A bit of disappointing news came down from Seattle, where the Mariners will begin the 2025 season with a new ad patch.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ad is for a video game console maker, one that has been located in Seattle since 1981.
The advertiser is, of course, Nintendo. And it was Nintendo who announced the patch via hype video:
Play ball ⚾
We’re thrilled to share we’re expanding our long-standing relationship with the @Mariners and will be featured on their jersey sleeve this season!
See it for the first time on Opening Day, March 27th! pic.twitter.com/Lig4Aw4bmf
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) March 20, 2025
The ad will make its first appearance on the Mariners uniforms on opening day, March 27th, when the Mariners take on the Athletics.
The ad will be as obtrusive as possible — a large red rectangle color block, with the Nintendo logo rendered in white.
Here’s a closeup, as if you need it…
UPDATE: The Mariners will apparently sport a different, even more obnoxious square ad for one of their advertiser’s new products, on their Northwest Green jerseys:
We’re slowly — but surely — approaching the point where every MLB team will have a sleeve ad. The Washington Nationals expect to have a jersey advertiser sometime this season, and the Athletics — playing in Sacramento for the next few seasons — recently announced they will have a Las Vegas advertisement this season.
So when the two teams meet on opening day, both will be wearing jerseys with ads for the first time. This is not a “record” I want to check, but it’s probably the first time two teams will debut uniforms with sleeve ads against one another.
Sigh.
So as of now, we’re now down to five ad-free teams (a number likely to lower as the season progresses): the Nationals, Rays, Rockies, Twins, and White Sox. (The other 24 teams who’ve sold out their uniforms to advertisers, aside from the Mariners, 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, Cubs, and Athletics.)
Check out their *different* ad patch on their teal jersey, specifically for the Switch 2. One of the biggest, worst ad patches North American sports have ever attempted. Fan uproar is already at a fever pitch about it, it HAS to change before Opening Day.
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Thanks, Bud — was just about to add to this article (which I have now updated) with the Northwest Green tops.
I think the teal and red work really well together, plus it’s nice that they actually used a fair bit of the space rather than a tiny logo on a large background
“I think the teal and red work really well together”
On what planet?
Earth :3
I think this is the 2nd time in as many days where you’ve been the only one with a specific opinion haha
I’m not surprised, I’m sure that I’m younger and my aesthetic and tastes are different from most of the others here. I very much like to live in the now and not be tied to tradition while also seeing how things like ads work with everything else since I don’t necessarily view ads as bad (although not good either, it all depends).
“I don’t necessarily view ads as bad (although not good either, it all depends).”
I’m just curious in what context you could consider an MLB sleeve ad as anything other than terrible.
This one for example. I like Nintendo, I like how the red goes with the teal. I would get this jersey lol. But as a counterexample while the green monster was once covered in ads, I would prefer if it didn’t have them now.
I also think the ADT one for the marlins is mostly okay and Motorola for the Padres looks good. I don’t like the Angels one. I don’t think FBM has a good logo and it just doesn’t work as a patch. Also I find the A’s dueling Sacramento and Vegas patches to be really funny so I’m all for those lol
Well as long as you’re sure that you’re younger lol
You’re the Stephen A. Smith of the UW comments—just brutal take after brutal take after brutal take.
It *has* to be a bit.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised if people are sometimes pedantic on a website dedicated to uniform pedantry…
Dunno, I think it’s OK for people to have differing opinions, and not just parrot the feelings of the website editors.
If 125 years of Major League Baseball have proved anything it’s that nothing (aside from “Don’t bet on major league baseball while being paid by a team.”) is truly sacrosanct. Ads have always been a part of the game. On the stadium walls, on the programs, during broadcasts. This is just another step in advertising related to the game.
It may have made sense not to have advertising on the uniforms in an era when total payroll might have been $500,000. But now, if you can get $1.5M for placing a 2 inch patch on a sleeve, it just makes good business sense. That’s two bench players at the MLB minimum.
