Opinion Names on Back of Jumpers

[Bostonian]

You may lose a sponsor, but you make up for it on shirt sales.

How?

Casuals aren't buying $100+ jumpers.

From another perspective would you want Brighton to remove names from their player shirts and plonk another sponsor on there? You do see it in other sports where casuals will purchase a name/number top of their favourite player, heck I saw a Man United Tevez 32 top this year from someone still wearing one.

I wouldn't care less if they did. I know who all the players are.

Most of those casuals buy fake knock offs anyway so the club makes sod all money from them. These causal fans actually ruin clubs social media platforms with their s**t.

Again you are taking it from a die hards perspective on a dedicated footy forum, it's the every day man that putting names on jumpers is geared towards. You aren't the target audience.

And you're pandering to a very small amount of people who will overwhelmingly not buy a clubs jumper at the price they are.

You're basing your view on a market that hardly exists.

 

[kane249]

How?

Casuals aren't buying $100+ jumpers.

I wouldn't care less if they did. I know who all the players are.

Most of those casuals buy fake knock offs anyway so the club makes sod all money from them. These causal fans actually ruin clubs social media platforms with their sh*t.

And you're pandering to a very small amount of people who will overwhelmingly not buy a clubs jumper at the price they are.

You're basing your view on a market that hardly exists.

So your end game is you want to keep the game to the die hards only? It's a very sheltered and selfish view of the world. I think you are grossly underestimating the amount of casual fans out there. Even going to a game in any part of the country you can tell that a lot of people do go to the footy for the experience, without necessarily living and breathing the game.

Getting the casuals interested and converting them to fans is how you keep the game growing. Stagnate and only pandering to the die hards without innovation will do more damage in the long term. This is why sports are always inventing new things to improve their end product to the fans (names on jerseys, new camera angles, fantasy leagues, social media, etc) so they can get more people interested and keep them interested.

End of I wouldn't worry about the space above the number missing out on valuable sponsorship space, as we are seeing in lower leagues the rest of the jumper and shorts is being whored out to advertising anyway. They will just find another spot to sell

 

[Kings of Lygon]

...as we are seeing in lower leagues the rest of the jumper and shorts is being whored out to advertising anyway. They will just find another spot to sell

God that is ugly. I hate seeing jumpers like that but unfortunately, a reality for some clubs to survive whilst others just like to have their coffers filled so they pay the best players who will * off when said money isn't there.

As for names on the back of jumpers.... Just no.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

I'm a footy nut but was never a numbers-nerd, sure I can tell you Richo and Dusty's numbers, but few others, it's the last thing I'm focusing on when watching a game. My brother is the opposite, knows all the numbers. I never understood that.

If anything, words are more useful than numbers.

Having said that, do you really care who has got the ball? Commentators just use names for filler 'insert name here' passes to 'insert name here'...and so on and on and on

I'm team focused, a footy communist, I just want the team to put the ball through the big sticks. If you wear black and yellow, you're my man, you get the picture.

It’s more about what happens away from the match. I see opposition players discussed in the media and BF and I don’t know who they are. Give me a little more to go on and there’s a more engaged fan right there.

As we all know, what happens for three hours onfield on a weekend is just the start of so many footy stories.

And to the people saying who cares about the casual followers - FMD! The VFL/AFL has the dominance in Australia that it has, because it has always had an evangelical mindset. (The stark contrast with the NRL, which has always played to its rusted-on base, and hence will always be big, but never huge, couldn’t be starker.)

If potential new fans to the game would find an easier entry point by players jerseys having names, so they can more quickly take part in meaningful discussion, well we’ve just won more converts.

AFL is far and away the biggest league in Australia, but it’s not the biggest across all of Australia. Just do it.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

I wouldn't care less if they did. I know who all the players are.

That you can put names to an annually-shifting pool of 648 players’ faces is a very impressive achievement, but you have to understand that this ability of yours shows us that you speak for anything but the typical footy fan.

 

[Kim Hagdorn]

Sydney fan doesn't know the players' names and calls jumpers 'jerseys' what a surprise.