Within the agreement, Nike will provide on-field uniforms, baselayers and training apparel for all 30 MLB clubs.
Source: Nike Enters 10-Year Partnership With Major League Baseball
When Under Armour signed on to take over Major League Baseball I wrote about 4 articles explaining why it didn’t matter and why they shouldn’t take the time and invest in the sport. One of the last things I wrote was:
Under Armour Gets Logos on MLB Jerseys… Why It Doesn’t Matter
In that post I wrote, “When Reebok had the NFL jerseys people still wore Nike shoes. Adidas has had the NBA for years and Nike still dominated footwear in basketball. Baseball in my view is like Golf, it’s old, white and dying. I guess I could say it’s old, white, and young and brown and dying…”
White people dig baseball, other races, not so much. I know that sounds bad, but it’s honest. As a high school head coach my team used to work at Qualcomm(NFL) and Petco Park (MLB) in San Diego. It was a great program that allowed high schools to give athletes work experience and to earn money for sports programs… San Diego doesn’t have many Black people. The Black population is about 6%. San Diego does have a huge Latino population at 31%, but White people are at about 55%. The stadium was pretty much White people at NFL and at MLB games.
Latinos are not really attending MLB games. Which is interesting because of any sport in the U.S. there are more Latinos in the sport than in any other sport. Many of the young stars are of Latin heritage. While the population in the U.S. is shifting to Brown, White people don’t like Brown people, or any people…
Wow that sounds bad. It’s also a generalization and a bad one at that, but I think you get what I’m saying. Black kid with Skittles = thug and shot. White kid insulting a Native American elder = awww give him a chance.
I’m being extreme because I’m forcing you to consider what has happened to race relations in the U.S. The same has happened to sports in the U.S.; but the politics around sports isn’t the problem, the professionalization of the sport is.
Historically the Negro Leagues produced some of the greatest players of all time. Up until the 80s legendary Black players were abundant. Baseball is now Brown and White. The sports footwear and apparel industry relies on a lot of Black dollars. Baseball doesn’t have footwear to sell and when the best athletes are Latino, that leaves the age group of MLB’s fans at 53 years old and White having to wear the jersey of a Latino player while also wearing a MAGA hat. (ESPN reported the average age of the MLB fan as 53.)
The biggest issue is baseball in the U.S. is not going to get any blacker. Baseball has been all but removed from inner city schools. Even in rural schools with low income white people the sport isn’t very popular. Over the last thirty years, like with basketball and football in the U.S., baseball has become professionalized and to participate it takes a ton of money. It takes a field, cleats, a bat and if kids want to compete at the highest level they have to pay a considerable amount of money.
The conundrum for Nike is that the company aligns itself with the athlete and expects the athlete to cater to a more left leaning customer. MLB is inherently conservative so Nike is going to have to spend an inordinate amount of time balancing their marketing, or they won’t spend any time at all and simply see the MLB as an opportunity to be the sports apparel bully. To be honest Under Armour would have been the better company to sponsor baseball, or New Balance. Nike is actually out of their comfort zone here.
It is truly an interesting discussion for those willing to talk about it.
