Among Major League Baseball’s 30 teams, 21 have stadium naming rights deals with a corporate partner. When it comes to jersey patch sponsorships—the brand logos that adorn uniform sleeves and have been permitted in baseball the last two seasons—23 clubs have agreements in place. Only one team has never had either: the Washington Nationals.
That could soon change.
The Nationals have hired New York City-based marketing and talent representation agency Excel Sports Management to take both sponsor slots to market, with initial conversations with potential partners having begun in January. The two sales processes will proceed largely independently, but hopes are high that contracts can be signed this year—perhaps even midseason. Together, the sponsorships could be worth more than $20 million annually to the Nationals, Forbes estimates.
“Summertime is when the Nats are top of mind for our fan base, and we think that’s the perfect time to make an announcement,” Mike Carney, the Nationals’ chief revenue officer, tells Forbes exclusively. In that scenario, patches would begin appearing on jerseys almost immediately, and temporary signage would be installed on the stadium currently known as Nationals Park within a few weeks. More permanent signage would be in place for opening day next year.
On the surface, it may not be the most obvious time to pursue these deals. Since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, Washington’s annual attendance has hovered around 2 million—down about 20% from 2018—and Nationals Park is now 17 years old. Meanwhile, six years after winning the World Series, Washington is coming off four straight seasons with at least 91 losses.
But pandemic restrictions that kept fans out of ballparks entirely in 2020 and limited attendance in 2021 prevented the Nationals from capitalizing financially on their championship run, and while Washington is currently going through an on-field rebuild, the organization is bullish about an exciting young core featuring outfielders Dylan Crews and James Wood and All-Star shortstop CJ Abrams. Also fueling the optimism are plans the Nationals unveiled in January to upgrade their ballpark and the surrounding area with funding from the D.C. Council. One other plus: The team is celebrating its 20th anniversary in Washington this year, which could offer a public-relations lift for any corporate partner jumping on the bandwagon amid the festivities.
Carney acknowledges that Washington has pursued a stadium deal in the past, saying that ultimately “the brands weren’t the right fit.” This time around, any partner would need to demonstrate “shared values,” he says, such as a commitment to the local community and support for the military.
These non-financial considerations aren’t trivial. The Nationals are aiming for a stadium naming deal that runs at least 20 years, and a jersey patch deal with a minimum three-year term, so any miscalculation could linger. For instance, more than a decade after the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans struck their arena deal, the Smoothie King Center remains the target of gentle fan ribbing for its name.
“You’re not just going to put any sign in the outfield; you want to have a filter for who that is,” says Martin Conway, an adjunct sports management professor at Georgetown University and former marketing executive with MLB’s Baltimore Orioles and Texas Rangers. “If you look at some of the early jersey patch deals that have happened in the NBA, they’ve come and gone. Why? Because there just wasn’t much staying power to the brand—and that also reflects on the team.”
Of course, the “right fit” also comes down to economics. The New York Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays are reportedly pocketing more than $20 million a year from their jersey patch deals, although a more typical fee would be closer to $7 million annually, according to Forbes estimates. Stadium naming rights deals have tended to be a little smaller—16 of the sport’s 21 ballpark agreements paid out less than $5 million in 2023, according to Forbes estimates—but those low numbers are primarily the result of timing.
“There are a lot of legacy deals within Major League Baseball,” notes Preetam Sen, senior vice president for properties and corporate partnerships at Excel. In the many years since those contracts were signed, sponsorship rates have soared, and the marketing landscape continues to improve. MLB team partnerships rose to $1.9 billion combined in 2024, up 55% since 2022, according to research firm SponsorUnited, and none of the other North American major pro sports leagues are growing their sponsorship revenue as quickly.
Against that backdrop, more recent stadium deals have come with much higher price tags. The New York Mets’ 20-year, $400 million agreement at Citi Field, which began in 2009, still leads the pack, but the San Francisco Giants’ Oracle Park deal from 2019 is believed to carry an average annual value of $15 million, and the Texas Rangers (Globe Life Field, 2017) and the Houston Astros (Daikin Park, 2024) are reportedly making at least $11 million a year.
Jersey patches are primarily about media exposure—on TV broadcasts nationally and regionally, for both the home and away teams—so the Nationals may seek a deal around the league average in that category as their roster continues to develop. With their stadium, however, they can aim much higher, thanks to their home market. Washington is the seventh-largest metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. and an emerging tech hub on the East Coast, Carney notes. Even more important, there is all of the government activity surrounding the stadium in the fast-growing Navy Yard neighborhood.
“If you look at federal contracting, for example, name recognition is super-important, right?” Conway says. “Look at Leidos and some other brands that have done sponsorships with [MLS team] D.C. United.”
Sen puts it this way: “Where [the stadium] is located visibility-wise, Joint Base Andrews is right across the bridge, and whenever any of those officials drive over the bridge, going to the Pentagon or the White House, they drive directly past Nationals Park. So you have to think about this being a landmark within the city—it’s a landmark within the city of landmarks.”
That position could help the Nationals expand the pool of bidders beyond the locally headquartered companies that tend to dominate stadium naming deals, Sen says, and perhaps even draw in international firms looking to catch the eye of the Trump administration.
Washington can also make the arrangement more attractive with benefits that go beyond the name on the building, including highway and bus signage, new street names in the area of the stadium, use of the ballpark for corporate hospitality purposes, and joint social media content. Sports marketing agency Two Circles, for instance, notes that while the Nationals have 2.3 million followers online—27th-best in MLB—they rank second in the firm’s “promotion quality” measure for their branded content.
If Washington lands the kind of sponsorships it believes it can, the money will make a big impact on its business, potentially even doubling the $27 million the franchise collected from all local advertising and sponsorship sources in 2023, according to Forbes estimates. On Forbes’ ranking of MLB’s most valuable teams last year, the Nationals were 16th overall at $2 billion, on total 2023 revenue of $355 million.
Carney isn’t offering specifics on how the team plans to put the extra money to use but suggests it could help boost the player payroll, which has ranked in the league’s bottom ten for the past couple of seasons.
“We want to win championships, and we are really excited about the team we have on the field today,” he says. “We want to be that brand that is a consistent winner year in and year out, and this is going to help to do that.”