If nostalgia longed only for the good old days, there would be far fewer football fans.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers began their existence in 1976 clad in orange-and-white uniforms with a swashbuckling, dagger-chomping pirate on their helmets. Their roughly two decades in those uniforms began with an 0-14 record and ended with a 100-223-1 record and just one playoff win after the team retired them in 1996.
But in this century, the Buccaneers are two-time Super Bowl champions. That newfound fortune yielded a more sentimental view of the old orange-and-white. When the team announced the return of the Creamsicle color scheme this summer in a video narrated by Hall of Famer Derrick Brooks and featuring Buccaneers legends Mike Alstott and Ronde Barber, demand for throwback uniforms increased from a small percentage of team merchandise sales to “significant interest” among both longtime followers and younger fans.
“When you’re talking about a throwback jersey, it’s very easy to just play some old highlights, and then walk out the jersey and call it a day,” said James Ruth, CMO of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Instead, the team used Brooks, who won the Super Bowl in 2003 in the new brand, but was drafted and played in the Creamsicle era. “Using [him] as part of a narrative that then connected to the current day was super important for us.”
That multigenerational enthusiasm brought more brands in for Creamsicle Day on Oct. 15—using retro billboards and products to turn Raymond James Stadium into an updated version of the Buccaneers’ old “Big Sombrero” home at Tampa Stadium. Unilever’s Good Humor distributed thousands of Creamsicle ice cream bars outside the stadium.
Ford had players drive to the game in ‘70s and ‘80s Broncos and Mustangs. Coppertail Brewing canned a Legacy Lager with Buc-O-Bruce on the label.
As teams across the NFL embrace Nike-made throwback uniforms and bring other brand partners into their turn-back-the-clock stadium nostalgia experience, both they and the NFL have discovered a largely untapped reservoir of fan fervor.
After years of treating throwback merchandise like a costly premium item for die-hard fans, the NFL, its teams and Nike are making them accessible to the masses. That’s giving brand partners a unique opportunity to reach broad, casual fanbases that might otherwise ignore week-to-week action. From Good Humor to Microsoft to Toyota, which helped the Philadelphia Eagles launch Kelly Green throwbacks this summer, brands have a chance to leave their mark on beloved eras in football history even if they missed out on them the first time.
“When we look at Creamsicle, we never really viewed this as a throwback—as a one-time gimmick,” said Atul Khosla, the Buccaneers’ chief commercial officer. “We very much viewed this as a long-term, multiyear effort to build a sub-brand.”
Let them play
The NFL loosened uniform regulations in 2022, making it easier for franchises to wear alternate throwback kits, with the Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, New England Patriots all opting to wear Nike and Riddell throwback uniforms and helmets. This year, the Buccaneers join the Seattle Seahawks, Philadelphia Eagles and Tennessee Titans—who’ll pay homage to their original hometown by wearing Houston Oilers throwbacks during two games this season—among teams embracing throwback gear.
Taryn Hutt, the NFL’s vp of club marketing, said that the last two years have shown just how connected fans have been to merchandise and design from specific eras, with Philadelphia fans waiting in line at 3:15 a.m. for the release of Kelly Green merchandise resembling the uniform worn by Eagles legends Randall Cunningham and Reggie White in the ’80s and ’90s. As teams launched throwback gear during training camp and at the start of the season, league marketers spent weeks promoting those efforts on NFL Network, NFL.com and morning football shows.
“What has made this program so special and elevates it year over year is clubs continuing to lean in [and] make it this whole integrated 360 plan,” Hutt said.
Neither the teams nor the league would divulge exact merchandise sales numbers, but they noted that throwback jerseys previously accounted for a small portion of overall jersey demand. While vendors like league partner Fanatics-owned Mitchell & Ness would produce premium-priced throwback jerseys made with era-appropriate materials and featuring legacy players’ names on the back, the NFL hit the jackpot by having Nike apply throwback patterns to game-ready jerseys for current players made with modern materials.
