Special edition sweaters lucrative for jersey makers
Hockey at the NHL and junior A level especially has created a new and lucrative revenue stream.
It included the special edition sweater, the third sweaters and the special warm-up sweaters.
In the majority of these situations the teams raffle off the sweaters for a charity or special cause. The Peterborough Petes have been active in creating then making available special sweaters for a number of years. Their Pink in the Rink night is one of the longest running promotions to raise funds for cancer research in the OHL. Specially designed sweaters, now with the names of individuals honoured in their battles with cancer are actually listed on the sweaters.
Last week the Petes wore a special sweater supporting Toronto Sick Kids hospital new hospital fund. They even wore ugly Christmas sweater jerseys last year, auctioning them off for a charity.
This relatively new phenomenon has now started to show in NHL games. The league and teams are not actually creating new game sweaters for special causes because selling their replica sweaters is a major income source, but are warming up in specially designed sweaters to be made available for charities afterwards. Other sports are also joining in.
Major League Baseball had all their teams wear, for a weekend, team tops with players nicknames rather than their surnames embossed across the back. Even the Yankees, who refuse to put players’ names on the back, played along with this event. All the tops were auctioned off with proceeds for minor baseball and softball leagues.
Since all these leagues have agreements with sweater manufacturers, the big money makers are these companies who produce the sweaters. The teams, especially in the NHL do in many cases produce what they call a third sweater to sell in their merchandise stores along with replicates of their regular home and away sweaters.
This season the NHL teams are all wearing a similar designed regular sweater with a metallic NHL emblem on the front along with lacing that has no particular use other than make the sweater more unique and sell more in their stores.
Buying and wearing team sweaters, especially for adult fans, is something relatively new. It now seems you are the odd one out, especially at baseball and football games, if you are not wearing some type of team apparel.
That use to be strictly a young child thing. No self-respecting adult fan would ever wear anything depicting the team to a game or on the street. Years ago the only place you could regularly purchase a child-sized NHL team sweater or coat was from the Eatons or Simpson-Sears winter catalogues and the choices were just two teams, the Toronto Maple Leafs or the Montreal Canadiens. If the child favoured any of the other four Original 6 NHL teams, they were out of luck unless grandma could get a pattern and knit them a sweater.
As a pre-teen I was a Leafs fan. The first winter coat I remember having any input into purchasing was blue with a Leafs crest on it. I was proud of that coat.
George Street United Church once brought in a Leafs player for a Sunday evening service once a year. The player gave a brief message from the pulpit then signed autographs in the church hall afterwards. Even though we were not members of the church, my father took me to the service when Leafs captain Ted Kennedy was the guest. Afterwards, when he was signing my autograph book, he looked up, smiled and made a comment about my coat. That was a big deal for me.
Don Barrie is a retired teacher, former Buffalo Sabres scout and a member of the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame and Peterborough and District Sports Hall of Fame. HIs column appears each Saturday in The Examiner.