Report: Mass Mutual has signed a 10-year/$17M a year jersey patch sponsorship

[InstaFace]

IDK what to tell you. For quite a long time, but accelerating during the Manfred administration, MLB and its owners have done everything in their power to extract every penny that they can from the game. In rare occasions (like expanded playoffs) it's helped the game, but in a majority of cases, it's actively hurt the game (contracting the minor leagues, getting rid of the last ten [or so] rounds of the draft, limiting the amount of call-ups in September). It seems that whenever they make a decision on "improving the game" they look at the bottom line first and ignore the ripple effect that comes with a move.

Nike wanted to put their swoosh on the sleeves of the uniform like they do for the NFL, MLB said that for an extra couple of million they'll put it on the chest.
FTX wants to advertise on umpire uniforms? Go for it. Who cares if it's basically a Ponzi scheme that's going to crater less than a year after they enter into this agreement.

Letting advertisers dictate where they can put their ads is just another example of the tail wagging the dog.

I'm glad that it doesn't bother you, quite truthfully, I'll get used to this (just like I said in my first post) but what caused my reaction is just how blatant and unabashed they are about shoving it in our faces. Next time you watch a game, check out how many different ads there are behind home plate, on the mound, on the umpire's uniform, on the score bug and now two more on the uniforms. It's an assault. How much is too much?

Yeah the notes about the minor leagues are a fair point about taking a short-term-financial view rather than an overall-health-of-the-game perspective. I generally prefer businesses to be long-term greedy rather than short-term greedy (because ones who are neither are not around for very long), and Manfred has occasionally shown inclination to do so (see e.g. the labor deal).

I guess the first things I think about when considering deals like this are:

(1) What are the historical perspectives? I think about how much more-intrusive the billboard and signage advertising used to be in ballparks, and how much more small-bore. With outdoor / highway billboards, it got to be too much for people in the 1960s and Lady Bird Johnson campaigned to limit it and there was just a general cultural receding of outdoor advertising after that. I think there is such a thing as people recognizing what is too much, when advertising is over-saturated and is past the point of diminishing returns.

(2) What do I actually care about, and does this impact it? What I care about are the players playing the game, and having it be an entertaining game. The forthcoming rule changes under Manfred, and even the ones preceding that for stuff like "no more takeout slides, but also no more neighborhood play on double plays", have given him a lot of credibility in my eyes to tinker with things and improve them rather than fucking them up. Bud Selig largely could've fucked up a lemonade stand. So, do uniform patches impact how the players play? Not to my understanding. Do they impact the visual attractiveness of the game? Does it change anything about it as an entertainment product? Not that I can see. I don't care if Xander just slid into Second Base Sponsored By Fidelity, let the announcers say whatever they need to say.

So by those standards, the fact that it was FTX advertising on umpire sleeves and not, I dunno, AT&T, was of no concern to me. It didn't draw my eye, because it's not what I look at. I guess if it does draw the eye of others (which, ya know, advertising is supposed to do!), that would be useful information. But I just assume that most of us filter it out like so many spam phone calls.

 

[GreenMonster49]

Then trade the Jimmy Fund sign on the wall (or wherever) for the uniform patch. MassMutual on the wall is far less offensive than on the uniform sleeve.

They are also putting their homage to graphic design by committee on top of the center field scoreboard (Globe, 30 November 2022: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/11/30/sports/massmutual-will-be-first-sponsor-have-logo-red-sox-uniforms/)

In addition, an 80-foot version of the company’s block-letter logo will replace the cursive “John Hancock” sign that has sat atop Fenway Park’s center-field scoreboard the last 30 years, with smaller signage appearing elsewhere in the ballpark and on other Red Sox digital properties. John Hancock opted out of its 30-year partnership with the Red Sox this past summer.

 

[Senator Donut]

Yeah the notes about the minor leagues are a fair point about taking a short-term-financial view rather than an overall-health-of-the-game perspective. I generally prefer businesses to be long-term greedy rather than short-term greedy (because ones who are neither are not around for very long), and Manfred has occasionally shown inclination to do so (see e.g. the labor deal).

That’s what bugs me about this deal; it seems like the Sox and MLB decided to take the money and figure out the consequences later. The NBA extended an olive branch to fans when it eliminated a television timeout from the 2nd and 4th quarters. However, the tradeoff to that has been ads behind the baseline, in front of benches, on uniforms, and 15-second spots during some free throws. Overall, I’m happy with the trade-off and I think the product is a lot better with less dead time, and it makes the proliferation of ads tolerable because I know I’m benefiting from it elsewhere.

