Have you ever wondered why soccer fans wear scarves? Well, guess what, they are no longer just soccer scarves. Sports like hockey, football, basketball, and lacrosse are all getting on board with the iconic accessory, and starting a new trend in sports scarves.
Ruffneck has been working with teams in several of the professional sports leagues outside of soccer. There has been an increase in demand for custom sports scarves across the board. The NHL, NBA, NFL, and Major League Lacrosse have all been at the forefront of this new rise in the sports scarf demand.
In late last year, Ruffneck Scarves and the NHL signed an agreement to provide officially licensed hockey scarves to hockey fans around the league. Ruffneck applied the same strategy used in MLS for soccer scarves, to the new designs created for hockey. Everything from jersey hook scarves to NHL mascot scarves has made their way onto store shelves in big-box retailers and stadium pro shops.
Ruffneck has worked closely with Fanatics over the past few years on both MLS and several NBA teams. For the past two seasons, we’ve seen rising popularity for sports scarves in arenas around the NBA. For instance, Golden State Warriors fans have been especially excited about this new trend, after the team chose to include scarves in their marketing strategy. Fanatics has since created other basketball team scarves available for sale on their site and in venues around the league.
With the help of Staples Promotional Products, NFL fans in the U.S. and Europe have begun to latch onto the sports scarf tradition as well. The first push into professional football began with the London series as NFL marketing officials were looking for ways to capture the English spirit in an American football series.
Offering the fans in London a custom team scarf was something the locals found very familiar and became popular premium giveaways in each matchup.
Because of the new opportunities for soccer scarves in other sports, Ruffneck has continued to branch out. The company is now the official scarf supplier to some of the biggest brands in professional sports. The MLS, NHL, US Soccer, USL, USWNT Players Association are just a few of the names they’ve signed deals within recent years.
You can find many of these new sports scarves in familiar retailers like Fanatics, Target, and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Keep an eye out for more teams and sports coming soon.