Why don’t NFL teams have main shirt sponsorship?

🏈 Fortunately I was lucky enough to have a quiet Monday morning, this allowed me the luxury to be able to stay up till gone 4am to watch the Taylor Swift backed Kansas City Chiefs defeat the 49ers in overtime in the 58th Superbowl.

🎽 It struck me during the match - NFL must be one of the richest, most profitable sports in the world, but why don’t the teams have main shirt sponsors like you see in most other major sports, with European football the most obvious example of this with clubs like Man City earning over £60m per year from their deal with Etihad.

💰 Post match, I listened to a podcast from Freakonomics (who have some great podcasts if you’ve never heard of them), who discussed exactly this issue – the podcast was almost 14 years old and nothing has changed in the intervening period to capitalise on the potential lucrative deals – to give some context, sponsorship valuation platform Turnstile, estimated NFL shirt sponsorship could be worth almost $700m annually across the 32 teams.

🙋‍♂️ And whilst the NFL has allowed small sponsorship patches on training kits, there appears no rush to add to main shirts, and the 2 main reasons behind this may surprise you:

1️⃣ – Players earning potential. Concern that team shirt sponsorships could impact individual players own sponsorship deals and reduce their personal earning potential. The Swift’s current squeeze, Travis Kelce (who played pretty well in the Superbowl if you are wondering), has reportedly almost 30 different brand endorsement deals, from podcast deals to major sponsorships with Nike & Amazon – he, like many of his superstar playing colleagues are not short of a bob or two, so it's fascinating that the NFL prefers to protect players earning potential in this way

2️⃣ – Plain old tradition. As the discussions have continued across many seasons, the term that consistently comes up time and again is tradition. The NFL has in its’ traditions not sold the shirt space and it doesn’t look like it’s about to stop “protecting the shield”. The presentation of the product that is the NFL remains of paramount importance, which is very focused on the traditional look of the playing “uniform”. That and the fact that the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is diametrically opposed to it

🏆 So in a period where sports can generate obscene amounts of money, demand record revenues for TV rights and where the top players make eye watering salaries with personal deals – it’s perhaps refreshing, that the NFL (the biggest revenue creator in US sports) is prepared to leave “some money on the table” to ensure its players and its product are protected.

I think there is a lesson here for many businesses, don’t just monetise your assets at every turn because you can (did you see the Guinness 0% logo on the Six Nations ball?) – always consider the broader and deeper impacts on those elements of your business that make it so valuable in the first place.