Law & Order: FHF - Advertising on Uniforms

Hey look, it's a new summer filler series! Today we introduce L&O:FHF, wherein two FHF lawyerly types argue either side of an issue, and you get to be the jury. You will not be sequestered. Today, we take on the hot-button issue of advertising on jerseys and unis. Order in the court.

Pro - HF29
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, fuck yeah bring on the ads! This league needs money, pure and simple. The salary cap will go down soon, the TV revenue is a joke, and only at the Bell Centre can you charge $9.50 for a crappy Molson. Teams are going bankrupt. More teams will in the future. Lots of owners are in trouble. The NHL is a business, and it needs all the revenue it can get.

You may worry about the sanctity of the game or some other such bullshit. I remember when the boards were all white. I remember when the ice was all white. It doesn't mean anything now. Things move forward. Times change.

Sanctity and history of the uniforms? Please. The Barclay's Premier League has as much history as the NHL. Think they give a crap about a Fly Emirates or a (mmm) Carlsberg on their chest? Fuck and No. They just care that the additional revenue allows them to sign Christiano Ronaldo for ridiculous amounts of money.

It may be a cash grab, but it's a cash grab that benefits everyone. Bring it on.

Con - Panger

Say it with me: no more crass commercialism. I mean: no to ads on hockey jerseys. Here’s just a few reasons why.

They are ugly. Advertising patches not only clutter up a jersey and distract from the feature logo, they’re unsightly and quickly look dated. Major sponsors are likely to appear on multiple uniforms, so they’ll get tiresome. Maybe a select few advertisers could get creative and hit on something interesting, but that’s not a chance I’m willing to take based on experience. There are enough obvious marketing department blunders among past and existing shoulder patches, stripes (either too many or in the wrong places) and primary and alternative logos and jerseys. Just think of the inevitable Tim Horton’s ads. [Hey, I made it though this entire paragraph about ugly without any Nascar jokes... damn.]

It breaks with tradition. Hockey is pretty conservative and this is unnecessary change. Sure, most uniforms change from time to time. But even the latest league-wide move to the slimmed down jerseys didn’t result in any radical changes to the classic hockey jersey look North American fans are familiar and comfortable with. The teams that indulged in a complete redesign were basically the same teams (like Washington and L.A.) that overhaul every few years anyway. Maybe this argument isn’t as strong for a team like Vancouver that switch logos more frequently than backup goalies, but it means a whole lot to a team like the Habs whose basic look hasn’t been more than tweaked in 90 years.

It’s one of the few things the NHL has gotten right. While hockey jerseys generally are the coolest of all sports uniforms IMHO (well, besides women’s beach volleyball gear), European commercial-laden hockey jerseys look crass and generally pale in comparison to North American uni’s. And even Europeans know to keep ads off national team jerseys most of the time. Do North American hockey fans really desire to look like their finger-whistling, futbol-loving, and (ironically) socialism-enacting European brethren? I will now stop channelling Don Cherry and take a long shower.

Commemorative shoulder patches go far enough. Maybe the door to jersey advertising has been opened with commemorative patches, but there are important differences - except of course that all patches are dreadful looking, like the all star game badge which uglied-up the Habs’ jersey this year. At least commemorative patches are limited to one per jersey and they have to be ‘earned’ in some way, like by making the Cup finals, or because you’re celebrating a franchise milestone. These types of patches have some direct link to hockey and the team “privileged” to wear them. Commercialized patches seems like a whole different visual and ideological ball game.

It is of no benefit to the fans. Maybe we’ll all get used to them eventually, but there is certainly no grassroots groundswell of support for adding ads among fans. But let’s get to what this is really all about: money. Commercials were added beneath the ice and behind the bench, and I don‘t recall any teams slashing ticket prices as a result; there is no reason to think jersey ad revenues will do anything but line rich owners’ and, by extension, rich players’ pockets. It‘s just another method to gouge fans by creating an artificial need for the most updated version of fans’ favourite team jersey – home, away and alternate, if owners are trying at all. Owners know they’ll sell more replica jerseys at $100 a pop even if only one ad changes from year to year. This has precedent, as the four ‘Opel’ AC Milan jerseys now hanging as collectors’ items in my closest will attest to. (BTW - anyone know what a ‘Bwin’ is?)

In principle, it’s a blatant corporate sell out and that makes me sad. I realize it’s unrealistic to insist that discussing NHL hockey jerseys is anything other than a business conversation, but I would still prefer to think of the “CH” as a symbol of an athletic club, its city and fans. Ads intrude on that symbolism. Corporations already influence too much public space and increasingly crowd out every free inch of everything else. Enough with the ads already.

Lap dance to friend of FHF GoldenGirl11 for the awesome Photoshop