The Great Dane
First Grade
- Messages
- 7,960
So basically just kill the jersey market overnight because a miniscule minority of fans whom live in an echo chamber refuse to accept any design except for the "traditional" ones.This looks so good and it just makes me sad to think how shitty the jersey culture of RL is....
It is fine (I guess...) for the clubs to slap sponsors on the chest (EPL, etc) OR for the clubs to keep changing their designs (My mind goes to the Marvel Superheors changing costumes every film). But both of them together just gives us shocker after shocker (Imagine if Marvel slapped on huge new sponsors across the chest every time the characters get a new costume).
Honestly, it think it would be a decent rule for the ARLC to say "Each club has a core Home/Away jumper that cannot even change year to year (maybe with special permission for brand reboots). Clubs can also do as many extra special event jerseys as they like, but NO SPONSORS on those event jerseys." Make them use a secondary club logo like this "Sharks" thing or Melbourne "Melbourne - Our Home" V.
They can sell as many units of dumb gimmicks as they like, but the dumb gimmicks are 100% focused on expanding the club brand, not making space for chest billboards...
Yeah that's never going to happen, and nor should it, especially when which designs are accepted by this minority as the "traditional" ones is totally arbitrary and heavily influenced by nostalgia from their childhood.
Also you can keep whinging about sponsors all you like, but at the end of the day the NRL and clubs need the money, so they have a choice; either accept billboards on the kits and around the grounds, or accept changes to the rules to allow more time for stoppages to allow more time for ads.
I know which I'd prefer, and it isn't the game being corrupted by being split into quarters and a bunch of excuses for quick stoppages introduced.
Oh and those 'dumb gimmicks' (especially the Marvel jerseys) have done more to expose the NRL to new audiences than almost anything since the Tina Turner days, especially amongst younger people. You may not like them, can't say I'm a big fan myself (thought the Hulk jersey was very well done), but we weren't the target audience and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.