Photo by bdjsb7
My son is a diehard UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) fan, and he’s actually gotten me hooked. I mean, who doesn’t love seeing two guys beating the hell out of each other? He wanted to get a Tapout t-shirt, so we headed on over to Dick’s to get him sized properly. This is the one that he picked out:
I’ll admit, it does look pretty cool. Or “sick”, as my son put it. It was then that it occurred to me how insane all of this sports merchandising was.
Free Advertising
I had unused money on a gift card, so the shirts were “free”, so to speak. Any time that I don’t have to lay out cash, I consider it a freebie. The store had row upon row of various merchandise, all with their manufacturer’s logos proudly displayed. People were lining up to become shills for Nike. Reebok would be getting free advertising on every basketball court. No royalties were being paid by Under Armour.
Walking Billboards
When did this phenomenon start? I can remember back in junior high school, when one of my classmates had a shirt with “PUMA” emblazoned on the front. I didn’t know it at the time, but that may have been the start of people turning themselves into walking billboards. Of course, after that Puma sighting, we all wanted to fit in, so we donned our adidas shirts. Call it peer pressure.
Paradigm Shift
What a brilliant idea from the sports merchandising folks. Rather than wear a shirt with your favorite team’s logo, you were promoting the manufacturer of the shirt. Reebok knows no boundaries between Red Sox Nation and Yankees Universe. Bears and Packers fans both wear Under Armour. They’ve sidestepped loyalty to a team, and created loyalty to a brand. Quite the paradigm shift.
Source of Passive Income?
So I had an idea. Maybe I could send a bill to Tapout for the advertising cost. We could negotiate a royalty based on how many times my son wears the shirt. After all, websites charge for advertising based on page views. He’s got at least 600 kids in his high school, so that’s potentially 1,200 eyes on him every day, all from the demographic that Tapout wants to reach.
So my question is: Do you think they’d go for it? 
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