Genuinely awful. There is nothing more to be said.
No Phil, you do not need to provide a close-up of the patch. By golly, even Ray Charles can see that Mariners patch. And he’s dead!
Good one!
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The Switch 2 one is awful, and the normal one is bad enough, but as far as these partnerships go, Seattle + Nintendo is about as good as it gets. I’m sure it has to do with efficiency/cost, but the Nintendo badge would look so much better if it was just the oblong shape.
Awful, but I’m old. I really do not like it, but kids will like it and not be offended. If baseball is to continue after I am gone, This will be the way.
This isn’t disappointing, this is awesome, their jerseys just got better
Make it a Luigi patch and I’m in
I dunno. It’d be pretty controversial after he gunned down that healthcare executive.
Mariners fans knew this day was coming. But this…this is horrible. Reading through the socials, the outrage from Mariner fans is real. Nintendo does make sense if we must have one, but nobody expected to be as bad as that teal one.
Jersey patches are the new norm, but these advertisers take no creative effort to make these things seem “normal”. If you recall, the Mets introduced their advert patch and it was met (no pun intended) with backlash and they quickly pivoted to make it seem more integrated with the team color way. I concur with Charlie’s comment and the oblong logo could have been sufficient.
This is great! Loving it! It’s highly visible, and it’s garnering attention!
More ads = more visibility = more of the same articles featuring these ads over and over!
Thank you Nintendo, the Mariners, and the awesome marketing team behind this!!
No one ever acknowledges the real hard work behind the scenes to make this happen!
Is Uni-Watch getting botted?
Sarcasta-bot
It’s not sarcasm.
I do enjoy the seeing the ads and lack of purity in these items that are supposed to be somehow sacred.
The game of baseball has evolved (not in a way that I personally enjoy it, I stick to the smaller, independent leagues that ironically do not have ad patches) and the yearning for nostalgia espoused on this site as well as the cut / paste like articles regarding ads on professional unifroms tends to wear one down.
There’s more to this topic and industry than repeating the same old topic.
*And I meant it, applaud the people behind the scenes who make this happen.
They are hard working, goal oriented people who male things happen in theor respective fields.
Is this the first MLB patch for a specific product, and not for a corporate sponsor?
I mean, the patch of the GIANT FREAKING SACK OF CONCRETE on Atlanta’s shirts is basically a patch for the company and its product…
And yes, I will never not yell that out.
I wouldn’t say the Mariners unis would look better if the company was still using the red-on-white version as their primary, or even going with the corporate gray-on-white version – it would maybe just look less awful – but this white-on-red (which is the company’s preferred iteration of the logo currently) makes for a very ugly patch. It’ll stand out badly as a big red block at any distance, much like the big lime green square of an ad patch for that Toronto-based bank that especially stands out horribly on the Vancouver Canucks’ black third jerseys, but still looks bad on the Canucks’ regular jerseys due to the bright green clashing with their regular green.
No, the Cubs and Padres have Motorola and the Giants have Chevrolet plus then I guess it depends how you count things like ADT (marlins)
I believe what they are referring to is the “second” patch which is specifically advertising the Switch 2.
Nintendo being the brand, and the Switch 2 being a specific product (forthcoming video game system).
To use the other sponsor examples you gave, equivalent would be Motorola and the Razr, or Chevrolet and the Silverado.
To the original question’s end… I think so? Looking at existing sponsorships, some are “product” (ie: Quikrete) but they’re also effectively representative of the entire brand, as well. Switch 2 may be the first specific product advertised on an MLB patch.
Ugh. So loud and tacky. Yeah, I know, that’s the point.
Almost makes sense; unless I’m mistaken, Nintendo (or one of the higher-level executives) was an investor in the Mariners during the early years of the franchise.
Yes, Nintendo invested heavily in the Mariners in 1992 and probably saved them from relocating. They maintained an ownership stake until 2016.
