Galaxy sells the front of its jerseys
Two months after acquiring David Beckham, the Galaxy has signed a multiyear, multimillion-dollar sponsorship agreement with nutritional products manufacturer Herbalife.
The deal gives the direct-sales company the right to splash its name across the front of the Galaxy jersey and makes the Galaxy the second team in Major League Soccer to take advantage of the league’s new shirt-sponsorship rules.
The agreement was first reported Thursday night in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal, which said the deal would “pay the club between $3.5 million and $5 million a year through 2011.”
Shirt sponsorship is uncommon in American team sports, although NASCAR, for example, has a long history of attaching sponsors’ names to just about everything from cars to drivers. Last fall, MLS became the first significant league to agree to sell its jersey front.
Real Salt Lake paved the way and in November signed a four-year deal with the Utah-based dietary supplement juice company XanGo that was worth a reported $4 million to $5 million.
The company’s name will be carried in block capital letters across the front of the Real Salt Lake players’ jerseys when the MLS season begins April 7.
Earlier in 2006, after Austrian billionaire Dieter Mateschitz had purchased the then-MetroStars from AEG for $100 million, he renamed them the New York Red Bulls and placed the Red Bull logo of his energy drink company on the team’s shirt. That opened the door for MLS to allow its other teams to follow suit and to find their own jersey sponsors.
Such sponsorship is common in Europe, where the more successful the club, the richer its jersey contract.
Shawn Hunter, the president of AEG Sports, called the Galaxy sponsorship pact “a milestone event in American sports marketing.”
