2019 MLS Kit Thread
- Thread starter ferrarinycfc
- Start date
Gotta applaud the honesty.
Nah they would get exactly the same treatment as every other team in this hypothetical scenario. However their kits would be fire, unique, and probably come with long sleeves.
ETA I don't even traffic in the Atlanta hate / preferential treatment stuff too much but if we're gonna have a pop we may as well be real.
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Can’t stand that dude. But he has a point. Seems like Adidas doesn’t give 2 shits about MLS. I hope the league realizes this when their contract is up.
Lack of competition leads to dreary, lazy, terrible production and designs. Let New Balance, Umbro, and/or Under Armour (hell, maybe even Nike) have a hand in replacing this current adidas boondoggle.
i dont think they added the star on replicas since Seattle won the cup i think, so thats now "new" i think.
Without exclusivity it will be harder to get a new sponsor for Generation Adidas.
After the 2024 season.
Now I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. But college tuition for 5-7 players a year, I think MLS can figure out how to replace that.
disgusting
That puts a whole new light into the kit design process
I'm being serious. And I think you have it backwards. GA subsidizes the entire salary not college tuition. GA players have to drop out of college. They only set aside money for scholarships for players who sign GA contracts and whose careers don't pan out.
But still, I agree it's not a huge amount of cash. But the point stands that the program has only has apparel companies as a sponsor (Nike, then Adidas). And if you take away exclusivity it makes it less likely someone wants to step up. It's not a particularly high profile sponsorship, and is most likely a cheap add-on to the overall contract between Adidas and MLS. That doesn't mean you can't switch when this contract ends, and go for shorter contracts as you suggested. Also doesn't mean you can't possibly go to a team by team market for jerseys. But it adds a hurdle among several that already exist, which I expect include:
- most clubs think the marginal benefits for a "better" design are small; in part because
- there is no fan consensus except that most fans hate their current option; fans whose teams have Nike jerseys bitch about them, as do fans whose teams wear Puma, and New Balance, and Umbro, and UA; so why should a team do anything but pick the highest bidder?
- a substantial number of MLS teams probably do better with their proportional share of a league contract than they could get on their own; and
- Adidas probably pays more for its full league sponsorship -- not just jerseys, but GA, and all the in-stadium signs, etc -- than the separate teams could get from assorted jersey sponsors cobbled together plus one of them becoming a less engaged league sponsor who would not have exclusivity.
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Interesting. Still not sure I buy that adidas didn’t have time for a more custom kit considering when FCC was announced - NYCFC got a custom secondary that first year that wasn’t used anywhere else.
Also strange to think the bigger / important a club/league is, the less chance of being fully custom- which is the opposite of what I’d expect since sales for those entities could/will go through the roof compared to a small potato club.
MLS has got to figure out a formula to bring in more kit suppliers. Something like allowing a club to bow out and sign their own deal provided they pay an exit fee to MLS for not being part of the MLS sanctioned supplier (because Adidas definitely places more value on ATL sales than RSL so losing ATL would hurt the contract terms), but allowing the club to keep more of the proceeds/sponsorship as reward for taking the risk.
I'm just doing the math here. There's currently 24 teams. The league could be at 28 in the next couple years (for sure 27). $700mm / 10 years = $70mm p/a. $70mm / 28 = $2.5mm per team. I think that's not a crazy number to average (No team will get Puma for $50mm a season like Man City, but $5mm for LAFC, LAG, NYC, ATL, MIA, SEA? Why not?).
Maybe this is where single entity comes into play. Every team that earns more than $2.5mm from their kit sponsor pays a tax on the excess to the other teams below the $2.5mm to make them whole and reach the $2.5mm floor. This may actually be a case of the parts being worth more than the whole.
Are you sure about the scholarships? I thought that any GA has a pool of money sitting there for them to go back and get their degree at any future date - that was the model when Nike had the P-40 project going.
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