No, the headline of the article is not a made up, fictitious thing. The “small market” Cincinnati Reds have more sponsorship deals than any team in Major League Baseball. Maury Brown of Forbes and Sponsor United provided a plethora of information in recent reports about team revenues from advertising/sponsorship deals.
The Reds have more than 200 sponsorship deals. They added 20+ new sponsorship deals for the 2024 season as they grew their lead over the Yankees for the second straight season for the top spot. The Yankees and Reds have been atop of the league in the number of deals in the three seasons the report presented, with the Reds growth going up each year.
What’s interesting is that the overall data shows that there’s a correlation between making the playoffs and gaining sponsorship deals. That obviously does not apply to the Reds, who have made the playoffs once in the last decade, but have more deals than any team in the game.
Over the last three years, sponsorship revenue is up 55% across MLB. The average deal across MLB was just over $550,000 in 2024.
It feels unlikely that the Cincinnati Reds are getting an average of $550,000 per sponsorship deal. If they were, that would put their revenue from said deals in the $115,000,000 range per year. Given the amount of eyes and ears available through broadcasts to their fanbase, they probably get a much lower rate for their deals than say the Dodgers who are not only in a large market in Los Angeles, but also get the Japanese market thanks to having Shohei Ohtani.
Still, with well over 200 team sponsorships, the Reds are probably doing quite well when it comes to revenue from all of their deals. How well, we don’t know, as the reports don’t give individualized breakdowns of how much each team is bringing in.
In a not-Reds-related piece of information that shocked me, you will never guess which player in baseball has the most sponsorships. Well, technically we can make it Reds-related because the player with the most sponsorship deals in the game used to be a Red. That player is also nicknamed red. It’s Justin Turner of the Seattle Mariners. Interestingly, it’s another Mariner at the #2 spot – Julio Rodriguez.
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