Well-filled stadiums and arenas, superstars on the pitch and a colourful supporting programme – performance meets commerce and entertainment on the American professional and college sport scene. Whether in the NFL Football League, the NBA Basketball League, during the games of the NHL Ice Hockey League or in the MLB, the American league of professional baseball players – merchandising plays an outstanding role in US sport. The franchises not only make a respectable amount of money, but also generate donations, boost ticket sales and demonstrate solidarity.
Fitted out with a beanie and appropriate jersey, the fans also demonstrate during everyday life which team they support.
There is no doubt about it: Merchandising is part of a big business on the US sport scene. The following figures underline how big the business is: According to a survey by Licensing International, which is carried out annually, the worldwide turnover with licensed goods and services totalled 356,5 billion US Dollars in the year 2023. In comparison to the previous year this corresponds to a 4.59% increase. The Sport section accounted for a share of 11.1%, or 39.5 billion US Dollars. 12.5 billion US Dollars alone were amassed by the American sports leagues.
The National Football League (NFL) topped the rankings with over 4 billion US Dollars. The revenue of the other “Big Four” North American professional sport leagues is also very high. For instance, the MLB Baseball League turns over up to 3 billion US Dollars – with a sport that many Europeans hardly know the basic rules of. Good money can also be earned with merchandise in the NBA Basketball League. The income here is around one billion Dollars a year. As a comparison: According to Statista, the total sum of the merchandising including licensing fees of all the clubs of the German Football League for the 2022/23 season amounted to 267 million Euros.
But why is merchandising actually so popular and what incites the Americans to spend so much money on team kits and accessories? The explanations range right through to sociology. The majority of the Americans place great value on their own origin. Particularly in a country like the USA that has continually been characterised by waves of immigration, “there is a need for integration, which is covered by the ‘American ideology’,” explained Prof. Dr. Peter Lösche for instance, former lecturer of the Seminar for Political Science of Göttingen University , in a text about an introductory to US Politics for the Federal Agency for Civic Education. According to Lösche, this ideology includes alongside the dream of social advancement also symbols and rituals and much more. These integration ideologies apply across the board for social layers, classes and groups, which would otherwise tend to keep out of each other’s way. Thus, the sport can also be considered to be part of the integration ideology.
The fans traditionally fill in the time until the game begins with tailgating.
Jay Deutsch, founder and owner of the promotional products agency, Bensussen, Deutsch & Associates (BDA) and also owner of the Seattle Kraken, an NHL franchise, knows that “licensed sports items play a decisive role in promoting the fan bond. They offer the fans a tangible connection to their favourite teams, strengthen the community and make an important contribution to the business-related side of the sport,” the merchandising expert confirmed.
Whereby promoting integration and identity using sport begins at an early stage. Sport plays a dominating role both at school and also later at the universities and colleges. The Football Stadium of the University of Michigan doesn’t hold 107,601 spectators without good reason. As such, the largest stadium in the USA is not the home of an NFL team, but in fact that of a college team. Thousands of current and former students and inhabitants of Michigan regularly come to cheer their team on here – equipped with typical merchandise accessories and dressed in fanwear. The selection is already huge at college. From the typical T-shirts and caps, to jackets and special sports clothes like baseball or basketball tops, through to car stickers, flags and sofa blankets, the stores offer everything that makes the fans’ hearts beat faster.
When merch becomes fashion
Taking a look at a wide range of fan shops shows that merchandise has long since become more than just a jersey or pair of jogging trousers. Irregardless of which sport or team one supports, flying the flag for one’s team in the everyday routine becomes easier and easier and more and more popular.
Many teams keep on betting on unique fan items, like this arm sleeve in the form of a tentacle, which is available from the NHL team, Seattle Kraken.
In the USA this mindset that fanwear is suitable for everyday use and fashionable has long since become tradition. Baseball caps are an ideal example here. Up until the middle of the 20th Century, only the players and very few fans wore caps as protection against the sun. During the rise of the hip-hop culture, sports clothes and above all baseball caps then became popular in the 1980s and 1990s, especially because artists like Dr. Dre or Snoop Dogg wore them during their day-to-day lives. Alongside the hats, the stars – especially from the baseball or basketball environment – started combining jackets and jerseys with their everyday outfits. Particularly the baseball shirts with their straight lines and classic design, the button panel and large lettering established themselves as a timeless it-piece.
The typography and the simple design also play a major role by the particularly popular caps of the LA Dodgers, the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox. With New Era as the official on-field cap outfitter, the officials of the MLB then pulled off a big deal. The design of the caps was standardised, only the team logos and colours are different. Back then like today, collaborations with stars caused a stir and the New Era baseball caps became hip accessories. Today, the caps, especially those with the iconic lettering, have become a fashion statement and popular souvenir for travellers to the USA.
Over the past years there have been many cooperations between sports teams and luxury brands. For example, the Major Baseball League team, the New York Yankees, brought out a Gucci collection in 2018 , that included among others shoes, blazers and different woollen hats as well as last, but not least caps. Beyond this, one can find numerous examples online of how to combine a versatile baseball shirt in different ways for the daily routine.
Social commitment
In the USA it is considered to be the done thing to do for companies to assert themselves for a good cause, make social themes public and support them. The major sport leagues are also following suit here too. As such, various match days follow a motto. Since 2009 already, the match days four to six of the NFL have been part of the “Crucial Catch” campaign, which in cooperation with the American Cancer Society aim to draw attention to the early detection of cancer and risk reduction. During this period of time the players and remaining team members wear special clothes that are branded with the campaign logo. In addition to informative articles, the fans can also purchase appropriate merchandising. This merchandising is limited every year, so new products are launched onto the market continually. Alone through the sales of merchandise items that carry the Crucial Catch logo and general donation campaigns, the NFL has donated over 30 million Dollars to the American Cancer Society to-date and thus helped more than 1.8 million people have medical check-ups or preventive treatment.
