The San Francisco Business Times is reporting that the Giants have sold space on their jersey sleeves to a car manufacturer. The team has not yet made an official announcement.
The new sleeve advertisement will replace the one that the Giants began wearing last summer — a move that blew up in the team’s face when that advertiser’s business license was revoked by the state of California, which found that the advertiser was a public safety menace.
The new advertiser is owned by GM, which also owns the old advertiser, so this move is apparently a make-good on GM’s part. The Business Times report says the new sleeve ad might be for only one year, with the old ad possibly returning in 2025.
The Giants thus earn the dubious distinction of being the first MLB team to have a second sleeve advertiser. The season hasn’t even started and they already lead the league in something!
At present, 17 of the 30 MLB teams have whored out their uniforms to advertisers. The other 16 are the Padres, Red Sox, D-backs, Angels, Astros, Reds, Marlins, Mets, Cardinals, Tigers, Guardians, Yankees, Blue Jays, Brewers, Dodgers, and Atlanta.
(My thanks to Phil for bringing this news to my attention.)
While I hate sleeve ads, at least it’s:
1) not for Cruise
2) not for self-driving cars
3) smaller and in the team’s colors rather than being a mishmosh sunset
Most Chevy EVs have available Super Cruise, which is their self-driving technology, so #2 isn’t exactly true
I mean, it’s a car ad. And the have one of the few ballparks that isn’t surrounded by a massive parking lot, in a city that has tons of public transit options. We need fewer cars, not more of them, no matter if they’re electric or not.
Just a bad look here.
I work for a tech company that does business with Cruise and it has been a disaster trying to work with them over the last six months (since their… issues… have become public). General Motors is the parent company, and they also are the parent company of Chevrolet. So I wonder if this isn’t a brand new deal, but GM trying to make good on their part of the agreement by replacing Cruise with another subsidiary?
Either way, it’s an eyesore and I wish the deal would have been scrapped altogether.
Reading this news, I can’t help but think of a conversation I was having on social media yesterday about the Nike uniform kerfuffle. Someone made an off-handed comment about how what Nike was doing was “much worse” than the ads. I questioned why? (Not that I like anything about Nike’s template disaster, but I personally feel ads are worse) and their feeling was that the ad patch was simply something “on the real uniform” while what Nike was doing was “ruining the real uniforms.” I don’t agree with that at all, but I think it’s probably the prevailing thought amongst enough fans that sadly the ads will just become more and more commonplace.
FWIW, I feel like you’re on the right track about the public perception of the ads. Remember back when NHL sideboards were gloriously ad-free? Fast forward to today – does anyone think that the majority of folks watching the game on TV or in person even notice them anymore? For me, they just blend into the background. YMMV
It’s been a long, long time since NHL boards were plain and ad-free, and they *did* blend into the background… until they decided to start digitally animating them on TV broadcasts, where they do end up being a distraction at times.
Too many ads in the NHL. Boards. Ice. Helmet. Chest. sometimes on the glass behind the bench. Ads everywhere. Viewers are over stimulated with ads. Makes Olympic hockey just that much better.
Look, Paul. This is the only thing the Giants are going to lead in this season! Give us fans something!
And as always, DUCK THE FODGERS!
Yeah given Cruise and Chevy are part of the same corporate org, this is probably just a switcheroo between GM and the Giants given the turmoil at Cruise.
From a purely aesthetic perspective, the new shitty sleeve ad is a vast improvement over the old shitty sleeve ad. It’s a classic corporate logo, rendered in team colors, set in a well-proportioned rectangle. The Cruise patch made me want to claw my eyes out, and that was before their robot cars started dragging pedestrians around.
When teams whore themselves out to an advertiser that turns out to be slime, they should be punished by being forced to keep shilling for them, as a badge of shame. Keep that old advertiser on the sleeve, and put Enron back on the Astros’ park.
At least it’s not Ford
Unless I misunderstood your list, those teams were those that have not sold their sleeve to an advertiser. While the Phillies removed their sleeve number, they are still not sporting an ad including the spring training , as of yesterday. Did I miss something?