Las Vegas Lights Soccer Team To Retire Jersey After Season, Will Invite Fans To Suggest Uni Designs
By Alan Snel
LVSportsBiz.com
You might notice that the Las Vegas Lights soccer team is selling its original jersey for only 20 bucks at home games these days.
No, the Lights are not leaving Las Vegas for Pahrump. But the second-year soccer team that has struggled to win games the first two seasons plans to retire its jersey at the end of the season and invite fans to be involved in uni design ideas and picking the next jersey.
It was only 19 months ago when the Lights revealed their jerseys at an event at Zappos in downtown Las Vegas, with players modeling the black uni top with vertical neon flashes of yellow, blue and pink to mostly positive reviews.
The jerseys were impressive for a team in the United Soccer League, the Triple-A of professional soccer in the U.S. Most of the USL teams use jerseys with bland designs. Unfortunately for the Lights, their creative jerseys didn’t translate into success on the pitch in Year 1 as the Lights won a mere seven games out of 34 contests.
There’s improvement this season as the Lights won, 3-1, over Fresno Saturday night before an announced crowd of 7,228 to notch their ninth win of the season with five games left.
The Lights have used several special jerseys this season. A Vegas Golden Knights-theme jersey has proven popular, and there have also been Fourth of July and organ donation jerseys.
It’s common for pro teams to come out with new jerseys to create more merchandise sales. The Lights original jerseys were selling for $80 a pop when they revealed in early February 2018.
The Lights, which take pride in their original marketing like helicopter cash drops and a marijuana sponsorship, spurned the standard soccer jersey templates offered by the name brand companies. So, the team picked a manufacturer called Beyond Limits Known (BLK) for the jersey production job.
Even one-time U.S. soccer savior Freddy Adu donned the jersey for the Lights.
The Lights expect fans to be involved in designing and picking the new jersey. Fans picked the team’s name.
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