In the picture above, you see members of the team that won 3 out of the last 5 WNBA championships. Do you know the name of this team? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not the Mayo Clinic and it’s not Boost Mobile. How about where this team plays?… Nothing?
This team is the Minnesota Lynx and the only way would know that is from this 
logo in the top left corner of the jerseys. Who are these seemingly irrelevant names on the jerseys? They are sponsors. Each WNBA team makes money off of a sponsorship deal with the brands that they are advertising on their jerseys. So, the Minnesota Lynx are making money from Boost Mobile and Mayo Clinic by having their logos on the jerseys.
The NBA just announced that they are going to have ads on their jerseys in the next 2 seasons. I’m not saying that the NBA is going to have ads all over their jerseys like the WNBA teams, but they are definitely going to be influenced by WNBA design. The thing is this: the WNBA needs the money, the NBA doesn’t. So, the WNBA basically using their jerseys as billboards to the point where you can’t tell which team is with from the jersey makes sense. However, the NBA is honestly just looking for more money even though they just signed a new television deal worth billions of dollars. If they don’t need the money and have been wildly successful and they are willing to go as far as to use jerseys, a part of the game that most people thought would never be compromised by commercialization, to gain more money, who’s to say they won’t expand the ad space at some point to gain more money.
I was talking to a friend about the NBA’s decision to put the ads on the jersey and his take was that it’s just a jersey. He’s an avid soccer fan. 
If you don’t know which team this is, then you don’t know sports. The fact that whoever is reading this will more likely than not know which team this is (or at least who the fourth player is) shows that the big Qatar Airways logo on their jersey isn’t hurting their image with their fans. We know that FC Barcelona is not the Qatar Airways. However, the NBA is different.
NBA fans have gotten so used to teams being on the jerseys and nothing else that seeing an ad on jerseys is going to be unwanted. Jerseys are the only aspect of the game that doesn’t have ads involved when you think about it and to be honest, ads just don’t look good. NBA jerseys are bought out of loyalty to a team and for style. The fans of teams will still buy those jerseys, but the people that like how a jersey looks might not like that jersey anymore if there’s this random IHOP logo on the top left corner. It starts with this…
and could end like this…
Other leagues can get away with it for either money grabbing or need meeting purposes. However, the NBA is not other leagues.
The Soapbox 