Instead of "brand protection", how about "consumer protection" or "fan protection"? Who is standing up for the ordinary folks who want to wear their team's colours but cannot afford a shirt that costs £80? Meet the fans halfway and charge a reasonable price. Take a leaf from how music streaming services conquered illegal downloads. Charge a reasonable price and fans will gladly support the brands through legal channels.
The problem in the music industry is streaming services don’t really support bands at all. The fees are so small. There’s definitely a middle ground though, and whether that’s lowering prices, or making new kits less often, brands can 100% do more!
"What about the fan who wants to buy an illegal product but can't"- what a strange argument. You don't NEED to buy the latest kit every year. But agree manufacturers need to do more and prices need to come down.
@@TheKitBreakdownAbsolutely this. Using music streaming services is a terrible example. They’re brilliant from a consumer perspective in the short term, but awful for the musicians who get paid barely anything, especially the non-major label independent musicians. And those conditions will actually be worse for consumers in the long term because of the lack of incentive for musicians to create (there are plenty of independent groups who no longer release music because of these conditions already), and it’s also changing how musicians write music due to how services payout on their rates (shorter songs with more concise structure, putting hooks at the start, etc.) which is effecting their creative process and making some popular music even more uniform than it was before. It’s terrible for the musicians.
Mate Google the cost breakdown of a shirt and you might never order 1 again! Adidas make £23.47 profit per £80 top!!! Then the retailers get £26.40! If u buy from the Adidas shop they get both and make £50 profit per top
Great video. While I can understand your frustrations as kit designers, until kits become legitimately affordable for the average fan fakes will continue to become more and more popular.
not just affordable, it just seems that the fan jerseys are expensive and pure unbreatheable plastic, nothing to do with the developed technology made for the players
@@vibortravas2932yeah I bought a fan version Argentina shirt from an Adidas outlet a couple of years ago. I wore it for a BBQ the next day and never sweat so much in my life
I'd never knowingly buy a fake shirt but for the dude to claim that it's morally wrong to buy fake shirts when Nike/Adidas etc use cheap asian labour to make the shirts is laughable.
kits become iconic if your team isnt shit. Im a chelsea fan. last iconic kit was when they won the champions league. that kit had the yellow stripe. its remember because that season was a success.
Football shirts are way too expensive and in developing countries this becomes an even bigger problem. A freaking shirt shouldn't cost like half a monthly minimum salary. Edit: Btw this video is doing an incredible job on selling fake shirts. No one is gonna feel sorry for these gigantic companies.
The main problem for us isn’t how it affects the companies, but the other aspects involved in these criminal enterprises. Consumers need to be aware of what their £30 football shirt is helping to fund!
@@TheKitBreakdownI hope I don’t come off rude or ignorant, but a moral stance is just not possible in football, atleast top tier football like the PL, or UCL. The very foundation of the sport in many places has been nothing but a facade to hide shady transactions and sports washing, and what not. While the point is true, it’s just a sad reality that, while not optimal is there. I would buy an original kit of a team like York city or Middlesbrough, or some league one team or lower tier teams. Pushing to PL and National teams, it’s a lot harder to justify paying so much.
@@TheKitBreakdown Most of the people involved in the production in the clothing industry are exploited. For one current example, garment makers are attempting to sue Nike for millions in unpaid wages and in 2017 the Guardian reported on 500 workers being hospitalised working for sportswear manufacturers. These companies ARE morally responsible for their supply chains, and to pretend that they offer a more morally conscionable product is to endorse the colonial and capitalist propaganda that people in 'brand protection' are employed to produce. The problem is with the imperialist, capitalist structure of global production - not whether the shirts are cheap enough or if the counterfeit market is too big.
As for that claim that its unfair because Nike don't run sweatshops - erm, "a 2018 report by the Clean Clothes Campaign, found that Adidas and Nike still pay “poverty” wages to workers."
