bulls warm up
Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images
Capitalism is like a garden weed, infecting every inch of land that it can, and will continue to do so unless someone stops it. Professional sports are perhaps at the nexus of that phenomenon as the industry becomes increasingly embedded with sports gambling. Case in point? This year’s NBA warm-up shirts feature bigger sponsorship logos than team branding.
On Thursday night, the Chicago Bulls played a preseason game against the Phoenix Suns, winning the game by a score of 124-117. While such a game would usually be a non-event in the sports world, the Bulls turned it into a headline by unveiling their new warm-up jackets.
NBA fans are ripping the league for allowing sponsorships to infect the sport to such a degree that sponsor branding is now featured more prominently than team logos
The jackets most prominently feature the logo of one of their sponsors, Plus500 — another online trading platform. The Plus500 logo actually dwarfs the Chicago Bulls’ iconic logo, which is barely visible.
Got new warmup jackets ⚫️🔴 https://t.co/ufadwbcLkj
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) October 8, 2026
What a shame. The Bulls USED to be the logo.
Now they’re just the fine print. https://t.co/EqpKV28V2P
— Die-Hard Chicago (@DieHard_Chicago) October 8, 2026
Adam Silver destroyed the NBA
— grams de champ (@gramsdidit) October 8, 2026
“The team logo being the smallest one on the warm-up is so nasty bra,” one reply read.
“It’s like the famous saying: Play for the ad on the front, not the name on the back,” a second sarcastically joked.
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“I can’t think of one thing Adam Silver has done that was a positive move. This dude has ruined the NBA,” a third bemonaded.
Plus500, an online trading platform, signed a four-year deal with the Bulls in October 2022. SportBusiness reported that the company became the first to put its brand on the front of the team’s warm-up apparel, and the deal also covers marketing, community initiatives, and events.
The Bulls deal was also Plus500’s first U.S. sports sponsorship — the company was previously the primary kit sponsor of La Liga club Atletico Madrid, for example — with Bulls president Michael Reinsdorf calling the partnership “a natural fit.”
The warmup jacket isn’t the only place a sponsor shows up. The NBA has allowed jersey sponsor patches since the 2017-18 season, and the Bulls added Zenni Optical’s patch in October 2018 on a five-year deal.