San Francisco Giants replace Cruise self-driving car uniform patch with another GM brand

Table Of Content

• California desperately needs water reform. San Francisco is standing in the way.
• Cruise Sponsorship Patch Now Part of Giants’ Jerseys
• Giants Reportedly Sign Ex-Red Sox Flamethrower After Inconsistent Season
• San Francisco Giants look to rebound after rout by Diamondbacks
• Chevrolet to replace Cruise as SF Giants' jersey sponsor

I’d suggest that was the reason the team has had a rough go of it, but let’s be honest, it’s the Mets we’re talking about here (sorry Mets fans — I’m a lifelong A’s fan; don’t talk to me about pain). It’s a newer phenomenon in the world of Major League Baseball, with clubs approving sponsored patches at the beginning of the current season, alongside changes like the pitch clock, bigger bases and the shift ban. The beginning of the 2023 season saw seven of the league’s 30 teams selling sponsorships. The iconic Yankees pinstripes earned the most lucrative deal for a jersey patch in MLB.

California desperately needs water reform. San Francisco is standing in the way.

The beginning of the 2023 season saw seven of the league’s 30 teams selling sponsorships, including the San Francisco Giants. Today the San Francisco Giants announced a deal to add a massive Cruise patch — a fitting sponsor, perhaps, given how ubiquitous the driverless cars have become on the mountain range known as San Francisco streets. However unsightly, and however questionable the sponsor, jersey patches are sadly here to stay.

Cruise Sponsorship Patch Now Part of Giants’ Jerseys

Almost no one notices or comments on the sponsorship of NBA jerseys any more, and soccer fans happily sport jerseys that show the sponsor's name bigger than the team's own crest. Eventually, every MLB team is expected to adopt a patch on its uniform, a trend which many of the sport’s diehards and traditionalists vehemently oppose. The Giants in August began sporting a specially designed Giants-themed Cruise patch on uniform sleeves as part of the first jersey sponsorship deal in team history.

Giants Reportedly Sign Ex-Red Sox Flamethrower After Inconsistent Season

They went the rest of the way, a late-season collapse that cost Kapler his job. The Giants announced their partnership with Cruise with much fanfare and a video from Gabe Kapler, wearing a very odd shirt, that promised to "drive our city towards a safer, more environmentally sustainable future." As part of the partnership, hundreds of electric vehicle charging stations will be installed around Oracle Park. The patch is rolling out to Giants uniforms starting today and running through 2025, by which point robo umps will presumably be arriving at Oracle Park in their own self-driving cars. The sponsor switch is the latest twist in the Giants’ jersey-patch saga, which has rankled fans who prefer the team’s classic, longtime uniforms not be altered. The new advertisement patch, which the Business Times obtained an image of, highlights the Chevrolet Bolt, the company’s electric vehicle that is also used in Cruise’s fleet of robotaxis.

This S.F. company is partnering with the Giants for a new jersey logo - San Francisco Chronicle

This S.F. company is partnering with the Giants for a new jersey logo.

Posted: Thu, 03 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Next week, the California Public Utilities Commission will vote on whether to allow Cruise and Waymo to expand their paid-passenger service citywide without restrictions. They announced in December that the doomed partnership would continue. The jersey patch was "more than thread and stitching. It's a symbol of our city." The SF Giants are moving on from their controversial first jersey patch sponsor, in favor of Chevrolet, according to a report by Phil Hecken of the Sports Business Journal. "It’s also a good opportunity for Chevrolet, as they have a longstanding history of supporting MLB as the official auto sponsor of the MLB and sponsor of 14 teams in the last 20 years," the San Francisco Giants spokesperson said.

Charging stations will be built in the Giants’ parking garage on Townsend Street and in the developing Mission Rock area across McCovey Cove. The San Diego Padres were the first team to sign a jersey patch deal, with a reported $9 million agreement with cell phone company Motorola. The Giants became the 14th MLB team to put an advertisement on their game jerseys, as they officially partnered with driverless car company Cruise. Practically it means that the Giants put an ugly patch on the sleeve of their jerseys promoting a company owned by General Motors that makes driverless electric vehicles - ones that have just been unleashed on San Francisco streets, to poor results. Starting Thursday, the Giants’ players and coaches will don uniforms with a specially designed Cruise logo sewn on the sleeves.

Today, Cruise fleets have traveled more than three million driverless miles – a distance equivalent to 120 laps around the Earth – to serve the city of San Francisco and provide greater accessibility to iconic, local attractions like Oracle Park. On the same day the Giants and Cruise announced their partnership, a self-driving car was recorded stopping in the middle of an intersection where a power outage had turned off the traffic lights. The deal comes amid escalating tensions between San Francisco leaders and the self-driving-car companies.