Conversely, MLB has plastered ads on the mound, on jerseys, and on umpires. Still most fans agree the game is slower and less interesting than it has ever been in their lifetimes. It has cheapened the game without providing fans anything in return.

 

[soxhop411]

Yeah the notes about the minor leagues are a fair point about taking a short-term-financial view rather than an overall-health-of-the-game perspective. I generally prefer businesses to be long-term greedy rather than short-term greedy (because ones who are neither are not around for very long), and Manfred has occasionally shown inclination to do so (see e.g. the labor deal).

I guess the first things I think about when considering deals like this are:

(1) What are the historical perspectives? I think about how much more-intrusive the billboard and signage advertising used to be in ballparks, and how much more small-bore. With outdoor / highway billboards, it got to be too much for people in the 1960s and Lady Bird Johnson campaigned to limit it and there was just a general cultural receding of outdoor advertising after that. I think there is such a thing as people recognizing what is too much, when advertising is over-saturated and is past the point of diminishing returns.

(2) What do I actually care about, and does this impact it? What I care about are the players playing the game, and having it be an entertaining game. The forthcoming rule changes under Manfred, and even the ones preceding that for stuff like "no more takeout slides, but also no more neighborhood play on double plays", have given him a lot of credibility in my eyes to tinker with things and improve them rather than fucking them up. Bud Selig largely could've fucked up a lemonade stand. So, do uniform patches impact how the players play? Not to my understanding. Do they impact the visual attractiveness of the game? Does it change anything about it as an entertainment product? Not that I can see. I don't care if Xander just slid into Second Base Sponsored By Fidelity, let the announcers say whatever they need to say.

So by those standards, the fact that it was FTX advertising on umpire sleeves and not, I dunno, AT&T, was of no concern to me. It didn't draw my eye, because it's not what I look at. I guess if it does draw the eye of others (which, ya know, advertising is supposed to do!), that would be useful information. But I just assume that most of us filter it out like so many spam phone calls.

I posted this above but this was Fenway in the 1940's

View: https://twitter.com/nut_history/status/1596625671299952640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1596625671299952640%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=


Look at how intrusive those ad's are compared to the ads we see in stadiums today...

 

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

Yeah the notes about the minor leagues are a fair point about taking a short-term-financial view rather than an overall-health-of-the-game perspective. I generally prefer businesses to be long-term greedy rather than short-term greedy (because ones who are neither are not around for very long), and Manfred has occasionally shown inclination to do so (see e.g. the labor deal).

I guess the first things I think about when considering deals like this are:

(1) What are the historical perspectives? I think about how much more-intrusive the billboard and signage advertising used to be in ballparks, and how much more small-bore. With outdoor / highway billboards, it got to be too much for people in the 1960s and Lady Bird Johnson campaigned to limit it and there was just a general cultural receding of outdoor advertising after that. I think there is such a thing as people recognizing what is too much, when advertising is over-saturated and is past the point of diminishing returns.

(2) What do I actually care about, and does this impact it? What I care about are the players playing the game, and having it be an entertaining game. The forthcoming rule changes under Manfred, and even the ones preceding that for stuff like "no more takeout slides, but also no more neighborhood play on double plays", have given him a lot of credibility in my eyes to tinker with things and improve them rather than fucking them up. Bud Selig largely could've fucked up a lemonade stand. So, do uniform patches impact how the players play? Not to my understanding. Do they impact the visual attractiveness of the game? Does it change anything about it as an entertainment product? Not that I can see. I don't care if Xander just slid into Second Base Sponsored By Fidelity, let the announcers say whatever they need to say.

So by those standards, the fact that it was FTX advertising on umpire sleeves and not, I dunno, AT&T, was of no concern to me. It didn't draw my eye, because it's not what I look at. I guess if it does draw the eye of others (which, ya know, advertising is supposed to do!), that would be useful information. But I just assume that most of us filter it out like so many spam phone calls.

I think that if we're not on the same page here, we're probably in the same chapter.

In terms of historical perspectives, baseball and sports have been an advertiser's dream. There has never been a time when any sports had zero commercial interests in it; so I'm not asking for a return to a day that never existed. I mean, the Cubs have played in a stadium named for a chewing gum and the Citgo sign here in Boston is practically a state institution. So I get that aspect of the game and its history, and that's cool. I may lean left but I'm never going to say that there should be a day when a person can't make a dollar. Make as much as you want.