The fact that these fakes can undercut the market with similar quality while still remaining profitable just highlights the greed involved when setting the prices of the official kits
Fortaleza and Ceara are some of fiercest rivals in Brazil but united in a initiative to solve the issue of piracy in the most amicable way possible with their fans. Both clubs are from the northwest region of Brazil, where people usually are poorer, so the fake jerseys flooded the markets and sell much more than the originals until they launched the "POP" jerseys, which have more reasonable price and quality for the average to actually purchase and support their team directly instead of criminals. And Fortaleza went even further and gave discounts to fans who retrieved their fake jerseys in their official stores if they bought a new one there. It was an instant success, and now during their matches you hardly see any of the pirate jerseys. It coincides with the most prosperous era of Fortaleza's history, which makes it much more beautiful. This could only be done because their kits are made at home, and I doubt any of the brands that dominate the sports market would be willing to release "POP" jerseys for every team anytime soon; but it goes to show that the clubs could be a bit more passionate for their supporters as much as they are for their team. Sure, the million dollar contract is awesome for the clubs, but if they can produce at home (totally or partially) and have an approximate profit or more than they get with Adidas, Nike, Kappa or whatever... why they just don't do that already?
It's much like the illegal streaming of football. People don't want to do it, people want they authentic product but ultimately it's becoming unaffordable for many. £70-£80 for a stadium jersey that is, let's be honest, getting almost like a fake version of a real kit. Couple that with how sensitive modern jerseys are to washing machines - plastic sponsors seem to come off/crack very easily. Football isn't a "rich man's" sport. If you're buying for children, buying for yourself to play 5 a side, etc., the price of a full kit is hard to justify at the minute.
@@TheKitBreakdown sometimes not think but respect the consumers. The football fans love the designers and want to wear their "work". In Croatia, the national team jerseys would always stay at top prices 70-80 Euros (even 3-4 year jerseys), and it would get people angry that original Croatian jerseys in England, Canada,... would cost 5 pounds and stay full price in Croatia
@vibortravas2932 they don't care we are just a number or plot on a spread sheet to show their profit margins. I worked at a major sporting goods store in the states while in college. All these shirts are marked up 100 to 110% for retail. Distributors are paying a fraction of that which shows you the true value of the shirt. The shirts are so cheap that the retailer still makes profit on top of the brands and clubs. So even when you see the shirt go on "sale" thats still probably 50% mark up on the actual price. This guy was just spitting bs rubbish he knows the truth.
Just to make a point on your theory on the palace shirt, I can guarantee absolutely no one is paying double the price for those minor details that you as a designer might consider fundamental differences, the average consumer doesn’t care about those tiny details, if the badge is just ludicrously bad then yes they might go with a genuine. as someone who has bought knock off shirts and have many of them, I haven’t even seen many of the real ones to know the difference in material and designs, so if you don’t know you can’t care and my final point, anyone considering buying knock offs isn’t doing it with the thought process of which is better, they’re most likely doing it because they either can’t afford or like me just point blank refuse to spend a fortune on a shirt every single year, the real ones also don’t last, the sponsors, PL badges and name on nearly all tops have fallen off, in my experience the quality of genuine shirts is actually atrocious too.
My kids have fake kits, they get them dirty and use them all the time. If I spent more I would be dead precious and careful with when they wear them. Also a full kids kit with name, number and logo, shorts and socks for £12.
Hit the nail on the head with the retro section. It's a product you simply can't get anywhere else - the club version is missing kit manufacturers and sponsors, and is still expensive. You can find 99% accurate counterfeit versions for £20. Add to that, a retro version avoids the "needing the new kit every season" problem
As soon as Player vs Replica kits began selling regularly in stores, it was game over for me. The vast difference in the Replicas, coupled with its rising cost, evaporated the magic of buying a Replica. I bought some Code 7 Nike shirts, circa 2003, and there is barely a difference to the replicas I have of the very same shirts. Now, however, the FAKE player-edition kits online are almost impossible to differentiate to the authentic player-edition shirts, and are 1/8 the price of just a Replica.
