It's the same story in Major League Baseball. The proliferation of alternate uniforms got so out-of-hand that the league imposed a limit of five different uniforms per team last year. Unfortunately, one of those uniforms is the City Connect uniform which is unrecognizable to the extreme for most teams.
I hate it. I want every team to go back to a white home uniform with the team name (or logo like the classic Yankees, Cubs, Tigers), and a gray road uniform with the city name, and maybe one colorful Sunday home alternate worn sparingly.
It's bad enough that the rosters have high turnover every year due to free agency. I've said for a long time that it seems silly to have a favorite team, because you're basically cheering for the uniform (i.e. because the people in the uniform are changing constantly) but now that's not even true anymore.
Thanks for sharing; I haven't heard that clip before, and I love it.
I was a Braves fan from the mid-1990s into the 2000s not just because they were winners but because they did it largely with the same core group of guys, whose playing style I liked to watch, over that whole span. I wasn't a Yankees fan during that same era, but I could respect Yankees fans because they also had a core group of players that stuck together (plus they've really held the line on their uniforms).
> I wasn't a Yankees fan during that same era, but I could respect Yankees fans because they also had a core group of players that stuck together
You are really talking about 4 or 5 players only. The yankees, along with the braves, brought in a lot of help along the way.
Also, the players don't determine who your favorite team is. You don't stop being a yankees fan because derek jeter retired. People tend to be fans of the teams in their area. Especially the area you grew up in.
> ...4 or 5 players only... brought in a lot of help along the way.
Right, but at least it was that many. One could watch those same few anchors play together year-after-year for a decade or even longer, which is more than you could say about any other team then or since.
> ...players don't determine who your favorite team is. You don't stop being a yankees fan because derek jeter retired.
That is indeed how most people follow sports, yes. My point above was precisely that it's a bit silly to me. When Glavine and Maddux left Atlanta, I really did care much less about seeing the Braves play and win, because they were the guys that I most enjoyed watching.
As someone who used to wear jerseys because I thought they looked cool when I was young, I would have never bought a plain white or gray one.
I think the city connect jerseys are only bad because they are basically a collection of random colors with, often times, no association to the team. But if they actually were team colors, they would have definitely been interesting to me.
not gonna debate taste, but i was describing the uniform as an abomination. I think the font is perfect for indicating where in Fenway park the MEN and WOMEN's rooms are, but i'm old skool and I miss the group trough urinals
Those Boston stencil jerseys are the Boston Marathon ones. Red Sox play a day game on the same day as the marathon each April. It’s a whole day of things for the city. The stencil approach mimics the days of spray painting down the finish line.
True, I'm OK with an alternate, including the City Connect uniform for a few teams, that's basically a throwback uniform. Milwaukee's is kind of like that, at least with the colors. Also Atlanta's, Pittsburgh's, and Seattle's. The rest of them... no.
At least with baseball the game is such that it's hard to mix up players on different teams. They aren't generally in a messy mix in a small space under the basket.
Money is the main driver, of course. I think this trend started in the UK.
Before the EPL, most English soccer clubs had one home, one away strip. It wasn’t that long ago that the only writing would be a single number on the back, a club crest over the front left chest (“near the heart”, you see).
Around the 1980s, it seems to me that European leagues started to experiment - England taking a bit of a lead - with shirt sponsorship. One side effect was that shirts suddenly aged. Show me an Everton shirt with “NEC” on the front, or a Manchester City shirt with “brother”, well, I know roughly what season that shirt is from.
And fans want to wear the current shirt, often. We can take the piss out of the “full kit wanker”, who turns up to a game in shirt, kit shorts and socks, waiting to be subbed in to his favourite team, but people like to show allegiance and they like to show they’re up to date - in the UK even your car number plate tells your neighbours how “with it”, and therefore how rich you are.
Each season a club changed its shirt it would see a boost in income as new shirts would replace the old. This was new. And it gave them ideas.
First, what about changing the kit when the sponsor doesn’t change? Some graphic design element, a neck line, maybe a subtle colour change?
Then the “third kit” came in. Often used in cup competitions, but occasionally an option for league games. Infamously one grey third kit had to get changed at half time at Old Trafford, as none of the Man Utd team could see each other.
And then as some non-domestic leagues took more prominence - European football in particular - some clubs decided to create home and away kits for those competitions specifically.
So now we have a situation where clubs like Man City have 3 “base” shirts, plus goalkeeper, plus fashion variants, plus the women’s team…
If other leagues can get away with this, they will. Most European leagues have a similar thing going on, and it surprised me that NBA took so long to catch up, and that NFL haven’t gone at this at full throttle.
And of course, it has created a collector’s secondary market, special editions, anniversary shirts, “retro editions”, and so on.
Sports teams sure know how to milk passion via the wallet.
