Many longtime baseball fans are not going to like this, but it sounds like advertising logos are soon coming to baseball uniforms.
According to Sports Business Daily, "a handful of MLB teams have already reached out to marketing agencies for evaluations and pricing estimates."
The NBA added advertisement patches to their jerseys before the 2017-18 season, and according to SBD they generate an average of $7 million per year, per team. That's a lot of money and big businesses rarely turn down easy, new ways to make money.
This would not happen until the 2022 next season, the first year under the next, yet-to-be-negotiated Collective Bargaining Agreement. There are many issues to work through, including who sees what percentage of the newfound money.
"I'd say it's inevitable down the road, but certainly not immediate," MLB executive VP of business and sales told reporters at the All-Star break.
If baseball wanted to do this in the least invasive way, they could just add a patch to a uniform sleeve, perhaps in the same place where teams honor recently deceased key members of the organization.
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