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Oakley Scores With NFL Partnership

Oakley Inc. was able to do what New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and Oakland Raiders wide receiver Antonio Brown couldn’t this offseason: get the National Football League to revise its stringent rules on the types of helmet-related gear its players can wear.

The sunglasses and apparel maker last week said it struck a four-year deal with the NFL to become an official on-field partner and licensee of the NFL, whose latest season kicks off on Sept. 5.

It’s the biggest sports deal in the brand’s history, according to the Foothill Ranch-based firm, which has been a unit of Italy’s Luxottica since 2007.

Oakley has also sponsored Major League Baseball and other sports over its 44-year history.

Financial terms of the latest deal were undisclosed.

The NFL is estimated to bring in about $1.4 billion annually from its multitude of product endorsements, not factoring in individual players’ deals, according to IEG research data.

“The Oakley brand started in stadiums and now we will continue our brand journey inside the biggest and most relevant stadiums in North America: football stadiums,” Benjamin Goss, Oakley’s Global Marketing Director, said in a statement.

Light Tint

Oakley will be the league’s official helmet visor provider—players that wear visors on their facemasks must use the company’s branded visors, unless they have a medical exception—and will see the league tweak its policy on visor use.

Since 1998, football players had been able to wear any visor they want, provided they were not tinted and hid a player’s face—think a Darth Vader mask.

Oakley’s Prizm visors are slightly tinted, but still allow spectators and TV viewers to see the players faces, helping the league with marketing its stars.

The tinting of the product “is engineered to help optimize detail recognition in the football environment,” and should help players with their in-game vision, according to the company.

The visors sell online for about $60 each; Oakley has also released an NFL-branded line of glasses for each team in the league. Most run between $176 and $196 a pair.

The sponsorship comes after a preseason that saw a few notable veteran players, including Brady and Brown, grudgingly swap out their longtime preferred helmets, after the league no longer sanctioned their use in games.

Local NFL Hiring

As part of the just-announced deal, Oakley will be designated as the “preferred” eyewear provider for the NFL. Coaches and players will be encouraged to wear Oakley sunglasses and eyeglasses on the sidelines. 

The company said it will promote the deal with a new TV ad campaign, as well as print, digital, out-of-home and in-store advertising. El Segundo-based Stept Studios produced the TV ads, which showcase a handful of players, including reigning league MVP Patrick Mahomes II of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Oakley signed Mahomes earlier this year as a pitchman; he was the first-ever NFL player the company sponsored, and it was also among the first national endorsements for Mahomes, who is repped by Newport Beach agent Leigh Steinberg.

Other Oakley signings include Los Angeles Chargers Derwin James Jr., an All-Pro safety with the Costa Mesa-based team.

Oakley is still ramping up its staffing to handle the NFL work.

Its website lists roles such as Director, Global Development Sports Marketing and Senior Project Manager (NFL Marketing) among the nearly two dozen open positions it has at its 1 Icon headquarters near the Foothill Transportation Corridor (241) toll road.

The Jim Jannard-founded company is estimated to employ about 1,400 people locally and is Orange County’s largest apparel company by employees.

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Mark Mueller
Mark Mueller
Mark is the Editor-in-Chief of the Orange County Business Journal, one of the premier regional business newspapers in the country. He’s the fifth person to hold the editor’s position in the paper’s long history. He oversees a staff of about 15 people. The OCBJ is considered a must-read for area business executives. The print edition of the paper is the primary source of local news for most of the Business Journal’s subscribers, which includes most of OC’s major corporate and community players. Mark’s been with the paper since 2005, and long served as the real estate reporter for the paper, breaking hundreds of commercial and residential real estate stories. He took on the editor’s position in 2018.
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