The popularity of sports is increasing every year and this means lots of money to be made. Every league has corporate sponsors that pay lots of money to be able to proclaim that they are the "Official Beer of the NFL" or the naming rights of a stadium such as "Centurylink Field." With both general managers and advertising executives trying to think up new ways to make money and promote their offerings it is only natural that corporations began advertising on the jerseys that players wear. The practice began with soccer teams and is now spreading into the NFL during training camps and the NBA is thinking about doing it during regular season games. I started noticing the practice of putting corporate names on jerseys when the Sounders began playing in Seattle in 2009 and the Seahawks began to wear corporate names at training camp a couple of years ago. Both the Seahawks and Sounders are owned by Paul Allen, who is a co-founder of Microsoft, and both teams promote Microsoft products. The Seahawks advertise the Bing Search Engine and the Sounders advertise the X-Box Game System. The advertising is being targeted at fans of the Seahawks and Sounders who want to use the same products that their favorite sports team is advertising. This would be directed at fans who have interests in sports. These advertisements satisfy a want because they makes consumers want to use Bing as a search engine or buy a X-Box game system. The advertisement is designed to create brand awareness and does not explicitly tell consumers where to purchase these products. The product's primary competitor is Google for Bing and Playstation for X-Box. I prefer Google to Bing and regard Playstation and X-Box as equal to each other. These advertisements on jerseys do not affect the way I buy products and I find myself indifferent to them because many factors contribute to how I purchase an offering and I am not swayed by whether a company sponsors a team or not.
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