A new home every year, a new away shirt but the previous season's away becomes the third. United between 2006-2014 did this, the only expectation being the 07-09 home being kept for 2 seasons (released a new third shirt with an away instead). Home shirts are worn in at least half games minimum, whilst some away/thirds are maybe used 5 times a season if that. Gives a best of both worlds
i get the designer being mad about being copied but is not like he gets royalties from the authentics that are sold, if anything having your creation massively counterfeited means you did a great job
Can I just say, I really appreciate the honesty you guys show in this video. So many commentaries on this issue get preachy about the illegality and immorality of fakes, without acknowledging the financial issue facing working families. So, I'm really glad you guys didn't just blindly defend the manufacturers and their pricing. Hopefully a happy medium can be found, where we can still support official products but at a reasonable price. On a side note, I think returning to a two year rotation for new shirts would really help. Paying out 100 quid for a new shirt is still too much but if it was one new kit per year instead of three or four then it would be a good start.
Really fascinating video thanks gents. As has been said loads by others, the main driver for this is price, and if the fakes are getting so good an expert can't spot them, why would the average fan care? The point on families is spot on. I support a championship club and its £55 for a kids mini kit, even with marketing and mark ups its disgusting and unjustified. Had no idea about how bad the working conditions are and where the money goes. That said, is there any legitimate evidence of this? The cynical side of me says brands could just be peddling that as propaganda to make consumers be 'ethical'.
I took a punt on a retro 70s Manchester United shirt and was astounded by how good the quality was. Let's face it, once you move your manufacturing to the car east, you lose control over it.
Great episode again lads. Think it would be great if you could get an over the table camera? Like a birds eye view where we can really see the details you pick out when looking at the shirts
A kit one every two years would better in my opinion. At least the home and away. In a way it would help reduce the amount of purchases made for the counterfeits, since it would the supporters time to save up for new kit. Maybe the third kit could change yearly.
I think we’ve got to the point where people are used to and even excited by the prospect of new kits every season. As with tv subscriptions, the kit manufacturers are pushing the prices to levels where people will go rogue to save some money. One more thing, why don’t manufacturers (Adidas in particular) produce official replica jerseys of old classics? They could do this with federations and clubs they still have contracts with (Germany, Spain, Argentina etc..)They’ve done it a bit, but they could in effect rerelease and resell their a lot of their back catalogue.
Well said in your latter point. I think a lot of Newcastle United fans will be hopeful that with the return of Adidas, retro kits such as the 1995-97 top in this video, the '97 & the '99 Newcastle Brown Ale sponsored tops will be re-released.... Ask a lot of youngsters (who were not even born when the iconic first 3 home shirts) and I can assure you they will have all wanted to have a newer version of something their parents will have worn when originally for sale
I'll never buy fakes, and I don't think anyone needs a shirt desperately enough to buy a fake (do you need the latest one every year?) but the clubs and manufacturers absolutely dont help the issue. As you say in this video, why do clubs need to release a suite of new kits every year? In response to the question Craig, I'd prefer a new home kit every two seasons, and happy to rotate away/third kits so you have fewer releases. And manufacturers could do more- the difference in price is just astronomical. You can buy a fake vapour knit shirt for about 10% the cost of an authentic, and as you show the fabric is almost indistinguishable, so how is the genuine one SO much more expensive? Any more info on that would be great. I understand that Nike and Adidas are held to account with the factories they use but I'm not sure I'm convinced they are 'ethical' anyway- ethical enough to justify 10x the cost? I doubt the people making them are paid less than local minimum wage which is a pittance. If the big manufacturers could prove me wrong that would be great, but it feels as though there's a reason clothing companies don't make films about their factories.
There’s a video by the athletic interest that covers this, and there are several costs involved as well. But I definitely agree, it’s certainly an option, and having like 4 kits release in a year is definitely not optimal.
