Good morning Uni Watchers, and a Happy Hump Day to all.
At the end of the 2024 Major League Season, more than two-thirds of the league had advertisements on their sleeves. Specifically, 23 of the 30 clubs have sullied their jerseys, with only seven — the A’s, Mariners, Nationals, Rays, Rockies, Twins, and White Sox — still ad-free when the calendar turned to 2025.
The last team to place a sleeve ad was the Chicago Cubs, and they unveiled their new advertiser on the first day of August in 2024. Since then, it’s been all quiet on the ad front. Until now.
As first reported by Forbes, the Nationals have been in talks to find a sleeve advertiser for the upcoming season, although no time line for when such an ad might appear has been set.
Not only are the Nationals seeking to find what many clubs call a “jersey sponsor” or “Official Jersey Patch Partner” or something equally noxious, they also have not sold naming rights to their ballpark. That is something else the team hopes to change going forward.
In fact, the Nationals are — at least for the time being — the only team to have neither a jersey advertiser nor a stadium naming rights deal. Forbes has estimated that each of these could bring in $20 million per year, and possibly more.
Ideally, the Nats would love to have an advertiser ready to go by mid-season.
“Summertime is when the Nats are top of mind for our fan base, and we think that’s the perfect time to make an announcement,” Nationals Chief Revenue Officer Mike Carney told Forbes. Once an advertiser is identified, jersey ads should immediately follow.
As far as finding a “partner” for a stadium naming rights deal, the Nationals have tried to do so previously. However, Carney noted, the “brands weren’t the right fit.” Whomever the club chooses “must demonstrate shared values,” for example, a commitment to the community and support for the military.
As mentioned above, both the naming rights deal and the sleeve advertiser would bring in a significant amount of revenue — while Carney did not indicate how that money might be used, he did intimate it could be used for player salaries. Forbes noted the Nationals have “ranked in the league’s bottom ten for the past couple of seasons” in terms of payroll.
The Nationals also got another boost of good news this past week, when a settlement between the Nationals and the Baltimore Orioles regarding regarding the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) was announced. MASN was created to appease then-Orioles owner Peter Angelos, who forfeited territorial rights to the D.C. area in exchange for control of the Nationals’ TV rights. MASN is owned and operated by the Orioles, and disputes between the clubs over rights fee payments started almost as soon as the arrangement was in place. As part of the settlement, the Orioles will pay several hundred million dollars to the Nationals, and the Nationals will be “free” to pursue their own TV rights deal beginning with the 2026 season.
Per MLB, MASN will air Washington’s games for the 2025 season under the terms of a new deal, but the Nats will be able to sell the rights after that.
In addition, the team unveiled plans in January to upgrade their ballpark and the surrounding area with funding from the D.C. Council.
But let’s get back to the uniforms for a minute. Of all the teams who already have jersey ads, the specific advertisers seem to run the gamut — some ads are for locally based corporations, which do indeed seem to make sense for both team and advertiser. Others seem random (like, had you ever heard of Starr Insurance before they began advertising on the pinstripes?). So who might “fit” with the Nationals?
If ever there was a potential advertiser that would be dead solid perfect for a team, the Nats have one teed up, should they so desire…
That’s right — how perfect would a Walgreens ad, whose logo is shown above, be for Washington? Of course, they’d have to use their script “W” (and not their symbol logo nor their script). But just the “W.”
That’s probably never going to happen, but that might be the one and only advertiser logo I could get behind on a baseball jersey.
(On another note, the history of the Walgreens logo, which has gone through many iterations over the years, is a fun read.)
But the Nats don’t have a sleeve advertiser yet, and it’s possible they won’t until mid-summer or maybe not even this season (though I wouldn’t bet against it). So as of now, we’re now down to seven ad-free teams (a number likely to lower as the season progresses): the A’s, Mariners, Nationals, Rays, Rockies, Twins, and White Sox. (The other 23 teams who’ve sold out their uniforms to advertisers, are the Padres, Red Sox, D-backs, Angels, Astros, Reds, Marlins, Mets, Cardinals, Tigers, Guardians, Yankees, Blue Jays, Brewers, Dodgers, Giants, Braves, Royals, Rangers, Orioles, Pirates, Phillies, and Cubs.)
The Nationals will be celebrating their 20th Anniversary in Washington this season (the former Montreal Expos were purchased by MLB and relocated to Washington for 2005). They’ve made some uniform news in the off-season, first announcing they will wear special cap patches this season. Earlier this year, the Nats introduced a new red jersey, and to make room for that, are ditching their pullover alternate jersey after only one season (it saw limited use in 2024, being worn only 11 times).
Obviously I’d love it if no MLB jerseys had ads (or any professional sports franchises for that matter), but this is one instance where I’d be ecstatic if the Nats and Walgreens could work something out. It’s a natural…
Your thoughts?
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I am happy that the Nats are getting their TV rights though it may be a Pyrrhic victory.
Even with the indeed very similar Walgreens W it is still another uniform that should not have an ad.
