Celtics Announce GE Advertisement on Jersey in 2017-18

Here’s another reminder that the inevitable day is about to arrive pretty soon. There were already a couple of NBA teams who were getting ready for this watershed moment in North American uniform history, but a pretty huge domino in the uniform world has fallen now.

The Boston Celtics are now the latest team to start getting their ducks in a row when it comes to advertisements on their jerseys, as ESPN’s Darren Rovell is citing a source who says that the Celtics are gearing up to announce that they have come to an agreement with GE that will make them the primary sponsor on their jerseys for next season.

Of course, it isn’t a shock that NBA teams are going to be wearing ads on their jerseys. We knew this was coming next season, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be jarring to see a team with uniforms as traditional and classic (when you ignore their alternates) as Boston’s.

Either way, ads are coming and not even teams like the Celtics are exempt from getting in on the cash grab. Of course, I don’t blame teams for trying to grab every penny that they possibly can. It’s a business, after all. Still, it’s going to be pretty weird seeing ads on jerseys for an NBA game. It’ll be coming to the other sports soon as well, but it’s time to get ready for it to hit the NBA in the very near future.

UPDATE Jan 25/17:

““GE will be woven into the fabric of the Boston Celtics both literally and figuratively” – Celtics president Rich Gotham

The Celtics have made this official, details were sparse as the team wouldn’t comment on how much the deal was worth saying only that multiple teams also wanted to know. The length of the deal was only described as “multiyear”.

Boston joins Philadelphia (StubHub) and Sacramento (Blue Diamond Almonds) as NBA teams to announce jersey ads for 2017-18 thus far: