NBA owners approved a three year pilot program to test out advertisements on jerseys beginning in the 2017-18 season, the league announced Friday.
To begin, advertising will be limited to a 2.5-by-2.5 inch space on the jersey. The timing coincides with the first year that Nike will be the NBA’s jersey provider.
According to ESPN’s Darren Rovell, the expectation is that each team would make between $4 million and $6 million from the ads, which would total $120-$180 million in new basketball-related revenue which would be split with players.
This makes the NBA the first major North American league to introduce the concept, which has been in place in the WNBA for seven years and is a well-known practice in soccer. It even got something of a trial run on this year’s All-Star jerseys in the form of a small Kia patch on the chest.
While a few teams, one notable one in particular, were reportedly opposed to the change, it seems to have passed with relative ease.
