that the patches don’t match the rest of the uniform…
Referred to everyone else by their mascot name but then used city name for the Braves. Hmmm.
Are you new here?
from a local SF online newspaper — they hate it!
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I still hate the redundant GIANTS wordmark on the other sleeve more.
I have base level distaste for obtrusive advertising (which all uniform ads are, in my book).
Beyond that, I prefer my intrusive ads to be visually appealing, probably a little old-fashioned looking, and for something I’m not inundated with constantly. So foreign ads, I find highly tolerable. As an east coaster, this one doesn’t bug me so much beyond it’s very nature as a harbinger of worse to come.
The Yankees one is still the worst.
Have you done a ranking of the sleeve ads? Would be interesting which ones you think were implemented better than the others. I mean they’re all terrible, but some more than others.