GTGFTS. A repeat from a short while ago. Game 3 of the 2005 World Series on October 25. The White Sox won 7-5 in 14 innings taking 5:41 to play. Geoff Blum hit the tie-breaking home run in the 14th; Mark Buehrle became the first player to start a Series game and save the following one since Bob Turley did it for the Yankees in the 1958 Series.
GTGFTU: August 30, 1975 preseason game Steelers at Giants at Princeton’s stadium. The Giants wore their 1974 uniforms for 5 of their 6 preseason games, but we’re transitioning to the Studio 54 look; in the first 3 preseason games they wore blank helmets with the new white/red/white stripes; this was their 4 preseason game and some players had the news NY logo on the helmets while others were still logoless. The next game all players had the new NY logo, and for the final preseason game they wore their full new road uniforms.
Nice write up John in KC, also the Steelers don’t wear front numbers on their helmets in the preseason
I’m not sure if it’s a genuine suggestion, but there is absolutely no way that Walgreens would ever do this, barring some one-off occasion. Less implausible, but still highly unlikely, would be a brand like DC Shoes.
No ad at all would be best.
Those patches are an atrocity.
Maybe 1-800-Contacts or Zenni Optical, since the placket already has two I’s. I’ll show myself out.
It is mind boggling that the penny pinching A’s and Rays are still ad free.
Who would pay to put an ad on the As jerseys now, when they’re essentially crashing on a friend’s couch for the next couple years?
apartments.com ?
I honestly can never discern between the Nationals W and the Walgreens W. And I made the mistake again reading this.
Two ‘friends with benefits’ stories related to this lede….
Flew into Orlando for Spring Training trip in 2015 wearing a Nationals polo (was going as a guest of the team). Rental car agent asked my friend and I what we did for Walgreens.
I was at that ‘05 Series game watching with Roger Clemens’ family in their suite. Took my father with us and he never stopped talking about that experience. It was the only Series game I’ve seen in person that didn’t involve the Orioles.
Mariners should get an ad patch for a cannabis shop.. .or Starbucks. They are both on every street corner in Seattle.
CVS enters the chat….
The matching “W” situation, reminds me of the Tacoma Rainiers whose “R” does match pretty closely to the Rainier Brewing Company “R”. Although that corporate synergy being quite intentional as Tacoma Iteration of the team harkens back to the Seattle Rainiers, an earlier minor league team, who were owned by the owner of the aforementioned brewing company.
I’m still incredibly surprised that the Trademark Commission approved the Nat’s version of the W with it being so close to Walgreen’s version.
I guess it wasn’t a concern in 1963 when the Senators adopted the first curly W cap.
Right? A couple of things. 1) The 2005 curly W was an exact reproduction of the 1963-1970 on-field curly W. The 1963-70 curly W contained several really poor rendering mistakes – curves and lines that don’t line up across gaps, uneven line thicknesses, weird bulges and angles – and the 2005 curly W contained all of those errors. The team updated the curly W in 2011 to fix all of those amateurish errors, but still hasn’t replaced the 2005 logo with the 2011 upgrade in all instances. Caps, for example, still mostly use the 2005 version of the curly W. Point being, the 2005 logo wasn’t inspired by or based on the 1963 logo; it _was_ the 1963 logo. When we see Cooperstown Collection merch using a curly W logo that doesn’t look like the 2005 curly W, we’re seeing a prime example of the poor quality and anachronism of Cooperstown Collection marks. 2) Trademarks aren’t about things looking like other things; they’re about protecting a company’s right to use a particular mark for particular purposes in particular markets so as to avoid customer confusion. There is vanishingly little potential marketplace confusion between a mark used by a drug store chain and a mark used by a professional baseball team, even in this era of pharmaceutical-influenced athletics.
No likelihood of confusion as to the source of the product. See also: Delta Airlines and Delta faucets.
GTGFTS— ‘05 World Series, game 3. First WS game in Texas and longest WS game in history at that time. Former and future Astro Geoff Blum (current broadcaster) hit game-winning HR in top of 14th.
Nats fan here, and honestly I don’t mind. The Nats have some of the only uniforms in baseball that can’t be made uglier with an ad patch. The road uniform in particular is already an F, and it’s not like a high F, almost a D-minus. This is like the kid didn’t turn in any of the homework and scored a 40% on the final F. It literally can’t get worse than it is. And given the type of companies that tend to want to advertise in DC, there’s a decent chance the new ad patch will at least be a little funny.
It would make just as much sense for Walgreens to advertise on the Nats’ uniform sleeves as it would have made for JetBlue to get the naming rights for the New Meadowlands Stadium. Which is, too much for it to actually happen.
The block Washington generic lettering. The old red script was a classic. Such a shame what a down grade.
Anyone catch how off the gridiron uniform ( yes, I know it’s unofficial) on the giants jerseys from pic above from 1975. In pic Giants have royal blue jerseys and socks, as opposed to a darker blue jersey in data base. The mismatched helmets are correct shade of blue.