With College Sports’ Commerciality At A Fever Pitch, Is It Time For The NCAA To Relax Its Corporate Logo Restrictions On In-Game Uniforms?
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With College Sports’ Commerciality At A Fever Pitch, Is It Time For The NCAA To Relax Its Corporate Logo Restrictions On In-Game Uniforms?
Executive Summary
NCAA sport playing rules restrict the use of corporate logos on uniforms, which upends the ability for schools to seek a new sponsorship pipeline
NCAA playing rules permit a very limited size (two and ¼ inch) apparel logo on jerseys and shorts as the only permissible commercial element on uniforms
The precipitating event that led to the NCAA creating a rule restricting logos on uniforms happened in 1983 and involved college basketball great Patrick Ewing from Georgetown University
Adidas sued the NCAA in late 1990s about this logo size restriction, but lost in federal court with the NCAA prevailing on amateurism and non-competing rationales
Professional sports franchises ranging from Real Madrid to the L.A. Lakers to the Phoenix Mercury have uniform sponsorships generating millions.
Real Madrid reportedly receives over $120M annually from Adidas and Fly Emirates
The NBA recently expanded its uniform logo policy to also permit sponsorship logos on shooting shirts and warm-up jackets.
As the NIL era continues to slosh up, down, and sideways amid the financial pressures facing college athletics departments ranging from reduced in-game attendance to the prospective of expending millions on Alston money, it seems timely for the college athletics cognoscenti to ask: “Should we open a new revenue stream by green-lighting corporate sponsors on game jerseys and shorts?”
Using men’s basketball as a contextual example, what’s the current NCAA rule(s) on corporate logos on game uniforms?
According to NCAA Men’s Basketball Playing Rule 1, Section 22 on Uniforms (Game Jersey and Shorts), Article 7.a.2 reads: “No commercial advertising is permitted anywhere on the uniform.”
That rule is pretty straightforward— NCAA playing rules (which govern jerseys, shorts, and other uniform components across all sports) remain rigid to any expanded commercialization on college athletes’ uniforms.
The one limited, commercial component to men’s basketball jerseys and shorts is the apparel manufacturer itself. Under Rule 1, Section 25 on Logos, Labels, Trademarks, Patches, Article 1 it reads: “A single manufacturer’s or distributor’s normal logo, label or trademark shall be contained within a four-sided geometrical space (i.e., rectangle) with an area that does not exceed 2¼ square inches and is permitted once on the game jersey, once on the game shorts and once on all other items of apparel. Names or logos of professional sports entities are not permitted on any items of apparel.”
The 2 and ¼ inch exception for apparel manufacturers is a carve-out that has been in existence for decades. This provision is what permits a Nike swoosh, Adidas three-strips and Under Armour’s UA logo to appear in a very limited way on jerseys and shorts. Beyond this accommodation, college sports uniforms remain untethered to the commerciality (and revenue) that pro sports franchises are seeing and, in some cases, “make” the jersey.
How did the 2 and ¼ inch size NCAA restriction come to be?
According to an injunction sought by Adidas against the NCAA back in the late 1990s, as part of a federal case— 40 F. Supp. 2d 1275 (1999)— Patrick Ewing of Georgetown University Hoyas basketball fame played a leading role in the NCAA going from no rule to a prescribed limit.
The decision from the Adidas v. NCAA lawsuit from 1999 included a historical timeline and peek at how the jersey sponsorship restriction came in to being:
“In 1977, the NCAA had no specific rule addressing a student-athletes' wearing of apparel or use of equipment that bore a manufacturer's logo or trademark. However, the NCAA Constitution prohibited student-athletes from promoting commercial enterprises. In 1978, a member institution questioned whether the wearing of a uniform bearing a manufacturer's logo constituted the promotion of a commercial product. In response to this inquiry, the NCAA concluded that as long as the logo on the uniform was the same logo generally available on that product to the public, it would not be considered promotion of a commercial product. This rule applied to equipment as well as apparel.
The rule governing the use of logos on apparel changed in 1983. The precipitating event involved Patrick Ewing, a basketball player at Georgetown University. During a college basketball game, Ewing wore a Nike T-shirt under his uniform that bore Nike's logo on each shoulder. When the Ewing incident came to the attention of the NCAA Eligibility Committee, which is made up of representatives of member institutions, the committee reviewed the logo question to develop a new standard. In its 1984-85 Manual, the NCAA changed its existing logo rule and included a case study, known as Case No. 40, to explain the new rule's restrictions governing the size and number of logos that could be worn by collegiate athletes in NCAA competition.
The new rule continued to allow student-athletes to wear or use equipment that bore a manufacturer's normal logo, but it restricted the size and number of logos permitted on apparel worn by student-athletes. Specifically, a student-athlete's uniform could bear only a single manufacturer's logo not to exceed one and one-half inches in height or width. The new rule treated equipment and apparel differently because the Eligibility Committee, in creating the rule, was responding to the concerns created by the Ewing incident, which involved apparel and not equipment. Although this rule was framed as a case study, it had the force and effect of an NCAA bylaw. The case study was eventually codified as NCAA Bylaw 12.5.4.
In 1989, Bylaw 12.5.4 was amended to allow student-athletes to wear competition-identification materials such as football bowl-game patches that include the name of the event's sole corporate sponsor. The NCAA allowed the wearing of bowl-game patches even though they represented a second commercial logo on the uniform and routinely exceeded Bylaw 12.5.4's size restrictions.
