An admission. I’m a football (soccer) jersey maniac. I started collecting them when I was 11 and have not stopped since. I must own well over 150 and I own every Arsenal home and away jersey since 1983. My most recent one (pictured below) is the new Arsenal away jersey that I bought here in the States two weeks ago. The catch? Official release day is today. Pretty cool (kinda like getting a pre-release copy of your favorite band’s album.)

Back when I was a kid in the early eighties, all football clubs relied on gate receipts as their only source of revenue (insert music business parallel: record sales). Sport was not yet a big business and no one was thinking about “revenue diversification” exactly. People were just happy to win a few championships and players did not make all that much money. I still remember that shirt sponsorship was prohibited and even brandmarks like adidas or Puma had to be covered when a game was televised. Back in those days a club like Arsenal would pretty much keep the same jersey year in and year out for about decade. No one ever thought of sponsorship or shirt sales as a viable way to make money.

Then all of a sudden, Liverpool FC ushered in a new era when in the early eighties did a deal with Hitachi, the Japanese electronics company, to sponsor their shirts. Purists freaked out and other clubs scoffed at the notion of having their shirts sponsored, but pretty soon Manchester United did a deal with Sharp; Arsenal with JVC; Manchester City with SAAB, Bayern Munich with Commodore, etc. Within a short period of time if your shirt did not carry sponsorship, you were not a serious club (Barcelona the only exception until two years ago when it gave in to UNICEF).

By the mid-eighties, as hooliganism drove many fans away from stadiums, football clubs realized that replica shirts can help boost sales and make up for lost revenue — so they started marketing jerseys as both a great affiliation statement but also a fashion accessory that they sold to millions of fans — some of who never paid a penny to buy a ticket for a match. Since then, club jerseys have been designed to look great both on the pitch (field) and with jeans. The David Beckham LA Galaxy jersey sold in excess of 750,000 in just a few months (at roughly $100 a pop, that’s about $75 million in gross sales). And if you take a look at any big club’s financials, replica jersey sales, shirt sponsorship and TV revenue collectively account for much more money than gate receipts do. (Adidas just paid the German national football team $298 million for the rights to make their jerseys; Fiat paid Juventus $134 million to be the sponsor on their shirt.) There are millions of Manchester United and Real Madrid fans out there that watch these teams on TV every week and wear their jerseys, but have never, ever, actually set a foot at either Old Trafford (home of Man. U.) or Santiago Bernabeu (home of Real).

I think the parallels with the music business are pretty obvious. The record labels will have you believe that just because record sales are declining, the music business is about to vanish. Yeah, right. As football clubs discovered almost three decades ago, crisis can lead to opportunity. Just as a modern football club’s income statement has revenue generated from TV rights, sponsorship, fan clubs, jersey sales, merchandise, video games, concession stands, branded gear, etc., the income statement of the modern empowered artist will be far more diverse than just record sales and touring income.

That’s what I’m talking about when I refer to the Artistic Middle Class: artists that realize that their income will no longer be dependent on a record label but on everything from brand sponsorships, sync licences, fan donations, touring, publishing, merchandise sales, and yes, shirt sales.

People like me will line up to buy them.

Panos

P.S. Is this shirt the coolest or what?

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