Get ready to see sponsors' logos on NBA jerseys.
They're most likely coming in the next five years, commissioner Adam Silver told an audience at the IMG World Congress of Sports on Wednesday.
"It just creates that much more of an opportunity for our marketing partners to get that much closer to our fans and to our players," Silver said at the conference, put on by the Sports Business Daily/Journal. "It gives us an opportunity just to have deeper integration when it comes to those forms of sponsorship."
In 2011, as deputy commissioner, it was Silver who said putting logos on jerseys would be worth about $100 million a year to the league. But Silver told ESPN.com last month that the discussion over the logo patches on jerseys had slowed in recent years because it was unclear how advertising on jerseys might compromise the advertising being sold by the league's national television partners, Turner and ESPN.
"We know what the value is to advertisers in a world of 1,000-plus channels to be able to show fans in-game branding," Silver said last month.
Perhaps no North American sports league has gone more all-in on jersey advertising than the WNBA. The sponsors' logos are so big on many teams' jerseys that they dwarf the teams' actual logos.
The current idea for the NBA is to allow a single patch for each team. Each sponsor patch would be 2½ inches by 2½ inches.
