The Baltimore Orioles have become the latest team to put a jersey ad on their sleeve.
According to MLB.com, “On Monday, the O’s and T. Rowe Price announced a marquee sponsorship agreement centered around a branded uniform patch that will be located on the sleeves of Orioles jerseys for all regular-season and postseason games. It will first appear there on Tuesday night, when the O’s open a three-game series vs. the Braves at Camden Yards.”
The advertiser is a global investment management firm, based in Baltimore. Not that that makes the ad any more palatable.
Here’s how it will look on the white, gray, orange and black jerseys.
A look at our updated threads. pic.twitter.com/pyQZPxJfvk
— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) June 10, 2024
It will also appear on the team’s CC uniform:
Unlike most other teams with jersey ads, every photo shows this ad being on the right sleeve. Most teams will swap the location of the ad due to the “handedness” of the player, in order to maximize TV exposure.
This means we’re now down to 10 ad-free teams (a numberlikely to lower as the season progresses): the A’s, Cubs, Mariners, Nationals, Phillies, Pirates, Rays, Rockies, Twins, and White Sox. (The other 19 teams who’ve sold out their uniforms to advertisers, aside from the Orioles, are the Padres, Red Sox, D-backs, Angels, Astros, Reds, Marlins, Mets, Cardinals, Tigers, Guardians, Yankees, Blue Jays, Brewers, Dodgers, Giants, Atlanta, Royals and Rangers).
That might be the worst one yet!
Also, I appreciate the use of “sold out” as opposed to the old term that was used in these types of articles.
I do too.
Same. “Sold out” is very fair. The other term was… not great.
I don’t know that I’d say this is the worst one, but it’s definitely up there. The Astros’ patch is very bad, imo. But as an O’s fan, I hate this. Knew an ad was coming sooner or later, it’s just where all the unis are going eventually, but I still despise it. If teams are gonna do this crap, at least make the patch color coordinate with the uni.
There’s a new sheriff in town.
But seriously, I was always fine with Paul’s colorful language, but it’s not necessarily my style.
New sheriff is doing an excellent job, by the way. Appreciated!
Thanks, Dave!
I had no problem with the more colourful language when it came to swearing to express the gravity of his feelings. I just think it’s better to avoid terms that are unnecessarily vulgar and/or sexist, and it was especially not necessary every single time a new team added an ad patch in the NHL/MLB.
City Connect, big Nike swoosh, and an ad patch. That preview pic hits the trifecta!
Gunnar is lefty, and Adley and Santander are switch, primarily hitting left because of the abundance in righty pitching. Bradish (in the gray) is a righty pitcher so his right arm is facing the camera unless he’s in the action of throwing a pitch.
So there’s still the possibility that the ad will appear according to handedness. It’s just that the reveal only shows handedness that favors the ad to be on the right sleeve.
The O’s have been doing the “patch sleeve depends on handedness” thing since last year. The ad patch will 100% follow the same protocol as everyone else’s.
I dont know what to make of it but it seems a bunch of the smaller market teams are without ad’s you would think they would have jumped at any additonal revenue opportunities.
This is an interesting topic that I thought never got enough play around here in the past. (I brought it up with Paul once and got the expected response. Lol)
I dislike uni ads on aesthetic grounds, completely separate from any issues of corporate greed, ethics, etc. But I think there are a few major-league sports teams who are doing poorly enough financially that they could genuinely justify needing the revenue from uni ads. (The late Arizona Coyotes spring to mind.)
“But I think there are a few major-league sports teams who are doing poorly enough financially that they could genuinely justify needing the revenue from uni ads.”
I’d rather see a team that’s having difficulties making ends meet in their current location move out of town or (in some cases) have the league office look seriously at contraction rather than sullying the uniform with ads.
I’d rather see MLB figure out some way to strike a balance between having a team who can pay $700M to a single a player and a team that’s doing poorly enough to require “sponsorship” from Chico’s Bail Bonds. It’s not a good look, especially when those teams are in the same division.