Atleast back in the day, clubs and nations started to lengthen the time their kits would be in use/circulation for. I remember in the early 00s, clubs would use away or 3rd kits for 2 seasons in a row, and would state their life span on the purchase ticket or upon the shirt itself(Arsenal 03/05 + England). Back in the 90s, many home and away shirts could be used for 2 seasons in a row easily. The quality of these items would actually be much better than the stuff made in the far east nowadays(whether thats authentic or counterfit). If a team decided to wear the same shirt for 2-3 years now and advertised it as "saving the planet/materials", while saving supporters money, i believe fans would get behind it much more. The greed in the game is very real and the counterfit market exists because of it.
@@TheKitBreakdown Sustainable, sexy and money saving, while lasting longer than the usual. Produce a few extra to cover 2 seasons, advertise and market it in a proper way(making sure the design is less copy+paste and more unique compared to todays stuff). And charge a little less. What about a reversible shirt?! Home one side and away/3rd the other. Now there's a job for you lads!!
18:54 MLS still does this and it makes sense. Nike counterfeits are super easy to tell though. Its all about where the tag is and what the wash tag says. Always Google the product code line below the size- fakes don't even have the size anyway
Great watch as always lads. Would have loved for the reactions to the quality to be wholly different, but unfortunately the reality is they can be quite similar at times. Great to have a go-to clip for the work the likes of Nike do to ensure workers are looked after. Always thrown up at sellers like myself when we mention fakes.
For the last few years I've alternated between buying an official kit from the club shop one year, to a counterfeit the next. The quality is so similar that I can't justify paying the full club shop price every year. Great video as always lads.
1:59 What so you don't get paid by the club/brand for your design? Did the person who designed and the person who approved the purple and blue cross on the England collar get fired? I wouldn't buy a real or fake one with a purple Saint George Cross on it. 3:17 PMSL laughing at morally wrong. So it's morally OK to charge £140 for an England shirt? 6:05 Less corporate greed from counterfeiters. 6:05 Yes mate. No teams have ever worn a yellow shirt before 2002. In fact, did yellow even exist before 2002?
This is a great and very informative video, but it would be even better if we could see close ups of all the details you talk about. Its hard for us to fully appreciate the differences if we cant see them.
a kit change every two years (with home and away staggered) would be the ideal solution in my opinion and the outgoing away kit could be kept on an extra year as the third kit - I'm sure that has been done a few times before (thinking the Man United "V" pattern kit - I'm sure they kept the white shirt with red V as the third kit for the following season though the sponsor changed I think)
Would love to see shifts going back to 2 seasons. One thing that doesn’t get talked about is the environmental impact of releasing 3 new shifts every year. Also to note the argument for the price of new shirts is partly due to the technology is doubtful. I’m sure football shifts of the past were also at the height of the technology for there era. I used to regularly buy my teams new shirt but not anymore. The price is ridiculous now and I’ve not even mentioned the players kits.
The fact is real kits are too expensive for most of the fanbase they are made for, the fake market is making the same kits that are the same quality as the original, you can say it's fake but it's the same design, material, feel and look as the original and if you think fakes are shit quality you obviously aren't buying them from a good supplier, there are loads of website that sell top quality fake kits for half the price of the original and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
If I buy one, it's still the authentic one. From a collecter's point of view, a fake one just isn't right. However I do understand people not wanting to pay £80 - £100 for a shirt, especially in a family with kids where you'll have to buy several every year. I read a rumour that Nike was considering going back to the old ways and keeping the home kit for 2 years, which would be my preference. Aside from this, does anybody know what's stopping the counterfeiters to put the correct productcode on a shirt? That's my number one go to when I'm buying old shirts at places like Vinted. I just ask a picture of the internal label and by this I know (at least I hope) that it's an authentic one. Would be a nightmare if the counterfeiters start using the correct productcodes.
Agreed, once they get those labels right we have no chance. It will affect the whole industry those as genuine retailers would end up selling the fakes, as even experts wouldnt be able to tell the difference (as this video shows).
