Paul here, making a quick August cameo to let you know that my Premium article over on Substack this week is a Uni Watch Power Rankings rundown of all 30 MLB teams, from worst to first.
You can access the first part of the article here. In order to read the entire thing, you’ll need to become a paying subscriber to my Substack (which will also get you access to my complete Substack archives, and will also get you my upcoming NFL Season Preview, which will be published on Sept. 5). My thanks, as always, for your consideration and support!
This site seems to have become one huge advertisement.
Yes, an ad to pay to read an article on why ‘ads on uniforms’ is bad, presented on a page bordered by ads. The irony is not lost…
This guy gets it(tm)
^This lol
And yes, as others have pointed out, MLB teams don’t “need” the $. Websites, theoretically, do…although it sure feels like this need popped up out of nowhere, considering the sheer increase in volume of the ads on this site.
But the point stands. Complaining about ads that are the size of half of a shirt sleeve feels weird when I click to access an article on this site and am bombarded with a full on pop up ad that blocks everything. Feels very “early AOL days”.
I think consumers are tired of everything being “paid” these days. It’s like the streaming services. One is fine. But now you need to pay/subscribe to ALL of them? Consumers need $ as well.
Thank goodness for my adblocker :)
This website is starting to look like logging on to the internet back in the day with NetZero
(Ironically I used to pay for a plus account, but I got tired of the bitching about uniform ads….)
There is a difference, however. MLB (and other pro sports teams) don’t NEED advertising dollars in order to continue to operate. Paul wrote extensively about how he has unfortunately (and reluctantly) had to increase advertising on this site to keep paying the bills, so to speak. In other words, give the guy a break. There are alternatives (Uni-Watch Plus, etc.).
I’d actually prefer it if there were *more* ads but all the content was free to read.
fully agree with you, though I do think it’s a bit of overkill to have this as a post and also copy/pasted into the lede. I get it though, the more spots it is, the more likely someone signs up for the first time due to that week’s article.
Seems a bit silly to base the ads’ acceptability on whether the business is successful or not. At that point – do we need to see the P&L of a business before we can make a judgment? Any business owner would be a fool to not take advantage of lucrative ad revenue if it doesn’t impact other revenue streams (at this stage, I can’t imagine that uni ad patches diminish other areas really at all!).
To me, it’s simple – it’s a wise business decision to capitalize on ad revenue. Paul finally figured it out, only after years of ‘sticking it to the man’ and stubbornness, now with his tail between his legs. I hope the site is successful now, but I’m definitely not going to pay only to read articles about how OTHER companies ads are bad for making the same wise business decision.
I really don’t understand how someone can be so utterly blind to context as you seem to be here. For one, I think the idea that a guy trying to make his living by writing about uniforms and a billionaire owner of a sports team might be in different positions of NEED when it comes to advertising revenue.
And I don’t know if you’re just a cynical businessman, but particularly when you’re a city/region’s institution–a civic institution, maybe you could say–I think you do represent more than just a typical business that’s out for every last dollar. (Though I think you could also say that one of the things that’s really wrecking this country for many American workers is the fact that businesses operate with nothing but the bottom line in mind.)
Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD or NEED to do anything, and that certainly applies to advertising.
Agree to disagree. You bring up “need” but I think that is absolutely irrelevant to whether ads are good or bad. Seems like you have disdain for successful businessmen/businesses and make excuses for the small guys who operate the same way.
I rather dislike the Astros, Twins and Reds. Astros should’ve recognized the shooting star as their legacy look when they went retro. Twins just don’t know how they want to look and I hate their roads. Reds have that ridiculous huge script on their red shirts. Every CC uniform is one uniform too many. I don’t factor ads into my personal opinion of a design.
All this talk about hypocrisy might make some sense if you weren’t being given two options, free with ads or pay for ad-free. Meanwhile MLB hikes prices substantially each year from all angles, offering premium prices for an increasingly ad-drenched experience. I don’t know, seems different to me.
My personal first choice for uniform sets overall would be the Baltimore Orioles with the Arizona Diamondbacks coming in last.
Black & orange is a really cool color palette and Baltimore’s font is classic.
Diamondbacks desperately need to go back to the early 00s era uniforms, when they won the World Series, that time.
As for best and worst singular uniforms my personal favorite single uniform is the Cardinals cream colors “St. Louis” uniform.
Worst overall is the Diamondbacks rust red “D-backs” alt. Their home is a close second but at least the teal is nice on the home jersey. The rust red and black is just ugly and putting D-backs on a shirt is just begging for an obvious joke.
Also worth mentioning although the Marlins current set is not bad, certainly much better than the orange era, that’s another team that definitely needs to bring back the 90s. Just change the F to an M. But bringing back the classic teal and black is a must.
For possible bias context, I’m a Red Sox fan so I have nothing for or against any of the teams I mentioned. I know the Orioles are AL East but I don’t hate them in fact if any AL East team besides Boston had to win I’d definitely prefer them over Toronto, Tampa, and obviously the Yankees.
Access the first part of the article here. Then proceed to see nothing whatsoever until the end where I put a fantastic uniform #30 cause it hurts my feelings.
Did Paul really do a ranking where he listed all of the teams with ads at the bottom? While also peppering his website with ads?
Most of these comments don’t understand what is being sold.
Sports franchises are in the business of selling their own product to consumers who pay for the product. TV money and ticket sales. Teams that don’t own their regional networks get paid by a broadcaster to air the games so they can then charge the customers a fee to watch.
The expectation should be that when a consumer pays for a product (the game) they get that product. Instead they’re getting a ridiculous amount of ads mixed loosely around a product they’ve purchased.
This is very bad for the consumer. Most say that the business (teams) would be dumb for not maximizing their revenue stream and you would be wrong. They should be in the business of maximizing customer loyalty to consuming their product. This is a decision that teams are actively not making by prioritizing the wrong thing (advertising dollars).
Now, to bring that back to Paul. He provides a paid option to not receive ads and provides a paid option to see all of his content. He also provides a free option to you but it comes with ads because this content (or any content) is not free. The difference is for the people who have paid to not receive ads and paid to get all the content are taking control themselves of what they want to pay for. For all those who have not paid, your eyeballs are being sold in the form of advertisement. The ad companies are not buying space on Paul’s site. They are buying you the consumer of Paul’s site.
If you’re a paying customer of a product you should have an expectation of not being blasted with ads for other products every few seconds. If I could get in to watch a game for free the ad amount would not bother me as the company has decided that’s how they will make their money off their consumers.
This stuff is pretty simple. Paul is not setting a double standard here. Some of the issue as it pertains to the internet is that for some reason newspapers started putting their content online for free and started selling the eyeballs. I never understood why they did that when you had to buy a paper.
I feel compelled to comment on the strategy here.
There are two things that have turned mainstream publications and readers off from Uni Watch over the last several years: Hating on Native American themes and hating on uni ads.
You can keep harping on those things if you want to — obviously a hardcore sliver of UWers seem to like it — but my strategy question is: Why put that above the break?? Keep the hating in the subscribers-only portion of the post, not in the free preview.
Anyway, enjoy your August break.