The Cleveland Cavaliers jerseys will be receiving some tweaking next year, specifically in the form of a new corporate sponsor’s patch.
According to Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg Technology, the Cavaliers will be wearing the Logo of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. The Akron based company continues to follow the trend of NBA teams picking sponsors with close geographic ties to the cities.
Thus far, four teams have announced that they will be pairing with corporate sponsors for the 2017-2018 season, as a part of a three year deal to test the waters on jersey advertisement.
Philadelphia, Sacramento, Boston, and Brooklyn have announced partnerships, with Boston showing uniform mockups. Responses to the move have been mixed, though the Boston jersey mockups seemed to focus on keeping the branding less intrusive than counterparts in sports, such as soccer.
The deal is still unannounced, thus making details about the deal itself slim, however, based on the previously announced deals, Goodyear likely paid somewhere between $5 and $10 million according to those familiar with the previous deals. Likely this number is closer to $10 million due to Cleveland’s high number of nationally televised games, giving them a wide viewer base outside of their home territory that few teams (Golden State, Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics to name a few) can offer.
Spokesmen from both Goodyear and the Cavs declined to comment on the deal. There are no details as to if the advertisements will be exclusively on players jerseys, or if these ads will be on the fan jerseys as well.
Additionally there are no details as to how these deals will affect either the revenue sharing programs of the NBA, notably how these deals might increase the NBA salary cap similarly to how the NBA’s new TV deal has already affected the deal.
There is no timetable for an announcement, though with a leak coming out likely the announcement should be made by the end of the week.