A friend works at an english football (soccer) club on the sponsorships team and yes money is definitely a big driver here!
Part of it is creating more sponsorship inventory - some brands can opt in for space on one of the jerseys that fit their budgets over others, or play around with sizing.
Great summary. My dad had only one or two jersey when he was a kid / teenager, because without sponsors they were all the same (maybe minor details)?
Now I am usually one of those who get a new jersey every new season, or maybe two if I like both home and away designs. There were years when I didnt get any, but those were the exceptions.
The implication is that this is a bad thing, but I don't really see why. If you're not sure who's playing can't you just look at the score overlay and see? I don't follow sports but when I see a game on at a restaurant it only takes me a few seconds to determine which team is which.
I think for a lot of us it's not a practical issue of determining which team is which, it's that sports are wrapped up in a lot of nostalgia. One grows up watching their team(s) as a kid and can continue to do so through the seasons of life even as everything else is changing. So it's sad when tradition is thrown away and it no longer feels like you're watching the same thing anymore.
In my case, I was obsessed with baseball as a kid but I stopped playing and stopped following the professionals when I went to college, met my wife, started my career, had kids, etc. Now I'm coming back around to follow baseball again and I'm often like, "What is this? This isn't what I remember." The uniform changes are part of that.
My football team has started to do the same thing, every now and then they change jersey throughout the season (without counting the THREE they start the season with) in order to sell new ones
They're making sports really hard to follow, and to be passionate about. Now I only watch it if I catch it in a bar and they have it on, I am hating football, it was on free tv, now some matches are on a paid TV, some other on another one, still paid, before it was wednesday, sunday, now it's monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday and sunday. I hope a lot of people stop watching it so that we can go back to something that makes sense
Aren't the sports generally growing their revenue and audiences? It seems the reason for the multicolored jerseys, gambling ads, etc. is you: 'You' (most people reading this) keep watching, no matter what.
Wow, my initial thoughts on more jersey variation is "that's kinda fun, but sometimes they're ugly". I'm surprised you think it makes sport hard to be passionate about.
I assume you're referring to football (soccer) since you called them matches.
Do you really think jersey changes are affecting your passion for sports or is this just another example of the system breaking down, but pay-to-watch is what's really hurting your interest?
As a Chicago Bulls fan, this site seemed like a lot of effort to explain a very small shift in their jerseys. I’m happy to see the Bulls are a low-flair outlier, and it was cool to be able to switch teams to compare.
There's so many alternate uniforms they many seem like low effort spam.
My team Timberwolves, some of their alternates are so simple they look like something you'd buy for your rec league at some small town screen printer...
The odds of really driving off long-time fans with uniform variations are low.
The odds of selling more jerseys to young fans - and possibly making new young fans as a result - are high.
Long-time fans have complained about the changes in sports for as long as there have been sports. Some of the new uniforms and courts especially have been terrible; I'll keep watching anyway.
Great data collection, nice data vil but somehow it fails to yield any interesting insights. I wish they had gotten into the why a bit more - are teams forced to choose jerseys that contrast with their opponents?
Jesus Christ almighty give me a site I can use if you want me to absorb your content.
I'm not using a screen reader, I have javascript enabled, I have up to date chrome, yet somehow I can't navigate your artsy site. What do you think your non-standard navigation is adding that is worth the cost of pissing users off?
What do I click on? Where's the content? Why am I guessing how to use your site? Actually, I'm done guessing and clicking the back button to get off this horrible thing.
I didn't downvote you, but I suspect others did because your comment goes against one of the guidelines for HN:
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
These sorts-of comments always come up whenever The Pudding makes the front page, since their visual essays have a style that some find offputting. (Personally I think they're delightful.)
Almost always, you navigate their essays by scrolling.
It's the same story in Major League Baseball. The proliferation of alternate uniforms got so out-of-hand that the league imposed a limit of five different uniforms per team last year. Unfortunately, one of those uniforms is the City Connect uniform which is unrecognizable to the extreme for most teams.
I hate it. I want every team to go back to a white home uniform with the team name (or logo like the classic Yankees, Cubs, Tigers), and a gray road uniform with the city name, and maybe one colorful Sunday home alternate worn sparingly.
It's bad enough that the rosters have high turnover every year due to free agency. I've said for a long time that it seems silly to have a favorite team, because you're basically cheering for the uniform (i.e. because the people in the uniform are changing constantly) but now that's not even true anymore.
> I've said for a long time that it seems silly to have a favorite team, because you're basically cheering for the uniform
You and Jerry Seinfeld have the same take, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we-L7w1K5Zo
Thanks for sharing; I haven't heard that clip before, and I love it.
I was a Braves fan from the mid-1990s into the 2000s not just because they were winners but because they did it largely with the same core group of guys, whose playing style I liked to watch, over that whole span. I wasn't a Yankees fan during that same era, but I could respect Yankees fans because they also had a core group of players that stuck together (plus they've really held the line on their uniforms).
