Bowen Dunnan
Baseball fans around the world tuning in to watch the World Series this fall are witnessing a marquee matchup that could have been dreamed up by MLB executives. The Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees play in the sport's biggest media markets, the teams won the most games in their respective leagues this season, and their rosters feature the biggest superstars in the sport, including Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge. The teams' classic interlocking "LA" and "NY” logos are perhaps the most recognizable logos in all of North American sports. But fans this year may also notice a new, less familiar logo: that of German workwear company Strauss.
Strauss’s logo—featuring an ostrich (“strauss” is German for ostrich) and the company’s name in bold type—has been on every single player’s batting helmet throughout this year’s postseason. This helmet partnership was the first of its kind for the league, whose deputy commissioner of business and media cited “the fact that our two organizations have so much in common” including “generational legacy” and “teamwork” as a selling point for the partnership between the MLB and the family-owned European clothing company.[1]
The addition of the new Strauss logos this October was just one part of an ongoing trend in baseball this decade. The helmet partnership followed the league mandating that all 30 teams add the famous Nike “Swoosh” to player jerseys starting in 2020 (in a deal reportedly worth $1 billion)[2] and teams adding corporate sponsors’ logos to their jerseys’ shoulders beginning in 2023.[3]
The reaction from MLB fans has been strongly negative, with baseball viewers criticizing the new logos’ size and appearance, calling the decision “embarrassing,” and worrying that the addition of the helmet logos won’t be the end of a trend that “cheapens the look” of the on-field product.[4] For fans of the usually-minimalist Yankees—who haven’t updated their pinstripes in a century and don’t even put players’ last names on the backs of their jerseys—the new corporate logos are particularly jarring.
Presumably the teams, players, and MLB commissioner’s office all agreed to the expansion of the addition of the logos. According to the current collective bargaining agreement between the MLB teams and the players’ union, which took effect in 2022 and runs through 2026, clubs may license to sponsors the right to place logos on player uniforms (including helmets) “provided the patch or design is approved in advance by the Office of the Commissioner after consultation with the Players Association.”[5] The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but obviously the parties involved have decided that the sponsorship money from Strauss is worth the negative sentiment from fans that accompanied the rollout.
The longer-term concern from skeptics, though, is about the devaluation of the MLB teams’ own visual identities over time. After the jersey patches and helmets, fans can’t be blamed for asking: What’s next? Are the helmet logos just one more step on the way toward NASCAR-style uniforms that feature a collage of clashing sponsors? It may be reasonable to fear that those sponsors’ logos could eventually crowd out the teams’ own visual identities. If the Yankees’ “NY” logo eventually becomes just one among many on a player’s uniform, the league might regret choosing short-term sponsorship money over maintaining consistent, recognizable, and valuable team brands that in some cases have lasted more than a century.
[1] David Adler, MLB, STRAUSS Announce New Helmet Partnership, MLB.com (Sep. 13, 2024), https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-announces-helmet-partnership-with-strauss.
[2]Anthony Stitt, For a Cool $1 Billion, MLB Adds Nike Swoosh to Uniforms, Forbes (Dec. 26, 2019), https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonystitt/2019/12/19/for-a-cool-3-billion-mlb-adds-nike-swoosh-to-uniforms/.
[3]Mitchell Parton, “It Goes Beyond the Patch”: Why Retailers Like QuikTrip Are Putting Their Logos on MLB Uniforms, Modern Retail (Sep. 3, 2024), https://www.modernretail.co/marketing/it-goes-beyond-the-patch-why-retailers-like-quiktrip-are-putting-their-logos-on-mlb-uniforms/.
[4]See Tom Dierberger, MLB Fans Had Strong Reactions to Debut of Strauss Helmet Patches in Playoffs, Sports Illustrated (Oct. 1, 2024), https://www.si.com/mlb/mlb-fans-strong-reactions-debut-strauss-helmet-patches-playoffs; see also Dylan Svoboda, MLB Fans Slam “embarrassing” Sponsored Playoff Helmets:“Cheapens the look,” N. Y. Post (Oct. 1, 2024) https://nypost.com/2024/10/01/sports/mlb-fans-slam-embarrassing-sponsored-playoff-helmets/.
[5]Major League Baseball Players Association, 2022–2026 Basic Agreement, 230, https://www.mlbplayers.com/_files/ugd/4d23dc_d6dfc2344d2042de973e37de62484da5.pdf.