Manchester United’s back-of-shirt sponsor points to future of sports jersey placements

Sponsor logos have been an established feature of European soccer kits for 50 years, with shirt sleeve sponsors showing up more recently. Ampere Analysis data showed that front and sleeve shirt sponsorships generated $631.2 million for the 20 teams in the 2023-24 English top flight, an average of $16.1 million each.

Snapdragon’s deal with Manchester United — an initial three year partnership, now extended to five — will run to $375 million, according to The Athletic. Manchester United and Snapdragon declined to comment at time of publication.

Sponsors’ spread to the back of the jersey is an indicator of the value of even a few square inches of sporting real estate, both to clubs in need of constant revenue injections and to advertisers operating amid a fractured and fragmented media landscape.

“The jersey is, pardon the pun, the common thread,” said Chris Ross, vp and analyst at Gartner for Marketers. “If I’ve got my name on the jersey, it doesn’t actually matter who has the broadcast rights. It’s pretty powerful.”

Dipanjan Chatterjee, vp and principal analyst, Forrester, explained that shirt sponsorships offer advertisers the chance to create brand exposure via a team’s presence in digital and social channels, as well as through broadcast and streaming coverage.

“A jersey sponsorship is unique in that it is a hardworking investment that can pay off across multiple formats and channels,” he said.

Progress in patches

While sport sponsors have been a feature of European soccer for decades (German digestif brand Jägermeister was the practice’s unlikely pioneer), American sporting clubs and franchises have been more reluctant to take brands on to the court or pitch with them.

In recent years, that reluctance has begun to thaw. The NBA has allowed teams to bear sponsor patches on basketball jerseys since 2018, and the MLB began allowing the same in 2023.

Live sports are already regarded by many marketers as one of the last means of reaching of mass audiences. With coverage of some leagues — such as the NBA — stretched across several broadcasters and streamers, the ability to accompany a team wherever it goes becomes even more valuable.

“It’s the one partnership asset that travels with the team and is not limited to in-venue exposure,” Andrew Lafiosca, managing director for Nielsen Sports in the U.S. and Canada told Digiday in an email. “These types of partnerships are activated across all consumer touch points and present a unique opportunity for a brand to drive awareness.”

According to Ampere, the 14 MLB teams that scored a jersey patch sponsorship deal in 2023 brought in an average of $9.96 million per season per deal, $139.5 million collectively.

The jersey patches so far used in the NBA and MLB take up less cloth than those seen in soccer. But, given the larger size of the U.S. advertising industry compared to the U.K., analysts expect sponsorship opportunities to expand.

‘Just a conduit’

One brake on that growth could be franchise owners and teams’ “reticence” to exchange too much of their own brand equity and fan goodwill for advertising cash, said Ross. 

“A lot of teams, they’re trying to figure out what’s the sweet spot where we can maximize the real estate that we have, maximize the value and opportunity that we can create, and make sure that we don’t water down or dilute the impact of our own team brand.”

Finding a team partnership that lines up the perceived values of a given club with that of an advertiser can help to defuse some of that tension. Chatterjee pointed to the example of airline Emirates, which sponsors Arsenal.

“Emirates sees a commonality between its premium experience and Arsenal’s rich history and tradition, and the club’s London base positions Emirates well in that global travel hub,” he said.

Treating the jersey placement as more than a logo add-on could help, too. 

“A jersey partnership is just a conduit to the bigger opportunity,” said Lafiosca. “In order to be effective, all sponsorship investments must have a clear activation strategy that is designed to enable brands to meet their primary objectives.”

For Snapdragon, that means embedding an AR experience into the shirt design, accessible to fans that scan a QR code and the Snapdragon logo on the shirt. It’s using the back of the shirt, meanwhile, to spotlight Microsoft CoPilot+ PCs, a hardware product that uses Snapdragon software.

Ross expects the NFL to catch up with the NBA and MLB in time. He said: “The NFL isn’t any more precious than any other sports league. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get on that bandwagon pretty quickly. It’s a missed opportunity, frankly.

“If you’re a franchise owner, there’s money to be had there.”