In 1993, the NCAA formed the Special Committee to Review the Relationship of Apparel Manufacturers to the Intercollegiate Athletics Community (the "Special Committee"). When an issue arose over the application of Bylaw 12.5.4 to design elements on collegiate uniforms, the issue was sent to the Special Committee for its consideration. A design element is simply an aspect of the overall design of a piece of apparel. Design elements are relevant to this case because sports apparel manufacturers have attempted to circumvent the restrictions of Bylaw 12.5.4 by adding additional advertising on athletic apparel in the form of design elements that look similar to their logos or trademarks.
NCAA staff asked the Special Committee to determine whether the design element issue should be handled as an interpretation of the existing bylaw or as new legislation. The Special Committee decided that the issue should be addressed through an interpretation designed to confirm the original intent of Bylaw 12.5.4. In April 1994, the NCAA Council adopted the following interpretation of Bylaw 12.5.4:
Design Elements Considered as Additional Logo: The Special Committee ... recommends that the Council confirm that an institution's official uniform cannot bear a design element similar to the manufacturer's logo (e.g., Adidas soccer shirt bearing three descending stripes on the shirt's shoulder, Umbro soccer shirt with the Umbro diamond repeated around the rib knit collar) that is in addition to another logo or that is contrary to the size restriction of Bylaw 12.5.4-(b). It was VOTED "That the Council approve the committee's recommendation."
Bylaw 12.5.4 eventually became Bylaw 12.5.5.
After Bylaw 12.5.5 became the governing standard, the NCAA changed the parameters of the bylaw's size limitation. Finding no reason to limit a logo to a square shape, the NCAA changed the by-law to allow logos to be any four-sided figure with an area not to exceed two and one-quarter square inches. In its current form, Bylaw 12.5.5 provides:
A student-athlete may use athletics equipment or wear athletics apparel that bears the trademark or logo of an athletics equipment or apparel manufacturer or distributor in athletics competition and pre- and postgame activities (e.g., celebrations on the court, pre- or post-game press conferences), provided the following criteria are met. [Violations of this bylaw shall be considered institutional violations ...; however, they shall not affect the student-athlete's eligibility]:
(a) Athletics equipment (e.g., shoes, helmets, baseball bats and gloves, batting or golf gloves, hockey and lacrosse sticks, goggles and skis) shall bear only the manufacturer's normal label or trademark, as it is used on all such items for sale to the general public, and
(b) The student-athlete's institution's official uniform (including numbered racing bibs and warmups) and all other items of apparel (e.g., socks, head bands, T-shirts, wrist bands, visors or hats, swim caps and towels) shall bear only a single manufacturer's or distributor's normal label or trademark (regardless of the visibility of the label or trademark), not to exceed 2 ¼ square inches in area (i.e., rectangle, square, parallelogram) including any additional material (e.g., patch) surrounding the normal trademark or logo.”
Interestingly, the Court reasoned the NCAA was not a competitor of Adidas in this context, wasn’t gaining economic benefit from the restriction, and, further, the NCAA was advancing its legitimate purpose of preserving amateurism.
That court case is over twenty years old, however. How amateurism in and of college sports is defined against today’s NIL, social media, sports gambling gumbo is a whole new question.
The NCAA’s playing rules back then, like today, had required such logos to be 2 1/4 inches square or smaller. Adidas often places three parallel stripes down the side of shorts and jerseys, but the NCAA ruled that this violated the logo restriction.
The following graphic reflects the NCAA’s current men’s basketball uniform regulations in terms of logo placement, size, and type among other jersey details.
College athletics in America does not operate in a vacuum, though. Some NCAA schools are warming up to corporate sponsorships with casinos and other gaming companies. And the potential riches that await from a jersey logo sponsorship could have athletics directors salivating.
Although sponsorships at the professional league levels can be layered with the same company paying for jersey logo, signage rights, and even stadium naming rights, the jersey logo value alone remains a rising tide.
According to a SportsBrowser article from last month, many elite, brand-name international soccer clubs like Real Madrid, Liverpool, and Manchester City are pulling in well over $30 million a year in logo sponsorship revenue. Liverpool’s Standard Chartered jersey sponsorship deal, for example, garners Liverpool $43M per season. And in some cases, teams have multiple sponsors on jerseys— front of jersey as well as on sleeves as permitted in certain leagues and competitions.
Pro leagues in the United States have also hopped aboard the jersey sponsorship logo express. The NBA began permitting teams to have a single corporate logo on its jerseys beginning with the 2017-18 season and the WNBA has permitted its teams to do so for over ten years.
The Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA even replaced its Mercury logo on front of jersey in favor of its primary sponsor LifeLock, Inc.
This past December, the NBA expanded where corporate logos could be placed around game-related wear. Specifically, according to ESPN’s Nick DePaula, the league will allow teams to wear a 3″x3″ advertisement patch on their shooting shirts and warmup jackets beginning with the current 2021-22 season in addition to the patch logo already permitted on the game uniform. Patches can be added to either the right sleeve or on the left chest of the jackets and shooting shirts (team’s choice) and don’t necessarily need to be the same company that already advertises on their jerseys. Some NBA teams are pulling in upwards of $20M in revenue from jersey logo sponsorships.
Even if college teams would garner only 2 to 3% of these high-water mark revenue numbers of NBA and major international soccer franchises, that could still lead to seven-figures in “found money.”
Of course, student-athletes may also have keen interest on if and when the NCAA may revisit its playing rule restrictions on in-game uniform logo sponsorships.
Athletics Veritas is presented for information purposes only and should not be considered advice or counsel on NCAA compliance matters. For guidance on NCAA rules and processes, always consult your university’s athletics compliance office, conference office, and/or the NCAA.
