Heart, Meet Sleeve

There is a great article about advertising in soccer jerseys in the August 2005 issue of FourFourTwo magazine. There is hardly a soccer club, at any level, that wouldn't sport its sponsor's logo on the chest of the jersey. And no wonder. According to FourFourTwo, Samsung pays London-based Chelsea 50 million pounds (90 million dollars) to have the reigning Premiership champions wear their logo the next four years. Deutsche Telekom coughs up 24 million dollars a year to Bayern Munchen, the German champion.

In the NHL, the teams don't have any advertising on their sweaters and it wasn't until 1980 that the rink boards got covered with advertising. The ice got its share in the 1990s and soon, it will move to the sweaters, it's inevitable. But what about the NBA, the NFL and MLB? Fellow blogger, Mark Cuban, is already advocating that development.

It's easy to understand the sports clubs. Money's easy, and there's a lot of it. Even Barcelona, now famous for NOT having advertising on the jersey, is considering giving in. Chinese government has offered the club 100 million pounds (180 million dollars) to promote the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Sure, why not?

Why not? Well, consider this:

Doctor Simon Chadwick, a lecturer in sports business in Birkbeck College, London, is perhaps the world's leading academic authority on football sponsorship, and even he doesn't have the answers. "It's difficult to know what football shirt sponsorship does," he concedes. "People say that it can improve sales, but it's difficult to prove that. It's good for raising brand awareness, and enhancing brand recall ... But what's the use of brand recall when you haven't got a clue as to what the company does?"

Now, do the Olympics need to raise the brand awareness?