This is by far the best take on our change in kit sponsors. Tillamook is now a sleeve sponsor and the front of the kit will feature Bank of America, a company with a lot of haters, but nowhere near as bad as DaBella. Tillamook was a welcome sponsor addition with deep roots in Oregon. They stepped in mid-season to replace DaBella, and probably got the sponsorship at a highly reduced rate. The comment in the image came from a thread on r/Timbers. Bank of America is likely paying a lot more than Tillamook, so that’s good for the team but it’s sad to see Tilllamook demoted, especially since they had such good will in the community. You might be reading this a few years down the road and none of it makes sense, so I’ll explain it after the jump.
Alaska Airlines was our kit sponsor for 12 years, including our entire MLS existence until the end of 2023. Frankly, it was a little surprising that they stuck with during the horrible #YouKnew period. (Note, there are too many links to choose from. Google “timbers scandal” and take your pic.) The Timbers announced DaBella as our new kit sponsor for 2024, a move that didn’t please anyone in the fan base as DaBella had a reputation for predatory sales tactics, shoddy quality, and very poor customer service, basically version 2 of the game crappy company Penguin Windows that was run by the owner of DaBella. The talk around supporters forums was that it was a bit of a joke that the only jersey sponsor we could land was a sketchy home improvement company. It was not uncommon to hear people say they would not buy a kit with DaBella on the front.
That kit sponsorship deal went through really fast. Apparently the jumped at the opportunity. In a (not) shocking development, the Timbers FO didn’t due their due diligence. On February 28 of 2024 we learned the the DaBella CEO was accused of sexual harassment. The truly shocking thing was that this time, Merritt & company actually did the right thing and terminated the agreement on the same day! They eventually initiated a buy-back program where you could get your money back for turning in kits with the DaBella logo on it, although it only applied to kits purchased from the Timbers directly at the stadium or through their online store. Meanwhile you could still go into a Dick’s Sporting goods and buy the DaBella logo kits off the displays for months.
The cool thing is, for a while you could buy kits with no sponsors on them. Many assumed that would be the case for the rest of the season. I know I did, and I was waiting to buy until the 50% discount at the Addidas employee store to take effect later on in the season. I don’t work for Adidas but passes tot eh store are easy to come by, either through 107ist membership, season ticket holder benefits, or direct from Adidas. Never pay full price for your kit! Well I got burned being frugal. Miraculously, the FO inked a deal with Tillamoook, an Oregon company that already had a presence in the stadium and seemed to be universally respected, if not loved. In fact, when the Alaska deal ended and “dream” sponoships were being floated around online, Tillamook was leading the popular vote.
Cut to the first home game with Tillamook as a kit sponsor…
The mood was joyous. Finally our FO had done the right thing, and we had a new scandal free sponsor everyone could get behind. Here’s a bit I originally wrote at Patch Patrol:
The Timbers army has a tradition of adding the word “Eh!” at the end of the each break in the lines of Canadian national anthem when it is sung before kickoff in games against Vancouver and Toronto. It’s a throwback to Bob and Doug and is poking fun at Canadian teams in an entirely good-natured way. I mean, we actually sing their anthem… The cheer of “Cheese” broke out spontaneously during our national anthem.
Instead of “O Canada! Our home and native land! …. EH!”
We heard “Oh say can you see… CHEESE!”
Did it make sense? No. Was it truly spontaneous? Probably? Who knows… but it is certainly funny. In any case it’s deeply ingrained in our culture for now. So much so that unfortunately the “CHEESE!” drowns out the customary “HA HA HA!” at the end of “…that our flag was still there.” Will it stick in the event that we no longer have Tillamook as a jersey sponsor? One day we might learn that answer, and if it does go way, it has been documented here for future Wikipedia citations.
With Tillamook still on the sleeve, there’s a good chance we will still hear “Cheese!” during out national anthem. However, Bank of America is not a company without it’s own scandals. They had to pay out $250 million for “for Illegally Charging Junk Fees, Withholding Credit Card Rewards, and Opening Fake Accounts.”
So there you have it. I’m hoping we do yell out “FEES!” instead of “Cheese.” That would be hilarious. I don’t care if we do continue to yell “Cheese,” but I really, really want to see the return of “HA HA HA!”
It doesn’t look bad actually.
