Welp. It was bound to happen sooner rather than later.
Major League Baseball (MLB) teams will now feature helmet ads during the postseason. This morning MLB announced it reached a deal for the postseason ads through the year 2027 with Strauss (a German apparel company). Strauss recently entered the U.S. market.
According to the AP, “Ads of 5-by-0.92 inches (12.7-by-2.3 centimeters) will be on each side of every helmet featuring ‘STRAUSS’ in capital letters in white alongside the company’s ostrich logo silhouetted by a red square, with an alternate color for red helmets.”
When MLB and the players’ union settled the lockout in the spring of 2022, the new collective bargaining agreement allowed teams to sell advertising on their jerseys for the first time. But another little-noted provision also allowed for ads to appear on batting helmets during the postseason. While that didn’t happen in 2022 and 2023, it is now a reality.
Here’s a look at how the ad will appear on a few different color helmets:
And the deal is not limited to MLB teams either. The Strauss ad will also appear on the helmets of the 120 Minor League Baseball (MiLB) teams for the next three seasons (2025-27) as well.
These helmet ads are being sold and coordinated by MLB, not by the individual teams. That’s how the helmet ads have been handled for more than two decades now for games taking place outside of the USA and Canada.
Just this past season, the Padres and Dodgers opened the 2024 MLB regular season in Seoul, South Korea, and each team had a helmet ad.
Likewise, the Rockies and Astros wore them in Mexico City this year, and the Phillies and Mets wore ads in their London Series.
Depending upon the helmet color, the Strauss ad will feature a different logo. Teams with red helmets will have a white square with a red Strauss logo (an ostrich), while other color helmets will have a red square with a white logo.
We’ve seen helmet ads as far back as 2008 for games played outside the United States and Canada. But this agreement will mark the first use of MLB helmet advertising for a game in the United States.
The ads will appear on both sides of the helmet as well. Previously, ads had been only on one side.
While MLB first permitted jersey ads beginning with the 2023 season (and 23 of the 30 MLB clubs currently have sleeve advertisers), other leagues permitted ads before MLB took the dreaded plunge. MLS (Major League Soccer) was the first American professional league to do so, and their use of jersey ads began in 1996. Of the major sports, the NBA was first to permit ads, and they did so for the 2017-18 season. The NHL permitted helmet ads for the 2020-21 season and began selling jersey advertising for 2021-22.
This is of course terrible news, but it’s not entirely unexpected. In fact, as Paul noted just before last year’s MLB playoffs, helmet ads were a distinct possibility, but fortunately did not happen. But those blissful ad-free helmets for playoff games are about to become a thing of the past.
This is so gross. Soon these leagues are going to look like NASCAR and Liga Mx. Please for the love of god stop.
Look at the uniforms of the Mexican Leagues. There are so many ads that the actual team name is indistinguishable. That is where we’re headed.
It won’t be long until ads appear on the helmets full-time. The genie is long out of the bottle and it isn’t going back.
Really gross and pathetic. The league and these teams are so greedy and sad. Let’s just end the facade and go full NASCAR and name the teams after corporations. Maybe we can just replace the 7th inning with 15 minutes of ads.
Just call them the Boston Mass Mutual Red Sox and be done.
All this is so vomit inducing.
Some team is going to win the World Series wearing this garbage.
Fucking brutal.
I concur 100%
So I hate this. BUT, I think I hate this less than the ads on uniforms, because there’s no retail market for batting helmets. The idea of someone needing a Mass Mutual patch on their Red Sox jersey to make it “official” make the uni ads feel way worse to me.
I concur. It’s still dogshit, but at least it’s easily avoidable.
Agree 100%! I have a Cubs home pinstripe (Sandburg)/blue alternate jersey (my blue one has the National League logo on the sleeve). I have been wanting to add a road gray to my collection. But, refuse to buy one with the Nike logo on it. Yes, the older ones had the Majestic logo on the sleeve. That wasn’t so much “in your face” as the Nike logo on the chest.
