The Giants became the 14th MLB team to put an advertisement on their game jerseys, as they officially partnered with driverless car company Cruise.
For the rest of the season, and through 2025, all of the Giants’ jerseys will have a Cruise logo sewn onto a sleeve.
The franchise announced the partnership with a video featuring manager Gabe Kapler and All-Star closer Camilo Doval. Before their Thursday afternoon game, a Cruise car parked in Willie Mays Plaza for onlookers to check out.
Between innings, Kapler’s face flashed onto the center-field screen and told the crowd: The Giants and Cruise. Together, driving our city into a brighter future.
“We’re excited about it,” Giants CEO Larry Baer told KNBR.com. “The thing about Cruise is it’s a San Francisco company, it represents innovation, and it represents the new economy. That’s kind of what we’re about, we view ourselves as the team of Silicon Valley.”
The move will certainly have its detractors. Baseball purists might not want their favorite team’s jerseys to be altered by a corporation. Progressives, especially in San Francisco, have been skeptical of driverless taxis’ readiness for the roads.
It’s history, nonetheless. Here’s everything you need to know about the partnership.
What’s the big deal with jersey patches?
During the 2022 collective bargaining negotiations, the MLB Players Association and owners agreed to permit teams to sell ad space on jerseys in a limited capacity.
Starting this season, teams can sell a 4-by-4 jersey patch advertisement on a sleeve. The sponsor and its logo must be approved by the league and players for every team, with alcohol, betting and media brands prohibited, per Sportico.
Austin Slater, the Giants’ players association representative, said there wasn’t much resistance from the players on the topic during CBA talks.
“Like anything else in bargaining, there’s a tit-for-tat kind of thing,” Slater told KNBR.com. “There’s horse trading all around. There was no pushback from us, but there’s always going to be push and pull in other areas.”
The San Diego Padres were the first team to sign a jersey patch deal, with a reported $9 million agreement with cell phone company Motorola. About half the teams in the sport have now partnered with sponsors.
“I think we just wanted to make sure that it didn’t jump from no patches to all of the sudden the soccer jerseys, where AIG is right across the front,” Slater said. “I think Major League Baseball was on the same page. I don’t think they wanted to have anything excessively large.”
Jersey advertisements represent just one more way for teams to generate another revenue stream.
“I think it was incorporated really well,” Kapler said of the patch. “It doesn’t stand out. Obviously, Cruise is a San Francisco, progressive, fantastic company with aspirations to make traffic safe. So it feels very natural, very authentic.”
What is Cruise?
Founded in 2013, Cruise is one of the several companies aiming to innovate in the autonomous vehicle space. Its largest investor is General Motors.
Residents of San Francisco have seen the amount of driverless taxis proliferate in recent years. Cars with spinning black cameras attached to their exteriors patrol the streets, accumulating data and getting experience on the roads.
Driverless cars, Cruise and other companies in the industry say, are safer than cars driven by humans. They statistically get into fewer accidents and can help improve traffic safety because they’re programmed to follow speed limits.
There have still been incidents, though. Driverless taxis have at times delayed emergency responders in San Francisco, got in dangerous collisions and held up traffic due to malfunctions.
In a joint press release, the Giants and Cruise said their partnership aligns with Cruise’s goals — “to further serve local residents and businesses, accelerate the electrified transportation system and improve road safety and environmental sustainability throughout San Francisco.”
Cruise has been a small sponsor of the Giants for a couple years, Baer said. Headquartered at 333 Brannan St, three blocks away from Oracle Park, the business partnership is certainly convenient.
“We didn’t want to do it just with any company, obviously,” Baer said. “We wanted to do it with a company that represents a lot of the innovation, values that we feel like the Giants represent.”
What does the partnership mean?
Cruise’s vice president of marketing Jeff Miller and the Giants’ chief revenue officer Jason Pearl played major roles in pushing the deal to the finish line, Baer said.
The financial terms of the agreement are undisclosed, but the multi-year agreement is worth less than the annual $25 million Starr Insurance is reportedly paying the Yankees.
The iconic Yankees pinstripes earned the most lucrative deal for a jersey patch in MLB. The Red Sox, Forbes’ third-most valuable MLB franchise, signed a sponsorship deal with MassMutual for $170 million over 10 years. The Giants are the fifth-most valuable franchise, per Forbes.
Sports franchises have recently gotten themselves into trouble by partnering with companies that quickly go under, namely cryptocurrency companies.
In addition to the revenue the Giants bring in, the partnership also includes the installation of hundreds of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Those will be accessible to all EVs, not just Cruises. Charging stations will be built in the Giants’ parking garage on Townsend Street and in the developing Mission Rock area across McCovey Cove.
There will also be game day activations involving Cruise, the press release said, and opportunities for fans to sign up for driverless rides.