Couldn’t they just do the “Nintendo” text in red with no background? I feel like all these ads in MLB are always rectangular splotches. Soccer has huge ads, but at least they are usually on the jersey color background
As I noted above, that would make some sense, and would look less bad, but it’s not the style they’re currently using – the white-on-red is.
And yeah, it would be… slightly less offensive… if more companies would allow the teams to harmonize the designs of the patches with their uniform colors.
When the dbacks revealed there’s it had a giant ugly black square around the A for Avnet. Luckily the actually unis didn’t have the black square anymore, maybe some hope for these red squares to go away
This ad will sell more jerseys with it than without.
1st off, the teal is green and not blue.
2nd – I do find it kind of funny that Microsoft and Sony will have to render an ad for their competitor when they add the patch to their versions of MLB The Show.
Garrish, inelegant…almost a parody of uni-ads.
Hate it, but its not like its marring a great uniform…the Mariners have a truly “meh” set.
Overdue for a new design (preferably an old Steelheads nod).
As a Mariners fan, this is hard. The patches are gross and obnoxious-looking.
I don’t mind sleeve ads as long as they somewhat match color, design, or the aesthetic of the team – dbacks, yankees, A’s, come to mind as fine. But man this and the Royals are such eye sores. Giant red blocks ew.
The Blue Jays giant green block too
That’s hideous. Would it kill these advertisers to go with a color that matches the uniform?
I’d be more inclined to check out their product that completely avoid it as I do now.
The Reds have a big blue Kroger patch? Make any sense?
If this is their way of getting the younger audience to pay attention to baseball then it’s a great first step. As it is, it’s just another ad where an ad shouldn’t be.
On the bright side, I feel like Nintendo as a company is probably one of the better options for a sponsorship. I’d even venture to guess that there will be people who buy jerseys *because* there is now a Nintendo patch.
Other would-be ad partners with strong Seattle ties: Alaska Airlines, Amazon, Boeing, Costco, Microsoft, Starbucks
A couple of these logos have colors that probably would’ve been more aesthetically pleasing than a massive red patch on uniform that otherwise contains zero red… but, I don’t think aesthetics are at forefront of these decisions, unfortunately.
As the preeminent site on uniform updates every time I see an article dedicated to a specific uniform ad, as a former Strategy Analyst at Ford, I think THAT’S why they did it! There’s a specific algorithmic thought process to advertising, “Can I get more clicks from this advertisement than it costs?”
Right now I know Uni-Watch will dedicate a specific article that will show up in the algorithms of my target market.
Every one of these articles ironically makes ad patches more valuable.
Unless we want our Big 4 to look like soccer, these posts need to stop being made
My problem with ads on unforms is more about a reflection of society. Tradition doesn’t matter anymore. Pleasing esthetics doesn’t matter anymore…. money, money is all that matters. It’s just tiring and disgusting, in my honest opinion. We get it. Companies sell stuff. Can we leave the constant reminders OFF sports unforms, too? Ads on unforms shouldn’t be accepted at the highest level of professional sports. It’s tacky, and it makes the leagues look less professional. Did they run out of room on the walls in baseball already? Why are we doing ads on baseball unforms when the baseline walls have no ads yet?
Where does it end? Painted ads on players eventually? Will all professional sports unforms in America look like European minor league hockey teams in the future? If things are getting so crazy expensive that even our professional sports teams need to sell out on tradition to bring in money… we have a huge issue in the country. If it’s just good old fashioned greed leading us to sully tradition in sports uniforms. Well, that actually tracks because our species kind of sucks.
Those are harsh to look at.
A website riddled with ads complaining about a uniform patch ad. The hypocrisy is astounding.
This guy really, “Get’s it.”
Ad free if you get a subscription.
Irony: see irony.
Call me back when the mariners have switched permanently to Royal blue and gold and gotten away from the teal in dark blue.
With the exception of the Braves’ dog-awful QUIKRETE ad patch this may just be the lowest of the low from this asinine garbage.