There won't be ads coming to NHL uniforms soon, but we might have to brace ourselves for the inevitability.
Ads won't be coming to NHL uniforms this year, and we can all thank the owners for that.
During a recent meeting among NHL owners, they've decided to say "no" to at least $120 million in added revenue, according to TSN. That works out to an extra $4 million per team, and hey, that's money that could be going toward re-signing someone important.
Of course, the cost of making that happen is having jerseys potentially look like billboards and the scorn it would bring from hockey fans, and we all know how cool and level-headed hockey fans are.
But there's something we all have to prepare ourselves for: the day when ads on uniforms does become a reality. We've already seen teams adding corporate logos to practice jerseys. The Los Angeles Kings' deal with McDonald's is one of the more apparent ones, and they're not alone in doing it.
While companies like McDonald's pay a fair amount to make it onto a practice jersey, cash rules everything around us, and someday owners are going to swallow hard, ignore their Twitter streams for a while and push the button to put ads on game jerseys.
Fans will freak out thinking NHL sweaters will start to look like European league jerseys and yet another apocalypse will be nigh, and let's face it, no one is prepared for that kind of PR mess. Not even the NBA, whose commissioner Adam Silver has said ads will happen eventually, has yet to pull the trigger.
In the future, however, you'd better be ready to have that Dunkin' Donuts logo stitched on your Bruins jersey or a Wawa patch on your Flyers sweater.