November, on the other hand, is “Salute to Service” month for many of the leagues. During this period, tribute is paid to the active soldiers and veterans of the American military forces. Of course, extra merchandise is also issued for this special campaign. As with the fan items with the Crucial Catch emblem, the NFL donates the entire revenue from the sales of the special items to the cause.
Beyond the football pitch, more than 73 million Dollars has been raised since 2011 for the partners of the Salute to Service month through the sale of merchandise, donation campaigns and events.
Merchandise in the digital era
The fan shop of the baseball team, the LA Dodgers, present the huge selection of merch items. The so-called Bobblehead figures are particularly popular among baseball fans. Above all special figures that are only available at certain games.
Unlike in densely-populated Europe, many fans live a long way away from their favourite teams in the USA. What’s more, the majority of the teams are not clubs, but indeed franchises with alternating owners, who can determine a new location. All of which makes visiting the stadium simply impossible for many fans. This makes selling merchandising via online shops all the more important.
The ECDB, a company that specialises in eCommerce data analysis, which works together with Statista among others, found out that the official NFL shop website, NFLshop.com, will have generated a turnover of 250 million US Dollars by 2025. The main target group for fan items are men aged between 35 and 44 years. According to surveys, young people, i.e. the next generation of fans, are addressed more via social media channels like Instagram or TikTok. The European market is also important for the eCommerce of the American leagues.
Jay Deutsch knows how important merchandise is in the world of sport: “Branded merchandise is super important. It has become a strategic cornerstone of large brands. It elicits emotion. I love it and every night I go to the Seattle Kraken game and go to our store there and watch kids, parents or single people coming in, finding what they like and saying, ‘I love this brand and want to take it home with me.” Deutsch also accentuated that merchandise serves more and more frequently as a souvenir: “If you go to watch a game, there isn’t even an admission ticket nowadays, because everything is digital. So what do you have as a souvenir of the game? This is where merchandise comes into play. The queues in front of the merchandising tents and sponsors, who are active there distributing items, are huge.”
Limited collector’s editions
In the past only the players wore them, today they are popular fashion accessories: Baseball shirts and of course the all-popular baseball cap.
This statement is regularly confirmed in front of the gates of the US stadiums. At the start of the season the teams publish so-called Promotional Schedules, which let the fans know which campaigns will take place on which match days. Jay Deutsch considers this to be particularly important: “I think there is much more promotional merchandise in the US than in Europe, especially from a game day give-away standpoint. In Major League Baseball many teams need to sell their tickets. We taught the sports world in the US market that branded merchandise promotion can help sell tickets. You just need to add a free premium when the spectators come to book tickets. That is a proven fact here in the US. So, if you want to sell tickets, do a promotional merchandise give-away that your fans will love, and it will work.”
Smaller examples of the Promotional Schedule are ticket packages that harmonise very well with certain events like “Star Wars Day” or Pride Night. As well as the tickets, the packages then contain meal vouchers or an exclusive merchandise item.
The so-called Bobblehead figures are extremely popular too. These are toy figures of famous people, mascots or fictive characters with overproportionally represented heads compared to their bodies. Furthermore, instead of being firmly attached to the rest of the body, the head is only connected via a spring so that the head can bob to and fro. Recently the figure of the baseball player, Shohei Ohtani, caused a stir and long queues. The first Ohtani Bobblehead Night demonstrated how popular the player already is in his first season with the LA Dodgers. The first queue already began to form at eleven o’clock in the morning – around eight hours before the game started – because the fans wanted to secure themselves one of the limited edition Bobblehead figures of the Japanese superstar. And in spite of the incredibly high circulation of 40,000 pieces, some of the fans still went home empty-handed. The Bobblehead figures of Ohtani were later sold at record prices via online auctions. Recently the ball that Ohtani hit his 50th home run of the season with was also auctioned off for the record sum of 4.39 million US Dollars.
The Green Bay Packers are the only NFL Franchise that belongs to the fans. That is why the “Cheeseheads” as the inhabitants of Wisconsin call the Packers fans, are considered to be particularly passionate.
But not only individual, particularly popular players, also anniversaries and special milestones are celebrated with big merchandise campaigns. When the New York Giants returned to the renovated MetLife Stadium in 2021, the Chief Commercial Officer, Pete Guelli, announced: “We could not be more happy to greet the fans at the MetLife Stadium again this year. As part of our commitment towards improving the experience of the game, we are proud to announce our theme and promotional gifts that offer the fans more ways of coming into contact with the team than ever before.”
Among others, the programme contained a Bobblehead figure of the team icon, Eli Manning, for the first 25,000 visitors, a poster with memories of the last Super Bowl victory ten years earlier, which every spectator received as well as a special comic depicting some of the well-known players as superheroes for 30,000 spectators.
Creating new incentives
The many campaigns not only show how versatile the American merchandising world is, the collecting instinct of the fans is also always aroused over and over again. Unique and limited products encourage the desire to buy and if the promotional products are offered as free premiums they also ensure full stadiums. The numerous special campaigns in aid of the military or cancer prevention address the patriotic Americans – after all by buying the fan items they are doing good.
The merchandise managers know the demands of the audience and they boost the sales with selected cooperations with streetwear brands or famous fanwear companies, thus making sure that the brand awareness in everyday life increases rapidly. Hence, the US teams are playing in their own league regarding the professionalism of their offer.
// Sophia Arnold