It’s quite a scary thought! We were shocked at how good these fakes were, and how some were impossible to tell even with the authentic shirt to compare it to. It’s going to get more and more difficult
If brands would charge affordable prices people would probably support the legit stuff. Another bugbear I have is that if I want a vintage shirt, a brand might do a "tribute" that is not identical, usually in a very limited edition that sells out in hours and costs even more than a current run shirt. The last time adidas did a retro Arsenal range, it was all sold out before I had the chance to even look at it. They will release two or three new shirts every season, some sort of high priced, limited special edition retro thing and then they'll add a new leisure range on top of that. You can only milk the fans so much.
I'd prefer to go back to a new shirt every other year, but alternate home and away each year. So you get new home one season, next season you get the away one. My gripe is that if these fake companies can make these nearly as good as the original but charge peanuts in comparison then the disconnect is surely the greed of big corporations charging through the nose. Ones ethically wrong, ones morally wrong.
I tend to only buy authentic kits when theyre 40-50% off, which is why all of my kits are outdated but that doesnt matter really, im not obsessed with being up to date anyway.
I usually wait till the end of the season to buy kits when the manufacturers like Nike and Adidas start slashing the prices. Still get a real kit and don't have to break the bank. Only exceptions would be if I want one with a name on the back or if I'm attending a match in person. Makes it feel a little more special and worth paying the price at that moment.
My favourite tactic is to wait until kit manufacturers change. I think I got a couple of reasonably priced Nike Man United shirts (now without the Chrysler logo) in about 2015 just before the switch to Adidas.
I used to do this. Plus if you buy at the end of the season and you can still get name printing, you can get a player who had a good season and it’s like a little memento of the year they had. The last shirt I ever bought was at the end of the season Rashford came through so I have a Rashford 49 kit which is a nice reminder of his rise to fame.
Can't blame people for buying fakes when official replicas cost a staggering £70-£50 on average when even fakes are almost on par quality wise with dem replicas clubs release on retail. *Edit: it's crazy because I managed to snag a napoli home replica shirt for 49 euros which is around £43 despite them being recent serie A winners and champions league participants. So it comes down to greed nothing more. 😤
To bring my perspective on buying kits, as a fan of certain clubs there’s another spanner in the works. I’m a United fan and I don’t wanna give the Glazers any more money than they’ve already leeched off us, and I’m sure there’s plenty of fans of other clubs feel the same way. I personally haven’t bought a kit in years. In that situation I can see people going for a counterfeit, maybe buying one of the fake retro kits, almost as a way to get back at the owners. But then the people who suffer are the people who put hard work into creating the kit, and the people working in the dodgy counterfeit factories.
Every two years for me - made the whole ‘new kit’ thing more exciting and surely made designers jobs easier in terms of a coming up with a new look every year
The biggest joke is the reason why the counterfeits are so good is because they are usually made in the same factories as the authentic ones, by the same people. This guy talking about the counterfeiters working standards and employees treatment like Nike and adidas don’t use the same factories with employees with the same conditions. It’s very simple Nike pay a company let’s say their hours are 7am -7pm. Well the factory owner or a manager opens the factory from 8pm - 4am to make a little extra on the side. Same factory, same employees, same materials. Quality control a bit looser. How else are these counterfeits able to make such good fakes?
Clubs/manufacturers definitely release far too many kits - not to mention training gear - but a home shirt every two seasons probably still wouldn't do much to encourage me to buy. It's still far too much; I'd still refuse on principle. I've bought from Chinese sellers but will stop doing that now too, having learned of the humanitarian issues that come with it. Therefore my shirt piggy bank will be saved for genuine retros from now on. NUFC away 97/98 is the object of my affections atm! Love the channel.
I'll admit that I do buy fake kits from time to time, especially if I love the look of a retro kit but can't afford the £150+ price. If new shirts were reasonably priced I'd have no trouble buying them. However, £80 for a replica and £110 for a pro version is simply ridiculous. You can get 8 fakes for that with little difference to the untrained eye! I see both sides though and if I like the design of a kit enough I'll get the official one and support the brands/designers. Great video and insight on something we know very little about, keep up the good work.
