NBA Planning to Feature Kia Ads on 2016, 2017 All-Star Jerseys

Kia Motors America was already a fixture during NBA All-Star Weekend, especially when Blake Griffin jumped over a Kia vehicle at the 2011 Slam Dunk Contest, but the car company will reportedly increase its presence by placing advertisements on All-Star Game jerseys over the next two years.

According to Sara Germano of the Wall Street Journal, the NBA will put a Kia logo patch on the upper-left chest of jerseys for the 2016 All-Star Game in Toronto and 2017 All-Star Game in Charlotte.

The patch was "part of an advertising buy between media-rights holder Turner Sports," which owns the broadcast rights to the All-Star Game, and Kia Motors America.

The decision to debut the patches at the All-Star Game rather than a regular-season contest allowed the league to bypass a negotiation process and approval from team owners.

While advertising on jerseys is common in European soccer and NASCAR, Germano said Kia's NBA patch "will mark the first time that one of the four major American professional sports will display a non-apparel logo on jerseys during a game."

This seems to be a logical step for the league's revenue stream in the eyes of Commissioner Adam Silver. Silver said corporate logos on jerseys were "inevitable" in March 2014, per Michael McCarthy of AdAge.com:

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I think it's inevitable. ... It just creates that much more of an opportunity for our marketing partners to get that much closer to our fans and to our players. It gives us an opportunity just to have deeper integration when it comes to those forms of sponsorship. ... Increasingly as we see Champion's League and English Premier League televised in the U.S., I think it's going to become more acceptable and more commonplace for our fans as well.

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Eric Freeman of Yahoo Sports expects jersey ads to become a reality once NBA owners and the National Basketball Players Association agree on a profit-sharing arrangement, although he pointed out it likely won't happen for years.

According to Germano, the NFL and MLB do not have any current plans to follow in the NBA's footsteps and sell ad space on game jerseys.