I knew this was coming at some point but a tiny piece of me held out some hope that my Orioles would change course under the new owners and drop plans for a f’ing ad patch. Dammitall.
This patch is as bad as the concrete patch the Braves wear. The colors mirror that of a division rival (TB Rays) and a f^*&ing ram on the Orioles uniforms just seems dumb. T. Rowe is based in Baltimore, whatta I know about rams except by going to the zoo. Sad day in Birdland, but we all knew it was inevitable. Next, a corporate name for OPaCY, but as long as we re-sign our core I’ll live with it.
Rumor has it (from Birdland Twitter, so make of it what you will) that this was David Rubenstein’s salvaging of a deal that the previous owner had with T. Rowe to do a stadium naming rights deal. Not sure if it’s true or if it makes it any more palatable. If getting a jersey patch were inevitable we all would prefer Old Bay, but oh well.
Ugh. How did they ever afford jerseys before a “sponsor”?? The world may never know.
I wish more teams would try to make the sponsor patches at least match the team colors. This is just an eyesore.
THIS. Just make it back and orange! Not only would it look better, it would be better marketing (more closely associating the product/company with the home town team).
Ha! I just said this in my own comment. Hadn’t seen yours. Quality take ;-)
Like most of the clientele around here, I dislike uni ads. But I especially dislike uni ads in colors that don’t fit the rest of the uniform. I don’t claim to be a marketing genius, but it would it really hurt T. Rowe Price’s business if they made the ad, say, orange for the Orioles uni instead of teal? It just looks ridiculous and ruins the visual flow of the uni design.
The patch is a roundel. I’ve never seen TRP’s logo rendered as a roundel before today. It looks like something their company softball teams would wear.
Clearly they did this to maximize exposure of the patch. If it had been rendered in the way their logo and wordmark usually appear, it’d just be a narrow strip. But clearly that wasn’t going to be good enough for them.
Nyeh.
By look alone, this should be the official “marquee sponsor” of the Rockies!
The cheapening of uniforms continue while the retail prices for jerseys are anything but getting cheaper.
I hate this so much.
Stink lines coming off it: feels greedy n gross, just like all the others.
And don’t fall for the ones that use team colors. That feels even more insidious, like they’re skating in as ‘partners in hue’ or some such nonsense. They’ll seem better because they ‘match’ but they’re absolutely just as gruesome as any others on a big league uniform. Nike turd-smear is bad enough. Ugh.
Logos in team colors are better because they literally look better. I understand that aesthetics in all its forms is ultimately opinion, but I think 99% of people would agree that a black & orange ad on a black & orange jersey looks better than a teal & blue ad on a black & orange jersey. Why take a positive and try to turn it into a negative by calling it “insidious”?
I too would rather see ads in places other than unis. But if that ship has sailed, let’s at least make it LOOK as good as possible.
Yes the colors matching is objectively better looking, but having them less bad makes that 99% of us more likely to accept the whole situation. The insidiousness is its normalizing the advertisement. Future seasons could feature two or three ad patches but all in team colors, so “hey, the ship has sailed oh well at least they’re orange” feels like soft acceptance to an expanding reprehensible development in sports.
It kills me how they do these photo sessions to show off the sleeve ad like it’s something to be proud of.
They prob get paid for it. I had no idea until last week players get 10k to do an in game interview on tv. Which basically makes the top players get richer where the guy who is making league minimum gets no opportunities.
I’m going to make a variant version with my brother’s cats replacing the ram and their names replacing the company name.
Am I the only person surprised the Phillies don’t have one yet? It seems as if they geared up for it by removing the sleeve number, then it has been blank since.
Man, talk about sticking out like a sore thumb. That relatively bright blue really clashes with the rest of the uniform…not that any of the ads are “good”, but this would probably be less offensive on a team where blue was a main color…say, the Rangers or Blue Jays uniforms. With the Orioles, it really jumps out…and not in a good way. Yuck.
So gross.