212-213-214-215 SOTN Sports_muk.qxp_NEW LSB 2008 GRID 22/09/2017 09:32 Page 212
State Of The Nation: Sports
This Sporting Life Well, all things considered, while the jury is still very much out on this wordsmith’s beloved, if not somewhat challenging, Hammers, this is proving to be a most successful sporting year on the pitch for sport in general. We have seen homegrown world champions being crowned, sporting heroes retire at their peak and new icons emerge. LSB looks at what’s making news in the sports licensing arena and highlights how the success of women’s teams is helping to build licensing programmes.
Exclusive NFL men’s line touches down at Sainsbury’s
Sainsbury’s has begun a new partnership with America’s National Football League, the NFL, which will see it sell officially licensed sports apparel ahead of the NFL season. Significantly, this marks the first time that officially licensed NFL clothing has been sold by a UK supermarket. Ahead of the NFL International Series that took place in London over the summer, team t-shirts for all eight teams playing in the UK were made available on the Tu clothing website. A range of NFL and American football inspired vintage-effect t-shirts were also available initially online and then rolled out to 123 stores nationwide in August. Emma Dimelow, junior buyer for men’s formal wear at Tu reports a great reaction: “Our online range has been amazing! NFL was actually the most searched term online during the first week of the NFL launch. It also accounted for a third of menswear sales that week online, which is outstanding”. To celebrate the end of the season and ahead of the Super Bowl in February 2018, Sainsbury’s will introduce a new collection of NFL team t-shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts. Launching in October this year, the t-shirts are team-based, seeing more iconic NFL teams, such as Packers, Giants and Patriots in the range. “Due to the success we’ve had with the NFL online the October range which consists of eight options will be online only. Again, we’re very excited to see how well our second hit of NFL teams does online with how well the first hit has done!” commented Emma.
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LICENSING SOURCE BOOK EUROPE 2017
Inset: Sainsbury’s score first with NFL.