Lucrative jersey deal another major victory for Warriors
OAKLAND >> It’s been 18 months since Warriors co-owner Joe Lacob proclaimed to the New York Times that his team was “light-years ahead” of every other franchise in the NBA.
On the court, even with the Warriors’ possibly karmic 2016 NBA Finals loss, Lacob’s proclamation rings true — the NBA season is set to get under way in a matter of days and Golden State will enter the campaign as the prohibitive title favorites, boasting a roster that might be the best in modern league history.
This is a squad that — if it wants to — could make last year’s 83-16 team look paltry in comparison.
“Light years,” indeed.
But the Warriors organization isn’t content with merely dominating the NBA on the court, it seems — it needs to be “light years ahead” off the court as well.
Tuesday, we found another example of that.
The NBA is allowing teams to sell sponsorships on the front of their jerseys now, and the Warriors went out and signed the most lucrative sponsorship deal in the league. According to ESPN, Japanese tech company Rakuten will pay the Warriors $20 million per season over the next three years for the right to post a roughly 6-square-inch billboard on the Dubs’ jerseys.
It makes sense for Rakuten to align with the Warriors and vice versa — or so we were told by defacto brands ambassador Dray-
mond Green in a tight three-minute, seemingly off-the-cuff spiel that rivaled anything Tim Cook did in Cupertino on Tuesday.
Even after a 40-minute presentation, I’m still not totally sure what Rakuten does, but they seem to have a lot of products. My best guess is that they’re the Amazon of Japan. That interests the Warriors, who want to further entrench their brand in the growing Asian marketplace.
“California is a country … a Pacific Rim country,” Warriors co-owner Peter Guber said. “It’s the sixth-largest economy in the world, so having these brands aligned here speaks to the world audience.”
But it doesn’t matter to the fan that Viber is the new official “instant messaging and calling app partner” or that Kubo is the new “official e-reader partner” of the Warriors — all that matters is that the patch looks inauspicious on the Warriors’ jerseys and that Rakuten is going to pay the Warriors a ton of money. So much money.
If the deal is worth $60 million over the next three years, as ESPN reported, then it will be twice as lucrative than the next-largest jersey sponsorship deal to date — which just so happens to be the Cleveland Cavaliers’ pact with tire company Goodyear, worth $10 million per season. Most jersey sponsorship deals have been worth between $5 million and $7 million per year.
Yes, the Warriors pulled double the next-best deal, and Rakuten wasn’t even the team’s largest offer. Again, “light years.” Warriors chief marketing officer Chip Bowers said Tuesday that the team had three serious bidders for the jersey sponsorship going against each other, but they went with Rakuten because of (insert corporate synergy talk here). Again, the important thing is that the patch looks fine.
Other teams could surpass the Warriors’ deal in the coming days — the Bulls, Knicks, Lakers and Rockets haven’t announced jersey sponsorship deals — but even if they do, the Warriors deserve credit for drastically re-setting another NBA market.
And as for how it affects the actual team on the floor, this deal should help the Warriors — if only a bit — keep their roster together moving forward, despite the threat of a highly punitive luxury tax looming in the years to come.
“We run a business, and financial revenue, expenses — it’s all part of it,” general manager Bob Myers said. “I don’t look at it as far as helping us build our team — indirectly, it does. Resources that are put into revenue stream, our ownership group pushes it back in the direction of the front office and says ‘build the best team you can.’ ”
Having another
$20 million on the books should make it just a bit easier for Lacob and Guber to open up their checkbooks and pay those big luxury tax bills Myers and the Warriors players are going to send their way.
The Warriors just finished one of the great postseason runs in sports history, they had a stellar offseason to bring back an arguably better team, and with this deal and the new arena in San Francisco (which is still on schedule to open in 2019, per Bowers) are winning big on the business side of the game as well.
It all begs the question: When’s the next time the Warriors are going to lose?