The Utah Jazz announced today that the team’s longstanding “5 for the Fight” jersey patch — a call for people to donate $5 toward cancer research — will no longer be appearing on the team’s uniform this season. A new jersey advertiser will be announced on Thursday.
The “5 for the Fight” patch began appearing on Jazz uniforms at the start of the 2017-18 season — the first season NBA teams were allowed to sell ad space on their uniforms. While many other teams have moved on to other uni advertisers since then, the Jazz have stuck with “5 for the Fight” until now. The team says it’s because the campaign’s $50 million fundraising goal has now been met.
5 for the Fight is a nonprofit charity initiative of the experience management company Qualtrics, which paid for the patch without having their own name attached to it. In 2020, three years after the patch began appearing, Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith bought the Jazz.
When the 5/Fight patch first appeared in 2017, I was hoping other corporations might do something similar by sponsoring charity patches instead of just plastering their own logos on the uniforms. Unfortunately, that never happened, and the Jazz’s patch has remained an outlier. Now that it’s being retired, I’m very curious to see what the team’s new uni advertiser will be.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Delta Airlines’ triangle logo on the Utah jersey. Other ideas include Vivint Smart Home.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess Qualtrics.
It likely won’t be Qualtrics. The company was recently bought by a PE company and Ryan Smith isn’t involved as he used to be. Like someone said above, my guess is Delta (current arena sponsor) or Vivint (former arena sponsor).
It would be nice if it were another charitable cause, but I’m not holding my breath.
I’d like to see a “pro bono” policy in professional sports where teams bearing ad patches have to play a percentage of their games with charity patches worn at the teams’ expense. Maybe on a nationally-broadcast day.
As if I needed another reason to freaking hate uniform ads.
Marriott
The good news is that there’s an entire arena still doing this – Climate Pledge Arena (Amazon).