$120 million is quite impressive considering the leagues short history. Most of these teams are not recognized as true brands quite yet. So to average $10 million per team is pretty decent. Comparing to MLB -- you have to think that baseball hats are the largest portion of that revenue! What american male has not at one point or anotehr owned a team licensed baseball hat???? They are just a part of the american culture! But baseball is the national pasttime as well so the fact that MLB has been around for 100 years or so helps quite a bit. MLS is getting there...it is just going to take some time is all. adidas has made a smart investment. What is the average age of a BS poster? I am guessing that more than 50% of us do not have kids yet and are under the age of 30. That is a huge thing to take into account......Ask any sother sports fan and ask themwhy they like the baseball/football/basketball team they do -- first answer will be geography and the second will be because of tradition (IE. my father/grandpa/big brother/neighbor, etc. turned me on the the team). Most of us soccer lovers have not have the opportunity to pass on the love to the younger generation.......once we grow up we will have passed on the tradition to our kids and grand kids etc. So figure by the time you are 60 years old and you have a kid and a grand kid influenced by you -- all the sudden 1 MLS fan has turned into 3! So in about 25-30 years I suspect that MLS will be filling 25,000 seat stadiums and be selling a billion dollars + worth of licensed merchandise!
Not enough??? Wow, if 120mil is the correct figure, that's awsome. 10 million per team is WAY above what I might have guessed.
Obviously, one reason for the lack of variety in MLS merchandise is that they don't see a demand for a lot of this stuff, for example: coffee mugs. So, here's a cockamammie idea, what if MLS cut a deal with Cafepress (or a similar outfit) that would permit fans to self-produce MLS merchandise? Give fans permission to use MLS logos and split the profits.
Re: Don't forget about the donkey show! I wear my METRO jerseys mostly at Sunday morning pick-up games. It's a very good selling tool at that. It gets people talking about the league which created a small handful of semi-fans for MLS. There is definatley something there for MLs to exploit. I get mine for free, but these cost $65 a pop at the games. Reduce the price a bit and get more people in em ($40 sounds fair). It's a better-than-you-think marketing tool.
Why is Everlast even included, since it is (at least I thought) a manufacturer, while the others on the list are licensers?
a team coffee mug would sell rather well. I know I would use one. Hell I use the Galaxy shot glass that I bought at a game. and remember that $120 million is from 2004. 2005 figures would have the additional 2 expansion teams. And one of those teams (chivas) sold more jerseys than the other 11 teams.
I believe Cafepress makes you sign something that says they own whatever you use them for to create merchandise. I could be wrong, but one of those companies did. One reason I never used them to make ThreeSixOne gear. And there's no WAY anyone who owns/controls a potentially lucrative brand/mark/logo is just going to let random fans (however well-intentioned) put it on just anything they want, splitting profits or not. It completely shreds the idea of licenses and hurts everybody.
Well, presumably MLS would retain editorial control over the product. I admit the idea is a bit daft, but I do think one reason for the limited variety of MLS merchandise is that the market isn't big enough to sustain many of the products fans might want. This would get around that problem. I don't think it automatically hurts everybody.
MLS is above Arena Football League and WNBA in term of merchandise sales. That's good. What I want to know is how much of the $120 million in merchandise sales will MLS get. I would venture a guess of 7%-10%. I didn't find the exact number but found this interesting article http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2000/06/05/story3.html Sports merchandise big business for small teams
it all comes down to availability...where can u get MLS jerseys? Online, or in speciality soccer shops - but you won't find it in a major department store or sports chain...all the other pro sports leagues have their merchandise in these stores....
You're right in that one reason for the limited variety is that there's a small market. You're wrong if you don't think that letting any Tom, Dick or Harry start creating whatever they want with no quality control would hurt everybody. It would cost MLS more to police what you want to churn out with your computer or your silk-screening equipment than they'd realize from the sales. There's a reason licenses for sports merchandise are valuable - when you diminish the quality control and theoretically flood the market with what would amount to knockoff merchandise, you do hurt everybody who pays to license sports merchandise. In theory, it would work. But only if you don't think about the theory for too long.
And the opposite goes for basketball. You'd think with all the jerseys that NBA sells each year, that fans will wear at least SOME of them at the games themselves.
Interesting. I am an Albany River Rats fan and I own a Rivers Rats jersey, winter hat and a few hockey pucks with the logo. I guess I'm really helping support the team.
I thought that was a really good article about merchandise. I know when I lived in Harrisburg PA the minor league teams (Bears/hockey, Senators/baseball, Heat/indoor soccer) in the area would have kiosks in the malls selling merchandise and passing out ticket information. I think back in the first couple years of the league you used to be able to get jerseys at Champs. That's the only national retailer that I remember carrying merchandise.
I think, if done right, quality could be controlled. At this point, I'll cheerfully put this one in the "agree to disagree" category.
Actually I bought them all during the two year wear period, one quite early on. Got that one online, just not sure how for the price. The other two were around the 18 month time which I'm sure affected the price. As a note, if anyone visits England, Sports World is usually packing some real good deals for jerseys, cleats, and other such items. What about trying to get local youth leagues to wear MLS style jerseys for their leagues? I know as a kid I played on the Blue Jays, Pirates, Giants, and Dodgers. It certainly helped to put interest in those prospective teams in my young and impressionable mind (if not empty). It also caused a number of parents to go and buy MLB gear to support their kid's team. I know that most club level teams will carry their own identity, but those kids are often fans of soccer anyway. I was thinking more of city youth rec leagues. Does anyone know if MLS has tried anything along those lines? As for cheaper kits at the end of season, I guess I'm just to pissed at the Crew in November every year to look for a jersey on the cheap. As for fans wearing replicas, I'm always impressed at how many I see at Crew games, more than I would have expected. Of course many say Lassiter, John, or Clark and reak of 1996, but still more than I can say for myself.
This is more than just jerseys though, isn't it? Wouldn't this include video game licenses, DVDs, and various other types of swag?
I was curious, because it's been reported that EA's video game deal with the NFL is $300 million bucks over 5 years for an exclusive license. That would make it 1/2 of what MLS gets TOTAL in a year. Amazing....