How Cleveland bankruptcy was triggered by these…....
It wasn’t too long ago that those Baker Mayfield ads for Progressive were an omnipresent force hovering over Cleveland, like Tim Misny billboards or locally-themed t-shirts.
Nowadays, though, you’re far more likely to see Browns legends like Bernie Kosar or Joe Thomas pitching products or brands. And one new report suggests that current Browns players lag behind their NFL peers in endorsements—though the Browns as a team have seen sponsorship growth in recent seasons.
from SponsorUnited, tracked NFL sponsorships for the NFL’s 2023 season and, from a league-wide perspective, there aren’t THAT many surprises but there were a few.
For one, former Cleveland Brown Isaac Rochell (a free agent who most recently played with the Las Vegas Raiders) was ranked as the player with the most brand deals (27).
That helped Rochell power past Kansas City Chiefs tight end / Taylor Swift paramour / Cleveland Heights High School legend Travis Kelce, who came in second. While Kelce’s romance with Swift didn’t hurt, neither did his popular podcast with his brother Jason, an NFL standout in his own right.
And the Browns had a surprising result, too, according to the report. The Fighting Stefanskis ranked second when it came to teams with the biggest year-over-year sponsorship revenue (47%)—just behind their downstate divisional rivals, the Cincinnati Bengals (64%).
According to additional data that SportsUnited sent to Crain’s, the team ranked 18th in the NFL in terms of total team deals with 99. That’s a five-spot drop from their 13th place ranking in 2022 even though they added 8 more deals.
(For what it’s worth, the Cleveland-Akron area ranks 19th in terms of NFL media markets—still ahead of Pittsburgh!)
The Browns’ players, though, still trail most of their peers. According to the report, Myles Garrett leads the team with 4 tracked sponsorships, including his long-term deal with Reebok.
Every report like this comes with a caveat, of course. If four endorsements feels a bit low for Garrett, consider how the report measured those endorsements. According to SponsorUnited’s methodology, “NFL player endorsements are monitored based on the number of times they actively promote or advertise a brand via campaigns and activations within the past 12 months.”
The report adds that the endorsements “represent the number of deals that SponsorUnited tracked during the 2023 season. Overall revenue ranking may be more of an effective indicator for their positioning among the league as opposed to number of sponsors.”
For what it’s worth, the Browns did not respond to a request for comment.