Ordering Teamwear: Keep Your Sponsors Happy

You found the first sponsors for your teamwear? Congratulations!

If there’s one thing that might be more important than finding sponsors, it is to keep them happy. For sure, winning matches is one way to put a smile on their faces. But there’s one thing they love even more than seeing your team score goals: their own company name and logo.

In our interview, we spoke with Magnus Johansson, General Manager of teamwear specialists SENZOR and asked him about the most important issues when it comes to placing sponsor logos and names on teamwear.

Technical details for teamwear sponsors

“First of all, a sponsor logo has to look good in itself. Nothing is worse than a logo that comes out blurry or pixely“, explains Magnus. “A sponsor will not give you money again, if their logo looks like a drunk person painted it on the jersey after midnight.“

As a minimum standard, a logo should have 300 dpi. Ideally, you ask your sponsor to provide it in a vectorized format. If they have a professional marketing department or advertising agency, they will understand. If not, tell them you need a file with an extension SVG, WMF, EPS, PDF, CDR or AI. Beware of file formats such as JPEG, PNG, APNG, GIF, WebP, BMP and MPEG4. Often their quality is not good enough.

“A professional teamwear expert will check this for you and help you, even or especially if you are a small team“, assures Magnus. „This is a service you will most likely not get from a sportswear store or – even worse – from some website where you upload your logos.“

An example that makes any teamwear sponsor proud: Leksands Knäckebröd polo shirt with embroidered logo and company name as well as company colour details on the sleeves.

So many teamwear sponsors, so many logos

If you are in the lucky position to have secured several sponsors and thus more sponsorship money from your teamwear sponsors, make sure to keep all of them looking good. This is not just a question of having all logos somewhere on the jersey, but of achieving a harmonious overall look.

This sounds easy and self-evident, but in practice it is hard. „Logos come in many shapes and colours. On your teamwear, you have to balance round and edgy features, so they don’t look strange. Other logos are just long texts, which results in you having to find a space for a logo that is wide but not very high. It’s tricky, but an experienced design team like ours will get the job done for you at no extra cost.

Who comes first?

Plus there is the delicate issue of vanity and of determining which sponsor logo should be placed on top. Placing logos in alphabetical order may seem obvious, and sometimes it is the only way out.

Consider also if you can convince your teamwear sponsors to have all logos in black and white or another monochrome solution. While a jersey with 27 different colours may look good if the professionals have balanced the design, it rarely does so in the hands of an amateur. In contrast, it often reminds of something more suitable for a circus than a sports arena.

Examples of clothing with multiple teamwear sponsors from various sports such as bandy, ice hockey, handball, running…

Keep the competition on the field, not on the jersey

In addition, you don’t want to irritate your sponsors by putting them next to your competition.

“Imagine a jersey with Pepsi and Coca-Cola as sponsors right next to each other. This is like saying, hey, all that stuff tastes the same anyway. It is just not done“, is the professional hint.

Make sure that all teamwear sponsors know who else is featured on your customized jersey to avoid nasty surprises.

Do you want to get your order for customized teamwear right?

Read more in our article series:

Helpful Hints for Ordering Teamwear

Helpful Hints for Keeping Players Happy