The Los Angeles Clippers have signed a jersey patch deal with Bumble, the Austin-based company behind female-focused apps for dating and networking.
The deal is effective as of March 6 and runs through the 2019-2020 National Basketball Association season, and it marks the 20th jersey patch deal in the league. Other corporate sponsors that have NBA jersey patch deals include General Electric Co. and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.
The total value of the deal is $20 million, or roughly $7 million per year, according to a source. Bumble’s logo will appear on Clippers jerseys beginning with Tuesday night’s home game against the New Orleans Pelicans. The agreement, first reported by SportsBusiness Daily, also includes in-arena signage and community initiatives. No agency was involved in either side of the deal, according to the team.
Bumble, founded by former Tinder executive Whitney Wolfe Herd in 2014, is best known for its female-driven dating app where only women can make the first move after two users swipe right on each other.
“Never before has a major professional sports team partnered in this way with a female-driven brand like Bumble,” Wolfe Herd said in a statement. “It’s an honor to partner with an organization as progressive and compassionate as the Clippers. Like us, they know generating awareness for diversity and gender equality is critical to business success.”
Clippers President of Business Operations Gillian Zucker, the NBA’s only female team president, said that the deal aligns with both the company and the team’s gender equality and diversity message.
“We have been looking at it not just as a patch but as a badge of empowerment of how important diversity is, specifically gender diversity,” she said. “We had been talking for a few months to a number of other brands. We were looking at something more than just an advertising play.”
Bumble is highly conscious of its image. In response to the rash of mass shootings across the country, the company has decided to ban images on its site depicting firearms. In other words, if any of its 30 million users wants to pose in a profile photo holding a shotgun, that photo will be rejected.
That image also took a serious hit recently when the Columbia Journalism Review reported that Bumble "promised" to pay $25,000 on social media to promote an issue of Texas Monthly with Wolfe Herd on the cover, soon after Texas Monthly's editor-in-chief, Tim Taliaferro, had boasted about the deal to employees. Taliaferro was subsequently replaced by Rich Oppel, a former Austin American-Statesman editor, on an interim basis.
Bumble has been growing at a staggering clip, and was expected to exceed revenue of $100 million in 2017, with a unicorn-style valuation that tops $1 billion. It recently opened a new headquarters in Austin and has more than 70 employees who are mostly women.
A "Bee Kind" neon sign within the new Bumble HQ reminds employees of the startup's mission.
The branding deal with a highly visible professional sports league deal also indirectly puts Austin a step closer to the dream of many civic and business leaders: having another well-known global powerhouse of a brand based in their backyard. With the exception of Dell Technologies Inc., Yeti Coolers LLC, Tito's Vodka and a few others, Austin has mostly been a base for thriving business-to-business brands that don't have that type of name recognition.
Austin's biggest consumer-focused companies of the recent past such as Whole Foods Market, NetSpend and HomeAway are now controlled by much larger companies on the East and West coasts. Bumble, so far, has reportedly rebuffed such buyout offers.
Austin Business Journal staff contributed additional reporting for this story.
Gross revenue 2016
| Rank | Prior Rank | Business name |
|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | Workplace Resource LLC |
2 | 6 | Shelton-Keller Group Inc. (SKG) |
3 | 4 | Kidd Roofing |