We totally get that for sure, it’s really not easy for consumers. The main point with this video is to make sure you at least can make an informed decision. We totally understand the financial aspect and there’s no judgement here! Just make sure you’re careful with quality of the shirt etc as they don’t have to meet standards that authentic ones do, and can lead to some dodgy materials or toxins being in the shirts. Knowledge is power, so they say! 🙌
@@TheKitBreakdown Definitely agree with what you've said here. Craig's trouble to spot the fakes says a lot about the quality they're putting out. Unbelievable how they get some of them so close. Hopefully more information comes to light about the conditions and mechanics of their trade to make that decision.
The truth is that the individual shirt costs the manufacturer far less than they are charging the fans, until that changes and these manufacturers stop ripping off fans and exploiting them then the counterfeit trade is going to continue, there is absolutely no reason to charge £75-90 for any football shirt and that cost is on top of the expense of a season ticket, travel to games etc. I think you should try to put pressure on Nike/Adidas/Puma etc. to actually charge affordable prices for their shirts. I have a few fakes because I wasn't prepared to pay those kind of prices for something I might wear 2 or 3 times.
Thanks for this. Quite an interesting discussion. It's something that I've discussed before in the classes I teach. I work as a academic in a business school (University of Essex). This has come up both in modules on Business Ethics, and more frequently in the module I teach on Management in the Creative & Cultural Industries. One year during student presentations a woman brought in a selection of Louis Vuitton handbags and asked the class to try and tell which ones were real or fake. And much like the discussion here it was really hard to tell unless you knew very specific things to look for. When I discus this with students we often end up having similar discussions. I'm often struck by some of the student counter arguments in defense. For instance I've had students argue that counterfeits even while not directly making money for a brand still enhance its reputation and image by being counterfeited. I've listened to people argue that too much of the cost for branded goods is for Intellectual Property Rights, and thus if more money goes to the people physically making them they might even be thought of as more ethical. But aside from that in the video you make a few empirical claims that I was wondering if you could provide some more evidence for, as in references, sources, etc... 1. Claiming that the common argument that many counterfeits are made in the same factories as 'legitimate' items is not true. What's the source on that? My hunch here is this argument arises precisely because of how hard it can often be to tell the difference between 'real' and 'fake' such that it seems quite intuitive the same people and processes must be used. 2. Counterfeit production is involved in drugs and guns, but not in the cool outlaw way, more like the exploitative way. Again some sources for this would be cool, because that's sounds totally plausible, but it also could easily sound like scaremongering (thinking here of anti-drug campaigns that often make claims about all sorts of malfeasance connected to the production of illegal narcotics, sometimes true, and sometimes in a very baseless way).
To the first point, Craig himself, as he has been involved with finding factories in Asia to produce Nike Football products as their Global Creative Director. So that’s from first hand experience. So when he talks about working conditions etc, it’s because he knows first hand that a lot of the myths spread to justify counterfeits just aren’t true. The counterfeiters also manage to produce such good fakes as they can get hold of the original products, deconstruct them, and copy them. It’s happening on such a scale with a level of sophistication that makes it difficult for a consumer to spot differences in final products. On the second point, this is all experience that Ben has had when dealing with these counterfeiters first hand. The counterfeit products trade is just one arm of many organised crime groups, “mafias” etc. that helps finance their other operations. This is something that Ben would be able to talk into better than us, though.
I think part of the issue is that when Ben describes the problem with the counterfeit industry, many people will (arguably justifiably) say the brands are guilty of the same things (immorality, worker exploitation, shareholder profiteering, waste, carbon footprint, poor quality etc) and the only real difference is the difference in scale and legality. Combine that with the extortionate prices brands charge for official products annually, the countless 3rd/special versions, the lack of retro re-makes combined with the insane prices for original retros, and then the low prices for counterfeit versions that to the untrained eye look very similar, and it's a perfect storm that makes it all understandable. Much like the music industry in the '90s and '00s, the industry has created the conditions for a problem it now needs to solve.
