If you take a visit to any sporting event, be it a jersey day game at Howard Wood Field or a primetime Sunday night game at U.S. Bank Stadium, you might notice that nearly every jersey or piece of fan gear is labeled with the signature Nike swoosh. Nike is currently the primary distributor of sports jerseys across the NFL, the NHL and the NBA. This amasses 92 different organizations, meaning about 276 different “styles” of jerseys a year (home, road and alternates). Even this number doesn’t cover the full extent of their monopoly, as it excludes specialty or limited-time jerseys and doesn’t account for Olympic, college or soccer equipment. To put it simply, Nike runs the jersey game. The question is, should they?
The reason Nike can so effortlessly manage all these products is that they don’t handle manufacturing. They instead offload this duty to fellow sportswear conglomerate Fanatics, pumping out a variety of different jerseys ranging from high-end replicas to relatively cheaper imitations. In recent years, Fanatics’ quality has been put into question, with their batch of jerseys for the 2024 MLB season being riddled with flaws of inconsistent sizing and unreliable material. Despite all the complaints, however, Nike consistently charges over $100 for the primary jerseys. This price in no way matches the quality of the product, but that doesn’t stop the company from making millions of dollars in revenue. They have a sort of stranglehold on the industry.Some consumers pay for authenticity, to say that they own a real, expensive product. It’s a sign of status, but that thought process has for some reason been adopted into the mainstream. Ask most fans and their reason for buying a jersey is to support the team, not some massive sportswear company. And yet, they choose to fund the megacorporation Nike’s monopoly solely due to convenience and recognition..

In recent years, though, a cheaper approach has become more mainstream. It involves buying jerseys second-hand. One of the largest sources for this is DHGate, a marketplace that connects wholesale manufacturers in China straight to the consumer, skipping the upselling of distribution. There, one can purchase a jersey nearly identical to an official product for less than a fifth of the price. Delivery certainly takes a bit longer and these jerseys aren’t exactly legit, but the final product achieves the exact same purpose. It’s a physical representation of a fan’s support, something that can be worn casually or for gameday, more than likely never getting pointed out in the wild. It’s a smarter, maybe even more ethical decision.
Again, jerseys are not worn to support a clothing brand; they’re worn to support a team. The current price barrier set by Nike is harmful to fanbases, making it so fans feel obligated to invest large sums of money into cheaply made items. There are many ways to support a sports team without giving into this bootlicking agenda. Buying second-hand, be it knockoffs or resale, achieves the same effect without giving into the Nike swoosh regime. To get any change, to make the market more consumer-friendly, people must start buying through other methods. Anything is better than serving Nike’s status quo monopoly.