Are the swooshes heat applied or sewn on? If the latter, just get a seam ripper…
Having ads in the first place is bad enough.
But why does MLB (and teams like the Yankees) go with these obscure brands that no one cares about? There’s no way this Strauss company is spending the kind of money that Mastercard or some other corporate giant would spend. Can’t they hold out for a legitimate company?
I find it amusing that people think Starr is obscure just because they haven’t heard of it. Starr is a huge company that sells insurance to corporations. The target demo is CEOs, not mopes looking for cheap auto insurance.
It’s those “mopes” that fill Yankee Stadium and buy the gear. Would be great if the ad actually resonated more with the masses.
That is why a company advertises, right? So folks get to know who they are? A lot of fans are more likely to boycott that company for this, however.
It seems to me more like an ego thing for these companies. So they can say at yacht parties “oh did you see our logo on the Red Sox uniforms… we’re a valuable partner of theirs now!”
Paul interviewed a guy who works close to these deals and if I remember correctly it all seemed very egotistical and corporate rather than market driven. I remember him saying that the ROI on these ads was still kind of speculative.
I would love for Phil to link that article more often on these kinds of stories because I remember it being very telling.
I wish I had however many billion dollars it would take to buy every MLB team and excise all advertisements from the uniforms. I’d get some real names on the ballparks, too, while I was at it.
Anyway, I’m convinced these greedy creeps are incapable of feeling shame.
Robert Carlson, is someone I want in charge of my company!
Let’s stop the nonsense, that MLB has turned in to.
This is a terrible decision. Baseball has such a rich history tied to iconic photography. Now, memorable moments will be recorded, and the Hall of Fame will receive artifacts with oversized corporate logos on jerseys and helmets.
If they absolutely must have uniform ad revenue — and if technology can do this — place a green screen sticker on the helmet and a patch on the jersey sleeves. Broadcasters can then digitally key in ads. In-stadium fans already see plenty of ads on placards and signs, while the television/streaming audience can view current-day sponsors. For historical re-broadcasts, they could even insert updated ads to replace outdated companies (e.g., FTX and Cruise).
This technology doesn’t exist and isn’t even close to existing. What makes those digital signs happen is that they’re in a fixed space relative to the fixed spot of the camera. If the spot is moving it can’t track it’s movement like that.
Only way that can be close to being done is in post production. There are tools that can do a very good job of tracking said item in a post environment but all the ones I have worked with will still need human adjustments of the keypoints to make them correct. That even gets before of the turning of the item that would be needed to make them legible.
In real time everything your seeing is flattened in the Z Space for the camera. In post you can alter that and then on export it gets flattened again.
Thanks for that explanation.
I commend the Washington Nationals for protesting this deeply offensive commercialism by not participating in this year’s postseason.
HAHAHAHA! The Rockies stand with you. :-(
Christ that’s awful. The ad patches are bad but so much less obtrusive than this.
Congrats, MLB. Soil your uniforms even more. That ridiculous helmet ad is huge.
Of course this is coming to the regular season. No doubt. And as I’ve been saying, expect a second sleeve ad as well as an ad on the uniform front, opposite that precious Nike swoosh. And this will not be limited to helmets, you can look forward to ads on caps as well.
Keep going full NASCAR, you greedy bastards. Each one of these gross ads chips away at my fandom. I should thank MLB. I care much less about my teams, which makes my life far better overall.
I also don’t like the gaslighting this does regarding the postseason. That the postseason is more important *because* it has additional ads on the players
Stupid.
One note on your stuff is that I believe MLS has allowed ads on uniforms since their first year in 1996. I know I saw ads on teams that stopped existing before 2007.
You’re right. Now fixed. Thanks.
In the early years, MLS ads were patch on the lower back which didn’t find that bad. Unfortunately, a big part of the change to align with traditional soccer leagues was adding chest advertising. It’s sad to fans wanted this to be more like Europe and South America.
