When news of the NBA’s massive television deal broke last week, most of the reaction focused on the billions of dollars at play over new nine-year deal, and the repercussions of such astronomical figures. Now, we’re finding out some of the minutiae of the deal, and that includes something NBA fans have been waiting for with dreaded anticipation for awhile: ads on jerseys. Sports Business Journal reports that, as part of the new television deal, ESPN and TNT negotiated certain spending guarantees to place national brands on jerseys for games televised on either network.
Early parameters indicate a distinction between whether a national brand or a local/regional brand buys a team’s jersey sponsorship. A national brand with a popular team would mean more money for the networks than a local/regional brand with a team that’s not on national TV very often.
According to sources involved in the discussions, if there’s a national brand with a jersey deal that would have bought time on ESPN or TNT’s NBA game telecasts — think Coca-Cola or Samsung — the two networks would get specific commitments from that company to also buy TV advertising during any nationally televised games featuring that sponsored team.
The NBA first tossed around the idea of ads on jerseys — in the form of a 2.5″-by-2.5″ patch — in 2012, and moved the logo to the back of current jerseys in preparation for the change. The only reason ads haven’t been seen on jerseys yet is because an agreement couldn’t be reached on how to split the revenue. However, under the new deal, the NBA stopped short of allowing ESPN and Turner to sell jersey ads, instead granting such rights to individual teams:
Under the new TV deals, NBA teams maintain the rights to sell the jersey advertising, which has an estimated value ranging from around $800,000 for small-market teams like the Memphis Grizzlies to more than $10 million for large-market teams like the Los Angeles Lakers.
In addition, Turner, which re-upped its exclusive rights to the NBA All-Star Game, will be able to sell ad space on All-Star Game jerseys starting in 2017.
[SBJ]
