NBA: Addison Foote Offers 30 New Team Logo Designs

NBA Team Merchandising Big Business

Ever wonder why teams have numerous jersey designs, colors or change their logo? Quite simply it’s all about the money!

With the re-negotiated NBA television contracts, salary caps will hit an unprecedented mark somewhere north of $100 million by 2017-18. While organizations earn the majority of their money via these contracts and ticket sales it’s not the only way revenue is generated. Capitalizing on sales of jerseys, hats and other merchandise is another key revenue stream. Organizations offer a myriad of options to fans and for the collector any new color or specialty jersey becomes a must add to their collection.

For example, I live in Toronto so I personally own the original purple jersey, jerseys with a white, black and red background and a camo jersey utilized every season around Remembrance Day as a salute to the Armed Forces. When you factor in the constantly changing rosters you can imagine how this adds up to a big chunk of change. The other way teams can increase their merchandise sales is via a change to the team logo.

Recently Graphic Designer Addison Foote undertook a project to futurize the logo for each of the 30 NBA teams and did so in a very efficient 3o days. You can view all the logo’s at this link. I’m not sure it’s homerism on my part but my favorites just happened to be the Raptors and the Rockets. Here’s my top 5 favorites of Addison Foote’s designs and why:

Houston Rockets:

I love the addition of the Rocket inside the basketball made to look like a planet. Addison Foote utilized the horizon line under the team name which adds a real futuristic tone to the design.

Toronto Raptors:

Granted I’m already pretty fond of the Raptors different jerseys and logos but I do really love this idea with the Raptor eye in the R and the Canadian Flag in the background.

Minnesota Timberwolves:

Big fan of this redesign which has the tree prominent in the wolves ear and I love the more menacing wolf. With the young pack of wolves in Minnesota it just feels like the perfect design to fit the current roster.

Atlanta Hawks:

I’m not a fan of the current Hawks logo but love Foote’s re-design. The colors work, the use of the A and H lettering works and the Hawk actually looks like it means business!

Portland Trail Blazers:

Finally I really like the minimalism of the Foote’s design yet the little details of incorporating the rose thorns into the racing stripe are brilliant.

So, that’s my top 5, have a look at all 30 and see which ones you like. Notably I didn’t pick any of the more historical teams and their new logo’s as it just feels like sacrilege to mess with the Knicks, Lakers, Bulls, 76ers or Celtics designs. Besides many of those teams even though not currently top teams still find themselves among the leagues top sellers.

Top Teams and Players Jersey Sales of 2014-15

The top teams of the regular season and post season are often the teams who have the highest player jersey sales or are teams with rich histories. Looking at this past season the Lakers and Knicks played so poorly they ended up with the second and fourth picks in the draft, but still made the top 10 list in jersey sales. Our Rockets didn’t make the regular season lists for either team or player jersey sales, but they did appear on the team post season list in sixth position and James Harden made the top 15 list in the seventh position. Here’s the entire lists for both teams and players of the regular and post season:

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Top 10 team sales of jerseys in 2014-15:

Top 15 player jersey sales of 2014-15:

The top 10 post season sales for 2014-15 were:

Top 15 Most Popular NBA Jerseys Post Season:

1. Stephen Curry
2. LeBron James
3. Derrick Rose
4. Kyrie Irving
5. Klay Thompson
6. Kobe Bryant
7. James Harden
8. Blake Griffin
9. Tim Duncan
10. Chris Paul
11. Kevin Durant
12. Kawhi Leonard
13. Russell Westbrook
14. Matthew Dellavedova
15. Draymond Green

As teams prepare for the new season several teams have altered their logos:

Toronto came up with a cool design, but it’s vaguely close to the Nets design.
The Bucks made a more contemporary deer design
The Clippers who’ve replaced a logo that was out dated and needed replacing, but obviously didn’t pay their graphic designer enough
The Hawks who should pay Addision Foote for a much better design

So, teams will soon be actively marketing and selling their merchandise. In the interim take another flip through Addison Foote’s marvelous designs and tell us which ones you like the best.

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Next: Southwest Division Off Season Update, Aug 20

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