Corporate sponsorships on NBA jerseys are slowly becoming a thing, from StubHub using the Sixers’ jerseys to advertise a way of finding tickets for other, better teams, to General Electric’s logo being rendered in Celtic green, to the dismay of marketing softboys the world over (there is no better argument for the intellectual bankruptcy of the entire advertising industry than the commotion that greets a major corporation altering the colors of its logo).
While the Utah Jazz recently got their jerseys sponsored by Qualtrics, a company that specializes in "research and experience software" (so, web browsers?) for $4 million, this trend has yet to make its way up I-70 to the Mile High City. Perhaps this is because attendance is so low at the Pepsi Center that marketers would rather expand awareness of their brands by tackling random street pedestrians and forcibly tattooing them, but it’s more likely that the right corporate sponsor hasn’t emerged yet.
In the interest, then, of helping the Kroenke family squeeze some extra dollars out of this franchise to buy more tarps in Los Angeles, I have come up with a list of potential sponsors for the Denver Nuggets’ basketball jerseys. I promise to mention this list to the next "Inside Sales Representative" who e-mails me asking whether I’m really, absolutely, 100% sure I don’t want to buy season tickets.
1. Cheba Hut
Look, there’s no way of getting around this: Colorado made national headlines in 2014 by passing a constitutional amendment that legalized marijuana in the state. Cheba Hut is a sandwich restaurant themed around, basically, "weed jokes." And the Denver Nuggets are commonly referred to as the "Nugs," which is both the name of the smallest sandwich size at Cheba Hut, and, according to friends who had more adventurous college experiences than me, a slang term for a cannabis bud.
Marketing Opportunities: This is #BrandSynergy at its finest, and the potential collaborations between Cheba Hut and the Nuggets practically write themselves. Discounts on Nugs in local Cheba Huts after a Denver win? A "Toasted Player of the Game," given to the opposing player who committed the most egregious defensive error? The Nuggets wearing special sandwich-themed jerseys on April 20? A "Buds Night," where anyone who goes to the game with their friend gets a coupon for a free meal upgrade? Whatever they come up with, it’s guaranteed to make Adam Silver grip a chair so hard it cracks in half, which is really the most you can hope for in a team’s marketing strategy.
2. ShaneCo
The fact that Denver’s basketball team is named after an unrefined precious metal has always been a little awkward, but the best possible solution may be to steer into the skid, and partner with the most recognizable precious-metals retailer in the state. Known for their earworm radio ads and their tendency to put up job postings for copywriters and then never respond to the applications, no matter how badly you need a job after leaving your last one in the mistaken belief that the market was going to be better, ShaneCo is a Colorado fixture, with widespread local recognition and even a brief appearance in South Park. Aligning themselves with a young, talented Nuggets team that could be competing for a title in a few short years would only cement their reputation as Denver’s friend in the RINGZZZ business.
Marketing Opportunities: ShaneCo already sponsors the Kiss Cam at Nuggets games, but sponsoring the Nuggets jerseys would give them an opportunity to expand on an idea they have experimented with in the past: the Proposal Cam. Anyone who is willing to propose to their significant other on the JumboTron while wearing a ShaneCo-sponsored jersey will get a free ShaneCo ring with which to perform the proposal. They could also craft some custom pinkie rings for Nikola Jokic’s large brothers.
3. Oskar Blues Brewery
I went to seven Nuggets games last year, usually in the top row because I’m an inveterate cheapskate (look for my guide on sneaking into the 100 Section during the third quarter later this year). During one of these games, I went to get a beer from the concessions stand, and saw that there were 3 price points: domestic, premium, and imported. Wanting a good beer but not wanting to spend too much, I decided to go for a Dale’s Pale Ale tallboy, figuring that that would count as a "premium." So you can imagine my surprise and displeasure when they charged me for an IMPORTED beer. Are you kidding me?! In what world does a beer coming from LONGMONT count as "imported?" The Pepsi Center is practically as close to Longmont as it is to Golden, but you weren’t charging nine damn dollars for a Coors!
Marketing Opportunities: If Oskar Blues became the Nuggets’ jersey sponsors, they could use that extra awareness to convince us all that a mediocre Boulder suburb counts as a different country now. I’m honestly still a little angry.
4. Chipotle
Chipotle needs some positive press after a few news cycles where it mainly seemed to be associated with breakouts of food-borne disease at its restaurants. Don’t get me wrong, those were good times for those of us who understood how low the risk actually was and got to experience the beauty of line-free Chipotle at lunch hours, but I have to guess that the company was losing money, even when the complete lack of fellow workers tempted me to spring for a two-margarita lunch. A sponsorship deal with the Nuggets could rehabilitate their image while establishing them as a dominant fast-casual brand.
Marketing Opportunites: A Chipotle in the Pepsi Center would be a welcome respite from the arena’s generally mediocre food offerings, and they could do little gimmicky things like wrap the burritos in gold-colored foil, and of course there’s the opportunity for discount coupons and all that, but the main thing I want to see is a Burrito Cannon. Just have Rocky fire hot, dense, 2-pound mission burritos into an alternately cheering and screaming crowd. It would be a glorious, sour-cream-and-salsa-coated mess. That’s really all I’m asking for here.
5. DaVita
This Denver-based dialysis firm may not seem like the most intuitive pick for the Nuggets’ uniform sponsor, but it makes some sense. Their large building is a landmark on the west side of LoDo, and the blue and gold of their logo matches the Nuggets’ color scheme. More to the point, they could use some good press after John Oliver made a 24-minute video investigating their shady business practices, which include paying illegal kick-backs to doctors, re-using medical supplies, paying over a billion dollars in lawsuit settlements, and subtly discouraging customers from getting potentially life-saving kidney donations.
Not only that, but the video outed DaVita CEO Kent Thiry as a first-rate nutjob, allowing his inexplicable fandom for the 1998 musketeer movie The Man in the Iron Mask to turn him into the floppy-hatted jester king of a company that he views, with a creepy hint of feudalism, as his "village," with the employees as its "citizens." But if there’s one place we still allow our billionaires to be creepy and eccentric and generally unencumbered by competence, it’s politics! And if there’s two places, it’s politics and the world of professional sports! Did I mention that Thiry is running for governor?
Marketing Opportunities: No doubt Thiry would request that the team’s name be changed to the Musketeers and one player on the court be forced to wear an iron gimp mask, so there’s two nice big revenue streams for the team right there. DaVita could partner with Nuggets’ Musketeers’ arena sponsor PepsiCo to make soft drinks in the arena cheaper and larger, the better to ensure that a greater percentage of fans develop kidney failure via type-2 diabetes. And for a few games each year, Davita could hold Used Medical Supplies night, where a circling mechanical DaVita blimp drops second-hand IV bags, half-empty Epogen vials, and lightly-used syringes on the excited crowd.
So there you have it. Like it or not, branded jerseys are becoming a reality in the NBA, and we have to be ready for the sort of change that may bring. It would not surprise me if one or more of the above scenarios plays out exactly as I predicted it, but of course these aren’t the only companies that might be interested in sponsoring the Denver Nuggets jerseys. What other companies’ logos could you see gracing the Nuggets’ jerseys in the next few years?
