Sponsorship

[worker201]

I can't believe this has never been reported here.

Check out this shirt:
http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/sounders/2008/11/14/the_official_unveiling_of_the.html

You can see the X-Box 360 Live log pretty clearly.  The Microsoft logo is in the lower right.  The Adidas logo is also pretty clear.  What you can't see in this photo is the name of the team.  This shirt is the official uniform for the Seattle Sounders pro soccer team.

These can be seen all over town on gamedays.  I thought that it was like a project shirt for Microsoft employees.  It took a few months to realize that it was a sports uniform.

[Lead Head]

Just shows what people/companies/organizations will do when desperate for cash.

[Refalm]

I see this in a different light. It's common that football teams get sponsorship from large companies in their home town.
Take PSV for example. They get their shirts sponsored by multinational Philips.

What's sad about this story, is that Sounders FC gets an ugly Xbox 360 shirt. Instead of the Microsoft logo, and a better designed shirt by Adidas.
You don't see PSV running around in "Cinema 21:9" shirts. That would be a great insult to the club, since it would make them look not important enough to their main shirt sponsor.

[worker201]

The real humor is that there are thousands of people in Seattle who wear these shirts that don't own X-box 360s.  (Actually, it's much more likely that they own a Wii)  And most of the people who actually have X-box 360s and play them all the time, don't wear these shirts.  Ironic.

[_ZeroBeta]

What else would these companies resort to when they're desperate for extra money? You see this quite a lot in football and a number of other sports - I could list examples of sponsors, clubs and teams all day. To name one example, my country's Ashes cricket tournament is sponsored by NPower, a gas and electricity company. Their logo is normally splayed across the centre of the grounds.

[worker201]

The main reason this was so interesting to me is that most American sports teams are very well branded.  You might occasionally see a Nike swoosh on the corner of someone's jersey, but otherwise, the uniform is dominated by the team's logo and colors.  And usually, the team logos are million dollar professional designs.  The NBA, MLB, NFL, and NHL are pretty much identical in their acceptance of standard branding practices.  But the MLS, for some reason, has gone totally corporate.  Maybe it's because the MLS is relatively young, compared to the other sports orgs.

[Refalm]

Maybe it's because the MLS is relatively young, compared to the other sports orgs.

.
Or because those things are normal to football clubs.

The name of the best football club in the world is called "NEC Nijmegen", not "Curaçao", which is their main sponsor.