Music: {allcanada} BAUER TO BID FOR NHL JERSEY LICENSE IN 2016

Thursday, October 18, 2012

{allcanada} BAUER TO BID FOR NHL JERSEY LICENSE IN 2016

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In what The Toronto Star supposes would be a David and Goliath contest, Bauer Performance Sports Ltd. says it plans to be a contender when the multi-million dollar license for the National Hockey League jerseys comes up in 2016.

The NHL license is currently held by Reebok, a company roughly six times Bauer's size in terms of annual revenues and part of the global athletic giant Adidas.

"We have every intention of bidding," Bauer president and chief executive officer Kevin Davis said after the company's annual general meeting Tuesday at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

If successful, it would be a huge coup that would give the leading hockey brand more sales and marketing muscle, a sports apparel industry analyst said.

The NHL jersey business is worth an estimated $200 million a year, including fitting the players themselves and their fans with replicas.

"It clearly would be a positive marketing story for them to have their logo on the NHL sweaters," said Matt Powell, a sports apparel industry analyst for Charlotte-based Sports One Source.

The bigger question may be whether Bauer will have deep enough pockets to enter the ring, Powell said later.

Typically, the successful licensee would pay an upfront fee of $50 million to the league and then another 10 per cent a year in royalties, he explained.

Reebok, a division of global athletic giant Adidas, had sales of nearly $2 billion euros in 2011, according to company reports.

In comparison, Bauer, the market leader in ice hockey equipment, reported $378 million in sales for the year ending May 31, 2012.