Steve Webb
LOS ANGELES, CA — Sam Bankman-Fried and his band of FTX slacker weirdos are in bankruptcy court today. The crypto-currency giant’s fall has been one of 2022’s biggest financial stories. And it is serves as a very teachable moment for all of MLB: Be very careful what sponsors you get involved with, lest you end up with some big time egg on your face.
Like most baseball fans who are not familiar with the ins and outs of crypto currency, I was curious when the FTX logo appeared on umpire uniforms midway through the 2021 season. The league had struck a deal for all umpire gear to be marked with the logo (one logo on the sleeve and another on the front of the shirt). The deal, the first of its kind, was thought to be in the neighborhood of $200 million. Let’s hope that FTX’s checks have already cleared, because it turns out FTX doesn’t have the money to pay its staff, much less its advertising budget.
And MLB was in bed with these creeps, financially anyway, for well over a year. Makes you wonder what kind of due diligence Rob Manfred and the gang are doing up there in the commissioner’s office. Manfred said it was a “pretty good bet” that MLB umpires will not sport FTX patches on their uniforms next year during a press conference last week. I should hope not.
However, this is not just a one and done sort of situation for the league. It’s already been announced that sponsor patches will start appearing on MLB jerseys next season. The initial size agreed upon will be 4-by-4-inch and can be placed on either the right or left sleeve of the on-field uniform. At a minimum, all sponsorship partners must remain consistent for at least a year. A single design that will be used for that season will be used – no alternate designs will be allowed.
In a key aspect to ensure that designs don’t get out of hand, the league and MLB Players Association must approve all the planned patches. To that end, certain categories in the sponsorship space will be off-limits. They include alcohol, betting, and media brands.
However, the FTX debacle is a warning shot for this enterprise. The more intertwined corporate America gets involved in baseball’s on-the-field product, the more players are going to be turned into walking billboards and not athletes. I know soccer does it and I know the NBA does it, and I know baseball is already doing it with that atrocious swoosh on every uniform. But the Dodgers had best step carefully in choosing its corporate partner.
The team has worked very hard to become one of the most respected names in all of sports. They had better be damn sure who they are doing business with before they let their names be associated with another brand in the marketplace.
Otherwise, they could get sucked into a lot of conversations that they’d rather not be a part of.
