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Every season is basketball season. Truly. The WNBA season ended Oct. 18, when the Las Vegas Aces defeated the New York Liberty in Game 4 of the finals, and this week, the NBA season tipped off.
It’s the league’s seventh season with jersey sponsors, a practice that, until recently, was fairly uncommon in the US. The NBA was the first of the Big Four to give brands space on its jerseys, and while the NHL and MLB have followed suit, the NFL still doesn’t allow these types of deals.
The price tags can be high—some as much as stadium naming rights—but the NBA has locked in a handful of new jersey sponsors for this season.
Welcome to New York: Sphere—Las Vegas’s new spherical entertainment venue—is coming to New York…sort of. Madison Square Garden Sports Group, which owns the Knicks and the Rangers, announced Tuesday that Sphere Entertainment will be the official jersey-patch sponsor of the Knicks this season.
- As part of the deal, the Sphere logo will be featured on the Knicks’ game jerseys, practice jerseys, warm-up shirts, and jerseys sold to the public.
- The Knicks were among only four NBA teams that didn’t have a patch sponsor last season after partnering with Squarespace for five seasons prior, per CNBC.
- Terms of the deal weren’t made public, but Sports Business Journal reported earlier this year that the Knicks were looking for $30 million a year.
- James Dolan owns both MSG Sports Group and Sphere.
Feeling the heat: Something similar played out earlier this month when the Miami Heat announced Carnival Cruise Line as its jersey sponsor for the season. Micky Arison owns the team and is chairman of Carnival Corporation.
It’s common for companies to sponsor teams close to where they’re headquartered:
- Golden State Warriors sponsor Rakuten has its US HQ in the Bay Area.
- Red Sox jersey sponsor MassMutual is based in Springfield, MA.
- The Heat’s stadium naming rights owner, Kaseya, is headquartered in Miami.
The champs: This week, cash-back company Ibotta said it snagged a patch partnership with 2023 NBA champs the Denver Nuggets for the next three seasons. Ibotta was founded and is headquartered in Denver.
- The partnership was hinted at during the preseason when the Nuggets repped Ibotta’s gold coins on jerseys and they appeared on digital displays in the team’s arena.
- Now, Ibotta’s logo will be on the Nuggets’ game and practice jerseys.
- The deal also comes with other marketing activations, like in-arena signs and social assets.
+1: The Utah Jazz announced its 2023-24 jersey sponsor, Utah-based LiveView Technologies, last month. In early October, the Charlotte Hornets introduced an unusual jersey sponsor for the season: Feastables, YouTuber MrBeast’s snack brand, the first creator-led company to partner with an NBA franchise in this capacity.
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