Sports has become a nonstop 2 and a half hour or longer infomercial with a few minutes of athletic action sprinkled in to keep viewers eyes focused towards advertising on uniforms, playing surface, around stadium, tv graphics, etc…
This is why I don’t watch MLB or NHL anymore and have greatly decreased NBA depending on if those digital ads are on the court. Surprisingly football (kudos so far NFL) is the only watchable sports (though college seems to be sliding in the wrong direction)
Yep. Ads everywhere. Hockey, the great sport it is, is getting tough to watch with the digital ads on the ice now. Plus ads in the corners, on the boards, on the helmets and on the sweaters. Soon it will be like European leagues with the ads. Why olympic hockey is the best.
Disgusting news. Thankfully my team, the Colorado Rockies, will continue to boycott the playoffs this year and for years to come.
I would’ve put the m in the title in parentheses: Ad-Nausea(m) – to emphasize the point.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, there’s nobody on earth who hates baseball more than Rob Manfred. I know that he’s ultimately just a mouthpiece for the owners, but that doesn’t change that he’s the one who has overseen baseball’s decline into absolute buffoonery. History will remember him as the worst commissioner of the modern era.
He’s definitely taking a run at Kenesaw, although I don’t think anyone will ever surpass him as worst commish ever. But you can’t say Manfred isn’t trying.
Many MLS teams had ad patches on the backs of jerseys below the numbers, sleeves and shorts way back in the 90’s.
link
By 2030, a requirement for playing in the majors, is that MLB reserves a 3 inch spot on every players arm, for an AD to be tattooed in that spot.
Everywhere you look are ads ads ads. The world is over-ad’d. Why it’s tough attending baseball and hockey now.
If attending or watching the games was free I could understand needing this, but you have paying customers coming to watch the game and not watch the ads.
Rob Manfred is worse than a dirtbag capitalist. He’s a monkey on a leash doing the bidding of dirtbag capitalists.
I’m sure this has been discussed before, but I never really thought about the few colors of helmets used in MLB. Blue (Navy/Royal) Red and Black. A few outliers for Padres and A’s. But most primary helmets are pretty primary colors. What color logo would be on an Orange shell helmet?
I bet my left nut that soon players will have sponsors with their names….imagine announcers- next up to bat for the Braves, Marcell “Home Depot” Ozuna!
or… “Target” Jefferson with the amazing catch for the Vikings!
How soon before we sees ads on bats? A big blue bat with VIAGRA plastered up the barrel…
I kept my promise to myself years ago, and stopped watching the NBA and MLB when ads started making teams look like they hail from the German Bündeslïga. It was hard enough watching major league home run fences getting plastered with goofy “HIT IT HERE” ads that made it look like the World Series was being played in Tidewater or Macon.
Haven’t missed it at all, and HAVE missed some horrific ads, I’d suspect. The NFL is right on the edge. RIGHT ON THE EDGE…
Makes me want to puke. The ads on team broadcasts are also obnoxious. Here in Arizona, Diamondbacks pitchers are always shown warming up in “the Sanderson Ford Bullpen.”
Has anybody ever heard of this company before? At the very least Manfred and MLB should have found a company from North America, Canada or USA to be the first helmet sponsor, not some unknown German company.
Yet, this site continues to run ads.
Yes this site needs ads to survive.
MLB does not need ads on equipment and uniforms to survive. Its a greedy grab
Just boo. Those are huge.
For all of the venom rightfully directed at commissioners like Manfred, Goodell and Bettman, they are merely well-payed stooges acting as human defector shields. They serve at the leisure of the owners. They’re not going to tell their billionaire bosses no. They aren’t the guardians of the game and its traditions. They’re the public face put out there for us to hate while the owners desecrate the game for a few millions bucks.
Between the MLB allowing the owner of my team to intentionally sabotage them for years and then move them to a city that doesn’t want them (following a stopover in a minor league heat stroke factory) and this, it’s become really easy for me to never watch baseball again.
This used to be my favorite sport. I watched every game, read books, researched history, loved the sense of tradition and myth and dignity.
That’s all completely gone. Good riddance.
Late stage capitalism looks really ugly on a society.