However, there is a point where your capitalism begins to tip into my enjoyment of the game. Am I going to never follow baseball again because of this? No. Baseball has its claws far too deep in me to leave over something like this. But at the same time, there are times when I'm watching a game and I get a bit distracted with the amount of advertisements clogging up the screen. Sometimes I count them and it's a low-level annoyance more than anything. I think what these companies are trying to purchase is cache. And they're getting a really bad ROI on it. When there's 8-10 companies trying to grab your attention per at bat, it's noise. When there are dozens and dozens of companies that are "Official sponsors of the Boston Red Sox", the specialness of that moniker is cheapened.

This all leads to your last question, do I care about this and does it impact my enjoyment of the game? The answer to both of those questions is probably not, with a caveat. Yes, the patch is not going to actually impact the game in any real way shape or function. But when I look at it, it's a reminder. A reminder of the greed of the owners. Which gets me thinking of the other things that they've botched in the last ten years. Which bums me out. I've talked on this board a lot about the weirdness of baseball and how much I love it. MLB is working overtime to sand down the weirdness and other than making a few extra bucks, I'm not sure why. I like that a guy like Steve Lomasney can get two at bats in the Bigs and go to his grave telling people he was a former Major Leaguer. I like that Mike Piazza can be drafted in the 31st round as a favor to his father and end up in the Hall of Fame.

To me the coolest thing about baseball is that you can be as small as Jose Altuve or big like Aaron Judge and still be a superstar--you don't have to be a genetic freak to dominate the sport (ala hoops or football). Does a MassMutual patch on a uniform kill all that? No. But it's a symptom and it sucks.

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

That’s what bugs me about this deal; it seems like the Sox and MLB decided to take the money and figure out the consequences later. The NBA extended an olive branch to fans when it eliminated a television timeout from the 2nd and 4th quarters. However, the tradeoff to that has been ads behind the baseline, in front of benches, on uniforms, and 15-second spots during some free throws. Overall, I’m happy with the trade-off and I think the product is a lot better with less dead time, and it makes the proliferation of ads tolerable because I know I’m benefiting from it elsewhere.

Conversely, MLB has plastered ads on the mound, on jerseys, and on umpires. Still most fans agree the game is slower and less interesting than it has ever been in their lifetimes. It has cheapened the game without providing fans anything in return.

Seems to me the pitch clock and some of the other new rules coming in are a return to the fans.

 

[dirtynine]

I posted this above but this was Fenway in the 1940's

View: https://twitter.com/nut_history/status/1596625671299952640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1596625671299952640%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=


Look at how intrusive those ad's are compared to the ads we see in stadiums today...

I’d so much rather go back to this than the jersey patch. I dig this, actually. The patch, as designed, sucks.

 

[mauf]

I’d so much rather go back to this than the jersey patch. I dig this, actually. The patch, as designed, sucks.

The Monster ads in that photo are cool because they’re retro and are hawking products (Gem, Lifebuoy) that no longer exist. They’d be a lot less cool if they were ads for Amazon, Fidelity, or whatever.

 

[dirtynine]

The Monster ads in that photo are cool because they’re retro and are hawking products (Gem, Lifebuoy) that no longer exist. They’d be a lot less cool if they were ads for Amazon, Fidelity, or whatever.

Maybe. I've never seen an ad on Fenway (modern or old) that has bothered me. At least there would be some creativity involved. IMO the jersey is sacred - not that it can't have an ad, but it needs to really fit perfectly. The walls of the ballpark are not.

 

[mauf]

Maybe. I've never seen an ad on Fenway (modern or old) that has bothered me. At least there would be some creativity involved. IMO the jersey is sacred - not that it can't have an ad, but it needs to really fit perfectly. The walls of the ballpark are not.

I don’t know that I agree that the uniform jersey is “sacred” in a way that the Monster is not. But I would readily concede that the ads on the Monster have been much better executed than this uniform patch.

 

[simplicio]

Perhaps MassMutual will hear the outrage and paint the monster black instead.

 

[YTF]

The Monster ads in that photo are cool because they’re retro and are hawking products (Gem, Lifebuoy) that no longer exist. They’d be a lot less cool if they were ads for Amazon, Fidelity, or whatever.

The other thing that I find cool about the vintage advertising is that it was unique in that the revenue sources were quite limited compared to today. No huge TV contracts, widespread licencing agreements or stadium naming rights to speak of. Today every nook and cranny of stadiums (inside and out) seem to sponsored in one way or another. We've seen The Dunkin' Dugout, The Sam Adams Deck, The Wasabi Studio, a multitude of signage that are both in and extending from the park and digital adds that are projected onto the field and back stops. As some here have previously stated, MLB is extracting every last dollar that they can from it's supporters and it seems to have become an invasive (for lack of a better term) process forced upon us by a league that is incredibly prosperous. To be clear, I'm not hating on MLB or the owners for any of this, but there is a HUGE difference between the in park advertising of yesteryear and that of today.

