A rough patch: the Astros’ new sponsorship deal with Oxy is doubly ugly

A s soon as it was announced that MLB teams would be allowed to include advertisements on their uniforms, a race seemingly began to see who would land the most dubious sponsor. While results are still coming in, the Houston Astros are leading the pack after signing a deal with Occidental Petroleum. Yes, the reigning world champions, not exactly popular to start with, will be walking billboards for a fossil fuel company as the climate crisis rages.

Today, we announced an expansion of our partnership with @WeAreOxy to become our official jersey partner for the next seven seasons. pic.twitter.com/trDma0um7W

Officially, the league prefers if you call this type of deal a “patch sponsorship,” which sounds folksy and informal. That term feels more than a little euphemistic, so maybe it’s more helpful to take the cue of journalist Paul Lukas, who believes the simpler term “uniform ads” is more to the point.

Because ads are what they are. To be a “patch sponsor,” a company simply hands a team a whole bunch of money – in this case, the exact terms of the Astros’ deal with Oxy have not been disclosed – and in return the teams wear uniforms with corporate logos. For the Astros players, this means wearing a red, white and blue Oxy logo for nearly every game of the year. The only exception will be two games where the logo will be gold instead to match the coloring of the 2022 World Series champions’ uniforms.

The Oxy logo will just be one of the corporate brands that baseball fans will have to adjust to in the upcoming season, the first in which MLB has allowed such promotions. It’s such a new process that not every franchise has found an official partner yet. Besides the Astros, the Los Angeles Angels have signed up with Foundation