Are leaks ruining the jerseys market?

The football summer, the time between the end of one championship and the beginning of another, has always been dominated by the football market, which monopolises the interest of all fans who dream of building a Scudetto-winning team. But at the same time, the jerseys that the clubs will wear in the following season are unveiled, through presentations designed (or perhaps not) together with the sportswear brands that produce them. These releases are usually all concentrated in the same summer period, not too close to the start of the championship but not too far away either, so that fans do not forget what their favourites will be wearing in the long-awaited season opener.

Although the attention surrounding jerseys has certainly grown out of all proportion in recent years, there has always been a great deal of anticipation regarding presentations, technical sponsors, numbers and fonts used by clubs and players, but until recently this was consumed in silence, as if talking about it had led to something totally distant from our expectations. In recent years, thanks to the impact of social media and specialised websites, we are instead experiencing a continuous anticipation through mock-ups, stolen photos and leaks of what will then be the official jerseys worn by the players.

Like the world of fashion, the world of football is now also invaded by leaks, a word that in its literal meaning in English means precisely an infiltration, a leak, something therefore uncontrolled that involuntarily escapes. And so the new designs, the patterns of the most eagerly awaited and celebrated jerseys are leaked, anticipating the times that would allow a presentation that would celebrate the most representative object for a club.  

Something that even the technical sponsors will certainly not be pleased to see, as all their long work, which has lasted almost a year, is ruined by shots that are often stolen and blurred, which do not do justice to all the details and peculiarities of the packaged product. This in fact was the initial characteristic of a leak, a photo that manages to give you a preview cannot by its very nature be perfectly complete, as if that photo had been taken surreptitiously at a time when everyone was distracted. 

But from that photo it has quickly moved on to something else. If leaks used to be confined to sites and blogs that unceremoniously leaked every detail of the jerseys, brands and clubs now have to deal with dangers from all sides. In addition to the usual photos from brand warehouses or filtered preview photoshoots, they now have to dodge video games such as FIFA and PES, which have quickly become the main hub of football shirt leaks.

The grainy photos have been replaced by digital, accurate and bright renders that in fact recreate every detail of the new jersey, leaving no room for interpretation. So if before someone could claim the benefit of the doubt, remaining sceptical or still unconvinced in front of those first anticipations, today even if they wanted to, it is no longer possible to escape any spoilers. Just yesterday, some of Europe's top teams, from Bayern Munich to Paris Saint-Germain, saw their third jerseys spoiled through TikToks in the FIFA 23 presentation. But even more incredible are the leaks that arrived through e-commerce, which put club jerseys on sale even before the official presentations, as happened to Liverpool on Amazon and Manchester United on Asos. 

Just like when you find those friends talking in front of you about a series or episode you haven't seen, with jerseys it's a bit the same with the only difference being that it's now impossible not to know in advance what a team will be wearing. And if in part this mechanism of leaks and anticipations has helped brands and clubs to understand more quickly the possible response of the public, it has certainly ruined that anticipation, that fantasizing about the possible design that for weeks became the topic of every sporting debate, giving other cues for conversation besides football market.

The leaks, in short, have not completely killed the market - even if, thanks to these anticipations, fake jerseys have always increased, arriving on sale even before the official ones - but it has certainly deprived every fan and enthusiast of experiencing that anxiety and anticipation, typical of every summer, in fantasising about the future aesthetics of the teams.