ST. LOUIS — The San Diego Padres on Tuesday became the first Major League Baseball club to announce a jersey sponsor, and its deal offers similarities to the type of agreement the St. Louis Cardinals said they hope to ink.
In 2023, each MLB team is allowed to have a brand put their logo on a 4-by-4-inch patch that will appear on the sleeve of on-field player jerseys. The sponsorship opportunity, which is expected to drive millions in annual revenue for local teams, stems from MLB’s new collective bargaining agreement inked last month. The Padres on Tuesday became the first MLB team to name its patch sponsor, reaching a deal with Chicago-based electronics company Motorola, the Associated Press reported. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The jersey patch deal closed by the Padres could be similar to the type of deal the Cardinals want to secure with their jersey sponsor, based on comments made earlier this month by Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III. As with the Padres decision to put Motorola on their jersey sleeve, the Cardinals could also seek out a long-standing, well-established brand for a multiyear deal.
“In some ways, it’s kind of like a stadium naming rights sponsorship agreement where you really want a good partner who you feel like will be in it for the long haul with you,” DeWitt previously told the Business Journal. “The idea of changing it every year to the latest or hottest widget that is being sold isn’t that attractive to me. I think somebody that really identifies with our brand and connects with it and is around for, like I said, a long period of time, that’s the kind of partner we’d be looking to match up with."
Read the full story on the St. Louis Business Journal website.
