Mercury Sell Out?

The Phoenix Mercury may have just upped the ante of professional sports advertising. A struggling team in a struggling

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league in a struggling economy has decided to sell their uniform to Arizona based LifeLock, a life insurance company. Instead of the front of the jersey reading “Mercury” it will read “LifeLock”. Some call this a travesty, some call this a necessity. What is it exactly?

Sports has been slowly overrun by advertisement since the middle of the 20th century. One of the few entities in sports that has remained clear of advertisement is the jersey. The jersey has long been for the name, number and team. People fear this move because it could be a catalyst to similar advertising campaigns. Sure, the WNBA is a minor sports league now but minor sports leagues are where this kind of thing starts. The Phoenix Mercury can probably pay the entire cost of their season based on this advertising alone. By simply replacing their team name with this ad they can guarantee another year of operation. They can guarantee their fans more games and their players a paycheck. This was a no-brainier move by the Mercury. I would certainly expect other WNBA teams to follow suit.

Will this become an issue in mainstream sports? Already Nascar has sold themselves out. Soccer clubs around the world have sold ad space on their jerseys. The last line of defense seems to be the major sports in America. The MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL aren’t close to attempting something like this, yet. The main reason being, where as this kind of advertisement can keep a WNBA team afloat, a major sports team makes much more money. A LifeLock advertisement on their jersey isn’t going to be the difference between meeting operating costs or folding the season. We wont have to worry about advertisements ruining the “purity” of the major sports yet.

Go ahead and take that deep breath but let me warn you: what happened in the WNBA is going to happen in major sports at some point. Back in 1950 it would seem radical to have stadiums named after corporations, now every stadium is sponsored. The Chicago White Sox start their games at 7:11pm, part of a sponsorship with 7-11 Convenience Stores. MLB once tried to sell their bases for a weekend as ad space for the Spider-Man 2 movie. I doubt we are any more than a decade away from seeing a Coors Light logo plastered across the front of a Phoenix Suns jersey. Hell, we probably aren’t even ten years away from seeing the Los Angeles Express, with a logo and color scheme to compliment FedEx, entering the NFL.

This is a fantastic deal for LifeLock. They have already received more publicity today than they probably ever imagined they would. This story is all over ESPN, including being one of the leads on PTI. CEO Todd Davis must be doing flips right now. I would love to see an alternate Mercury jersey with Todd Davis’ social security number plastered across the front.

I also find it funny that the Mercury received an infinite more amount of press over this story than they did when they won the WNBA championship a few years ago.