Cincinnati Reds Add Kroger Logo to Jersey Sleeves

The Cincinnati Reds will wear an advertisement for the Kroger chain of supermarkets on their jersey sleeves during the 2023 season. Much like most other advertisement deals struck in the league thus far, the company purchasing this space is headquartered in the city in which the team calls home.

Our first look at the new patch came courtesy a Tweet from the official Major League Baseball account showing Reds first baseman Joey Votto’s player portrait for the upcoming season.

The photo we saw showed a white rounded rectangle patch on the player’s right sleeve with the Reds’ running man logo on the left. The Kroger logo is not re-coloured to match the club’s red, white, and black colour scheme; instead shown in the company’s usual blue and white.

Players who bat from the opposite side of the plate will have the logo on the other sleeve which has resulted in a new Reds “running man” patch showing a reversed version of their usual logo:

Embed from Getty Images

Most teams will flip the advertisement patch to the player’s camera dominant sleeve, what makes the Reds unique is that they had to create a whole new team logo in order to let this happen. Tampa Bay will also be faced with a similar situation when it comes to their devil ray sleeve patch.

As far as I know, just about every team will flip the ad patch to the sleeve that gets the most camera time — what makes the Reds situation unique is that they actually needed to create a new team logo to make it happen. pic.twitter.com/GIfwXt8wYK
— Chris Creamer (@sportslogosnet) February 22, 2023