> I wasn't a Yankees fan during that same era, but I could respect Yankees fans because they also had a core group of players that stuck together
You are really talking about 4 or 5 players only. The yankees, along with the braves, brought in a lot of help along the way.
Also, the players don't determine who your favorite team is. You don't stop being a yankees fan because derek jeter retired. People tend to be fans of the teams in their area. Especially the area you grew up in.
> ...4 or 5 players only... brought in a lot of help along the way.
Right, but at least it was that many. One could watch those same few anchors play together year-after-year for a decade or even longer, which is more than you could say about any other team then or since.
> ...players don't determine who your favorite team is. You don't stop being a yankees fan because derek jeter retired.
That is indeed how most people follow sports, yes. My point above was precisely that it's a bit silly to me. When Glavine and Maddux left Atlanta, I really did care much less about seeing the Braves play and win, because they were the guys that I most enjoyed watching.
As someone who used to wear jerseys because I thought they looked cool when I was young, I would have never bought a plain white or gray one.
I think the city connect jerseys are only bad because they are basically a collection of random colors with, often times, no association to the team. But if they actually were team colors, they would have definitely been interesting to me.
>the City Connect uniform which is unrecognizable to the extreme for most teams
but it gets even worse in gradations, compare the Milwaukee "Brew Crew" uniform which is kinda cool
https://img.mlbstatic.com/mlb-images/image/private/t_16x9/t_...
to the similar color combination Boston "spray painted stencil" font abomination
https://img.mlbstatic.com/mlb-images/image/private/t_16x9/t_...
I get that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but why would you describe the font as an abomination? It seems unassuming and easy to read to me.
For one thing they don't space it so that the S isn't overlapping the two sides of the shirt. I hate that no matter what the font.
not gonna debate taste, but i was describing the uniform as an abomination. I think the font is perfect for indicating where in Fenway park the MEN and WOMEN's rooms are, but i'm old skool and I miss the group trough urinals
Those Boston stencil jerseys are the Boston Marathon ones. Red Sox play a day game on the same day as the marathon each April. It’s a whole day of things for the city. The stencil approach mimics the days of spray painting down the finish line.
If they only wore it on Patriots' Day, fine, but they wore it 50 times in the last four years.
True, I'm OK with an alternate, including the City Connect uniform for a few teams, that's basically a throwback uniform. Milwaukee's is kind of like that, at least with the colors. Also Atlanta's, Pittsburgh's, and Seattle's. The rest of them... no.
At least with baseball the game is such that it's hard to mix up players on different teams. They aren't generally in a messy mix in a small space under the basket.
> City Connect uniform which is unrecognizable to the extreme for most teams.
Preach. The NY Mets version looks like Colorado Rockies themed children's pajamas.
Money is the main driver, of course. I think this trend started in the UK.
Before the EPL, most English soccer clubs had one home, one away strip. It wasn’t that long ago that the only writing would be a single number on the back, a club crest over the front left chest (“near the heart”, you see).
Around the 1980s, it seems to me that European leagues started to experiment - England taking a bit of a lead - with shirt sponsorship. One side effect was that shirts suddenly aged. Show me an Everton shirt with “NEC” on the front, or a Manchester City shirt with “brother”, well, I know roughly what season that shirt is from.
And fans want to wear the current shirt, often. We can take the piss out of the “full kit wanker”, who turns up to a game in shirt, kit shorts and socks, waiting to be subbed in to his favourite team, but people like to show allegiance and they like to show they’re up to date - in the UK even your car number plate tells your neighbours how “with it”, and therefore how rich you are.
Each season a club changed its shirt it would see a boost in income as new shirts would replace the old. This was new. And it gave them ideas.
First, what about changing the kit when the sponsor doesn’t change? Some graphic design element, a neck line, maybe a subtle colour change?
Then the “third kit” came in. Often used in cup competitions, but occasionally an option for league games. Infamously one grey third kit had to get changed at half time at Old Trafford, as none of the Man Utd team could see each other.
And then as some non-domestic leagues took more prominence - European football in particular - some clubs decided to create home and away kits for those competitions specifically.
So now we have a situation where clubs like Man City have 3 “base” shirts, plus goalkeeper, plus fashion variants, plus the women’s team…
If other leagues can get away with this, they will. Most European leagues have a similar thing going on, and it surprised me that NBA took so long to catch up, and that NFL haven’t gone at this at full throttle.
And of course, it has created a collector’s secondary market, special editions, anniversary shirts, “retro editions”, and so on.
Sports teams sure know how to milk passion via the wallet.
A friend works at an english football (soccer) club on the sponsorships team and yes money is definitely a big driver here!
Part of it is creating more sponsorship inventory - some brands can opt in for space on one of the jerseys that fit their budgets over others, or play around with sizing.
Great summary. My dad had only one or two jersey when he was a kid / teenager, because without sponsors they were all the same (maybe minor details)?
Now I am usually one of those who get a new jersey every new season, or maybe two if I like both home and away designs. There were years when I didnt get any, but those were the exceptions.
The implication is that this is a bad thing, but I don't really see why. If you're not sure who's playing can't you just look at the score overlay and see? I don't follow sports but when I see a game on at a restaurant it only takes me a few seconds to determine which team is which.
I think for a lot of us it's not a practical issue of determining which team is which, it's that sports are wrapped up in a lot of nostalgia. One grows up watching their team(s) as a kid and can continue to do so through the seasons of life even as everything else is changing. So it's sad when tradition is thrown away and it no longer feels like you're watching the same thing anymore.
In my case, I was obsessed with baseball as a kid but I stopped playing and stopped following the professionals when I went to college, met my wife, started my career, had kids, etc. Now I'm coming back around to follow baseball again and I'm often like, "What is this? This isn't what I remember." The uniform changes are part of that.
My football team has started to do the same thing, every now and then they change jersey throughout the season (without counting the THREE they start the season with) in order to sell new ones
They're making sports really hard to follow, and to be passionate about. Now I only watch it if I catch it in a bar and they have it on, I am hating football, it was on free tv, now some matches are on a paid TV, some other on another one, still paid, before it was wednesday, sunday, now it's monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday and sunday. I hope a lot of people stop watching it so that we can go back to something that makes sense
Aren't the sports generally growing their revenue and audiences? It seems the reason for the multicolored jerseys, gambling ads, etc. is you: 'You' (most people reading this) keep watching, no matter what.
Wow, my initial thoughts on more jersey variation is "that's kinda fun, but sometimes they're ugly". I'm surprised you think it makes sport hard to be passionate about.
I assume you're referring to football (soccer) since you called them matches.
Do you really think jersey changes are affecting your passion for sports or is this just another example of the system breaking down, but pay-to-watch is what's really hurting your interest?
It's hurting because they're constantly trying to sell you something, even the jersey is full of sponsor in soccer
The multicolored jerseys, not the incessant idiotic gambling ads, are what makes sports hard to watch apparently.
why not both, it's not the jersey in itself, its the constant tentative of sell you something
As a Chicago Bulls fan, this site seemed like a lot of effort to explain a very small shift in their jerseys. I’m happy to see the Bulls are a low-flair outlier, and it was cool to be able to switch teams to compare.
There's so many alternate uniforms they many seem like low effort spam.
My team Timberwolves, some of their alternates are so simple they look like something you'd buy for your rec league at some small town screen printer...
I was expecting a mention of advertising.
Anyone else find the referee's uniforms distracting, with the big red EMIRATES logos?
Pic: https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/nba-emirates-patch-...
The odds of really driving off long-time fans with uniform variations are low.
The odds of selling more jerseys to young fans - and possibly making new young fans as a result - are high.
Long-time fans have complained about the changes in sports for as long as there have been sports. Some of the new uniforms and courts especially have been terrible; I'll keep watching anyway.
Great data collection, nice data vil but somehow it fails to yield any interesting insights. I wish they had gotten into the why a bit more - are teams forced to choose jerseys that contrast with their opponents?
Very cool! Also interesting the the NFL is on a similar trend with color rush.
this is an exceptional example of modern website. very nice job. may i ask what framework you are using for the UX?
blame nike for that uniform nonsense.
and in the mlb quality of jerseys has gone down as well.
for soccer nike kits for some teams have been an abormination or copy/paste jobs.
in the nfl - meh.
light vs dark was in multiple sports due to early television being black and white. It made easy to understand what's going on on the screen.
“And for those of you watching in black and white, the pink ball is next to the green”
Jesus Christ almighty give me a site I can use if you want me to absorb your content.
I'm not using a screen reader, I have javascript enabled, I have up to date chrome, yet somehow I can't navigate your artsy site. What do you think your non-standard navigation is adding that is worth the cost of pissing users off?
What do I click on? Where's the content? Why am I guessing how to use your site? Actually, I'm done guessing and clicking the back button to get off this horrible thing.
I didn't downvote you, but I suspect others did because your comment goes against one of the guidelines for HN:
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
These sorts-of comments always come up whenever The Pudding makes the front page, since their visual essays have a style that some find offputting. (Personally I think they're delightful.)
Almost always, you navigate their essays by scrolling.
Hey buddy, I love to complain too, but honestly I find the Pudding extremely easy to use. What could be more simple than keep scrolling down?
I'm sure there's tons of simple ways to steer an automobile but if I don't see a wheel I'm not going anywhere in the thing.