San Francisco Giants, Houston Astros Continue to Be Linked to Top Free Agent Starter After Attending Sim Game

The incident prompted multiple state agencies to revoke the company’s permits to operate its self-driving technology in the state. Eventually, Cruise pulled its entire fleet of robotaxis off the roads nationwide. But in the months since the patch was sewn onto the Giants’ cream-colored threads, Cruise has spiraled into crisis. The company’s problems came to a head in October when one of its vehicles struck and dragged a pedestrian 20 feet in downtown San Francisco. The victim, a woman who has not been identified, was hospitalized with serious injuries but has since been released, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital told the Examiner.

Chevrolet to replace Cruise as SF Giants' jersey sponsor

The Giants' Cruise logo patch they wore last season will be replaced with a Chevrolet symbol in 2024. We took outfielder Joc Pederson and his brother Champ for their first driverless ride. “Cruise continues to be our valued partner,” a Giants spokesperson told The Examiner. The San Francisco Business Times on Thursday first reported the news of Chevrolet replacing Cruise. The San Francisco Giants won’t be wearing jerseys with a Cruise patch after all.

Cruise Sponsorship Patch Now Part of Giants’ Jerseys - Transport Topics

Cruise Sponsorship Patch Now Part of Giants’ Jerseys.

Posted: Fri, 04 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Cars with spinning black cameras attached to their exteriors patrol the streets, accumulating data and getting experience on the roads. Jersey advertisements represent just one more way for teams to generate another revenue stream. In a release explaining the move, the Giants said the patch will pay homage to their Oracle Park archways and will be a combination of the Giants and Cruise brand colors. Electric chargers will also be installed around ballpark parking facilities. WME is a leading entertainment agency representing the world’s greatest artists, content creators and talent across books, digital media, film, food, music, sports, television and theater.

The colorway combines the Giants and Cruise brand colors to form a backdrop inspired by the memorable ballpark sunsets. The patch will be featured on Giants uniforms over the coming weeks starting with the home (cream) jersey today, August 3. The Giants were supported by WME Sports in the development of this partnership. “Cruise is dedicated to providing safe, reliable, accessible transportation to our hometown community of San Francisco,” said Jeff Miller, VP of Marketing at Cruise.

It symbolized traffic, like when the autonomous vehicles shut down in North Beach creating long traffic jams. It symbolized the outsized political power of the tech industry, and the folly of using a crowded city as a beta testing site for robot taxis, like when a Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian. It symbolized the city's struggles with public transportation, like when the driverless cars wrecked Muni lines. The uniform patch change comes several months after San Francisco-based Cruise lost its commercial permit to operate robotaxis in the city following an October incident that left a pedestrian stuck under, and then dragged by, one of its self-driving cars. The patch will be featured on Giants uniforms over the coming weeks, starting with the home (cream) jersey today, August 3. In addition to the revenue the Giants bring in, the partnership also includes the installation of hundreds of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

The meeting, which is set to center on Cruise and Waymo cars’ interactions with first responders and law enforcement, follows a number of high-profile instances in which the self-driving vehicles allegedly impeded emergency response. Cruise’s vice president of marketing Jeff Miller and the Giants’ chief revenue officer Jason Pearl played major roles in pushing the deal to the finish line, Baer said. Cruise has been a small sponsor of the Giants for a couple years, Baer said. Headquartered at 333 Brannan St, three blocks away from Oracle Park, the business partnership is certainly convenient. When Oracle Park opened as Pac Bell Park in 2000, it had a deal with online grocery company Webvan, who paid "in the low seven figures" to plaster its logo on every single cup holder in the park, as well as a few billboards. They were going to disrupt the grocery space, but instead the company went from being worth $8 billion at its IPO to worthless in 19 months.

Terms of the Giants’ deal were not disclosed, but most MLB jersey patch deals reportedly range from $5 million to $17 million per season. The Warriors reportedly receive about $20 million a year from their jersey sponsor deal with Rakuten, a cash-back shopping site. Cruise, which offers a driverless ride-hailing service in San Francisco, now has a patch with the company’s logo on the shoulder of each jersey. As TechCrunch noted last June, selling ad space on the uniforms worn by professional athletes is common practice in some sports.

Yes, the Heartbeat of America is now the Sleeve Patch of San Francisco. The Giants kept it in the General Motors family, though the patches can't sit well with minority owner and Toyota enthusiast, Buster Posey. San Francisco manager Gabe Kapler was featured in a video that was released by the team as a way to announce the partnership. Driverless taxis have at times delayed emergency responders in San Francisco, got in dangerous collisions and held up traffic due to malfunctions. Residents of San Francisco have seen the amount of driverless taxis proliferate in recent years.

The Golden State Warriors and Miami Heat learned that when cryptocurrency exchange FTX was exposed as a massive fraud. At least the Warriors only had to take down some ads - the Heat had to rename their entire arena, and find someone to replace their $135 million sponsorship deal. A day after the massive expansion of robotic taxis was approved, countless Cruise vehicles were stalled all over the city, blocking streets in North Beach.