This isn't like the NBA where teams are often playing 3 games in a calendar week so although they have one-off jerseys, their main jerseys get plenty of wear and (most importantly) don't change every year. In the NRL we have 26 rounds a season and clubs have a home jersey, away jersey, heritage jersey, women in League jersey and now special edition movie jerseys. That means, on average, a certain team will wear a particular jersey just 6 times in a season.
An important part of club marketing is having a stable identity, if a club has all these different jerseys then it makes it harder for the general public to identify a team and furthermore, who is going to want to buy a jersey if you're only going to see the team ever wear it a handful of times?
And this multiple sponsors fad is something else the NRL need to stamp out. Club jerseys are in danger of looking like NASCAR team shirts with all these multi-coloured logos all over them. The clubs may argue that they are giving more exposure to their sponsors, but I would argue that having lots of different sponsors, changing year after year, makes it harder to identify particular sponsors with the clubs they support, which defeats the purpose of brand recognition. As an example, while staying on this very page, I can still remember every clubs' major sponsor and sleeve sponsor from the simpler, more uncluttered season of 1999- when we had 17 teams:
North Qld- Overflow (Main) KFC (Sleeve)
Brisbane- 131 Shop (Main) Ansett (Sleeve)
Newcastle- Impulse Airlines (Main) NBN Television (Sleeve)
Manly-Warringah- FAI Insurance (Main) Fuji Film (Sleeve)
North Sydney- BBX (Main) No sleeve sponsor.
Sydney City- Siemens (Main) City Ford (Sleeve)
Auckland- Vodafone (Main) Barter Card (Sleeve)
South Sydney- Downtown Duty Free (Main) RSL.com (Sleeve)
St George Illawarra- Integral Energy (Main) St George Bank (Sleeve)
Cronulla- Pepsi (Main) Fox8 (Sleeve)
Canberra- Oracle (Main and sleeve- the best way for a company to get recognition IMO)
Melbourne- No main sponsor, Honda as sleeve sponsor.
Canterbury- Stardome (Main) Cenovis vitamins (Sleeve)
Balmain- Meriton Apartments (Main) No sleeve.
Parramatta- Asics (Main and sleeve, again a great way to get brand recognition).
Western Suburbs- Signature Alarm Systems (Main) Wests Ashfield (Sleeve)
Penrith- (No jersey sponsors, however the following year they struck a deal with Sanyo which lasted 11 years and had great sponsor integration).
13 years on and I can still recall all of those companies. I'd have a hard time recalling even who every clubs' jersey sponsor was 5 years ago. Not just that, but too many sponsors looks cluttered and ugly. The English Premier League is a great example of how a major sponsor can get maximum exposure while (generally) integrating themselves. The NRL should follow suit.
/rant.