“Once those uniforms actually come back and hit the field, the scope of the fan engagement becomes so much larger,” said Jonathan Wright, the NFL’s senior director of uniforms and on-field products. “It’s kind of a niche market—the throwback stuff—until it becomes relevant again, and when it becomes relevant it becomes a pop culture moment; and then once it becomes a moment, it catches fire.”
Remaking a memory
In Philadelphia, the Kelly Green throwbacks are as much about the era from 1985-1995 as they are about the teams the Eagles produced during that time. Kids were steering Cunningham and White through Tecmo Bowl and the early days of Madden, Keith Haring was painting murals in the city, Mitchell & Ness was getting noticed for its first throwbacks, and the music scene turned DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Boyz II Men and The Roots into icons.
It’s the reason Jeff narrates the Kelly Green launch video, the Eagles created a full Kelly Green playlist on Spotify and the impetus for Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin’s apology to Eagles faithful after the site’s initial Kelly Green throwback merchandise was thrown back in disgust by disappointed fans.
The throwbacks aren’t just team merchandise: They’re reminders of a specific time in the city’s history—an era that fans either lived in or heard about from previous generations. Sure, the Eagles brought back Reggie White’s son, Jeremy, as an honorary captain during their Kelly Green game on Oct. 22, but they also dropped Kelly Green Starter jackets and plan to re-release the Kelly Green varsity jacket worn by Princess Diana in the ‘90s.
The team launched the throwback line with a Toyota-backed social media blitz. But the team also threw a block party, because that’s what Philly did then and continues to do now. It’s important to the team to remain true to the city’s culture, which is why it’s also launching a Kelly Green streetwear line with Philly native and JSP founder Jimmy Gorecki.
“We’ve been celebrating Kelly Green as a sub-brand for a long time,” said Jen Kavanagh, the Eagles’ svp of media and marketing. “Fans have been showing up on game day and their Kelly Green attire for many years—they’re big fans of nostalgia and that era.”
Embracing an era
The ‘90s hold a unique place in the history of the Seattle Seahawks as well. Though the team only managed two winning seasons and one playoff appearance during that decade in the AFC West, their years in bright blue and green with a Coast Salish-inspired bird on their helmet coincided with an iconic era in the city’s history.
Microsoft was booming in Redmond, Starbucks was growing into a coffee powerhouse. and yet the city’s most popular export was the scruffy, flannel-clad, fuzz-emitting metal-punk hybrid bands of the grunge movement.
Seahawks marketers saw an opportunity to reward longtime fans who remember the ‘90s as a time when Microsoft’s Paul Allen bought the team and began building it into an eventual Super Bowl champion. They also wanted to appeal to younger fans obsessed with the era and its aesthetic, as well as football fans nationwide looking for a second team to watch on Sundays.
They teased the throwback uniform during a game against their former AFC West rival Raiders last year before launching the line this summer with a ‘90s-heavy ad filled with era-specific Microsoft technology and Pearl Jam music.
Microsoft even built a ‘90s/early 2000s-style website complete with pop-up windows and video of the implosion of the Seahawks’ former home, the Kingdome. The old stadium’s silhouette is stitched into the label of throwback jerseys, Kingdome elements surround throwback gear at the Seahawks’ Pro Shop, and the team id planning to turn Lumen Field into a makeshift Kingdome for a day during an Oct. 29 home game.
When the Seahawks throwbacks launched in July, initial sales were four times what Fanatics had projected for the first 48 hours. The numbers were three times greater than the team’s last jersey launch, with the Seahawks ultimately moving 3,600 units of throwback gear in its stores and 20,000 through Fanatics.
“The ’90s pop culture has had a great run—the nostalgia for pop culture in the ’90s has been universal,” Jeff Richards, former Seattle Seahawks vp of marketing and brand, who was with the team for the throwbacks launch earlier this year. “We saw an opportunity with the ’90s from a style and design standpoint, but really, Seattle showed up on the world stage and drove pop culture as much as any area in the ‘90s.”