 

[GreenMonster49]

Maybe. I've never seen an ad on Fenway (modern or old) that has bothered me. At least there would be some creativity involved. IMO the jersey is sacred - not that it can't have an ad, but it needs to really fit perfectly. The walls of the ballpark are not.

I could have done without the late and lamentable Carcinoma Cigarette billboard above the bleachers.

 

[DourDoerr]

Perhaps MassMutual will hear the outrage and paint the monster black instead.

If the Monster's in play, Monster Energy Drink is the first call.

I like the Gem blade ad too, but mauf's right that it's the retro nature of the ad mirroring the retro nature of the park that makes it work.

 

[ehaz]

If only Moderna was the jersey patch sponsor. Would've been entertaining to watch Houck's reaction or Sale ripping up another uniform.

 

[SemperFidelisSox]

The patch didn’t look that outrageous when Kenley Jansen was wearing the uniform at the press conference today. Hardly noticed it.

 

[soxhop411]

Some of that sponsorship money is being used to install LED stadium lights it seems
View: https://twitter.com/lifeatlow3rd/status/1622276273258070016?s=46&t=gRKgQ6CeLEx49Zs1pwAl5w
View: https://twitter.com/bostonstrong_34/status/1622337798085787648?s=46&t=gRKgQ6CeLEx49Zs1pwAl5w

 

[Harry Hooper]

I will say this, when MLB sells out, they sell out really hard. The greed is absolutely disgusting. The owners are pigs.

You would think they would learn from the Masters. You can be really demanding and limiting, but networks and sponsors will ultimately accept your stipulations and fork over mega-cash.

 

[Harry Hooper]

I posted this above but this was Fenway in the 1940's

View: https://twitter.com/nut_history/status/1596625671299952640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1596625671299952640%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=


Look at how intrusive those ad's are compared to the ads we see in stadiums today...

Intrusiveness is a matter of personal perspective I think. Yes, there were enormous ads on the Monster in the 40's, but almost no signage on the CF wall and elsewhere

 

[JOBU]

If those lights starts flickering on and off everytime the Red Sox hit a homerun I may lose my shit.

 

[JohnnyTheBone]

If those lights starts flickering on and off everytime the Red Sox hit a homerun I may lose my shit.

"Yo, bartender! Jobu needs a refill!"

 

[derekson]

If those lights starts flickering on and off everytime the Red Sox hit a homerun I may lose my shit.

They're gonna change to rave party colors.

With a spotlight that follows the hitter while he does his home run trot.

 

[JOBU]

They're gonna change to rave party colors.

With a spotlight that follows the hitter while he does his home run trot.

I’d be on board with this actually. But only if they play the theme from “The Natural” as the batter rounds the bases. Looking forward to it honestly.

 

[CarolinaBeerGuy]

I’m 41 years olds and this doesn’t bother me at all.

 

[InstaFace]

They're gonna change to rave party colors.

With a spotlight that follows the hitter while he does his home run trot.

Sign me up. That's fun. 30-second spots of disc lights and disco music. The DJ can get steadily more obscure as it goes on.

 

[Kenny F'ing Powers]

I’m 41 years olds and this doesn’t bother me at all.

What do you mean? A different shade of white doesn't ruin your whole baseball experience?

Fake fan.

 

[joe dokes]

With a spotlight that follows the hitter while he does his home run trot.

I'm surprised that hasn't been done already.

 

[LogansDad]

I’d be on board with this actually. But only if they play the theme from “The Natural” as the batter rounds the bases. Looking forward to it honestly.

Some team (Arizona maybe? I can't really remember) already plays that theme when their players hit home runs, so I think the Sox need to be more original. That said, the awfulness that is "Sweet Caroline" has infiltrated seemingly every stadium in North America, so maybe it's time the Sox stole an idea from someone else, after all.

 

[bosockboy]

Some team (Arizona maybe? I can't really remember) already plays that theme when their players hit home runs, so I think the Sox need to be more original. That said, the awfulness that is "Sweet Caroline" has infiltrated seemingly every stadium in North America, so maybe it's time the Sox stole an idea from someone else, after all.

Rangers I believe.

 

[LogansDad]

Rangers I believe.

Yes, that's them.