It purely comes down to price. I’ve stopped buying current kits and purely buy retro, because they’re almost half the price. It would be interesting to see the rise in price across the years because it feels like it was only a few years ago that you’d pay around £50, whereas now you’re looking at around £70 for a Villa top.
I support a lower league club and most of the time we keep our home kits for 2 seasons, presumably for cost reasons just as much as any other. Another good thing about having kits for 2 years is it gives them a chance to become iconic and memorable. When you have 3 new ones a year you don’t remember half of them.
Exactly the designer doesn’t even know how much they sell the real ones and couldn’t tell the difference between a good fake. £80 for fan (replica), £110 for player (authentic) compared to £15 max. It’s not the choice of paying £20 or £30 extra for the real deal it’s the choice between paying an extra £60 or £90. The only criminals are people trying to sell counterfeit ones as real and all the companies posting record profits when everyone is struggling to make ends meet.
Totally agree that amount charged for football shirts has driven counterfeit market. I definitely see more match going fans buying counterfeit. I'd definitely prefer two year cycle for home shirts, Brentford did do that for their home and it looks like theyre doing it for their away this year
Im a big cr7 and messi fan since 2006 i regularly buy my jerseys in auctions on ebay and the very first thing i ask is for the product code and i also ask them to measure it why because most fakes the sizing is off and the fakes never get the code right. Some people are amazes by my collection and they ask me if they are all real and im proud to say yes as all have a product code to back it up and i can tell right off the bat which shirt is a fake by the stitching the color of the jersey and the placement of the team badge or sponsor nowadays its hard but i always tell people a real shirt is more of a investment than a fake. A few months ago i sold a messi jersey for 435 it was from his debut season at Barcelona and thats my most expensive sale so far I've made
I think of something that I would call a Toni Kroos model: clubs can release a new home shirt each two years, a new away shirt each 1.5 years, but in a secondary colour of this club, and a new third kit with any design possible, also each 1.5 years, but in different half of a year (for example, let the club introduce new away at the beginning of 23/24 season and new third at the beginning of the year 2024).
My first consideration would be the pricing of kid size shirts needs to be massively reduced. If an adult wants to buy a shirt, I don’t see why they can’t pay the going rate (although 70 quid is a bit much) but having to buy for kids at the current pricing is actually disgraceful. The club, the kit manufacturer and the shirt sponsors all get indirect advertising from supporters walking around wearing the shirt so why can’t they factor that into the cost of the replica (maybe a way to subsidise the cost for the walking advertisement). Anyway it’s too pricey currently, and as the gents have repeatedly said, kits are getting churned out every year and really are not innovative or good - so maybe stagger releases for a start.
I bought a retro man united tracksuit jacket from the club shop last year for £65 First wash, the badge fell off, as it was glued on. I complained and all i was offered was 10% off my next order. I paid a seamstress £10 to sew it back on. I will never ever spend my hard earned cash on anything original again.
I'd say too, if even you don't have dependents looking a shirt, buying even two a year is extortionate and especially in contrast to template shirts which are much cheaper. I'd love to see a lower price cotton version of these modern kits
Hi guys, great video as ever. So a significant amount of shirt sale revenue comes from the sponsorship/licensing money from the kit manufactures (as opposed to actual profit on the sales), if I remember what I've seen before? Wondering what your thoughts are on a medium club accepting a loss in revenue to drive shirt sales, from a marketing perspctive? If a club took on a 40m loss from selling shirts for cheap, could it make the returnd in the long term?
I would personally prefer an alternate year release between the home kit & away kit. Just like the 90s to early 2000s. I'm so glad that adidas & sometimes umbro are releasing remakes of their retro shiirts.
I would rather my club released a kit once every two years. I am a kit collector and love buying kits but I couldn’t imagine being a Napoli fan the last couple seasons.
I live in developing country, been a Newcastle fan since 2010 and I've never bought a kit brand new fresh from announcement... mostly bought my replica kits used after 2-3 season late (authentic one usually dont even last a season so no need to bother looking for them). For the newest kit I always buy fake counterfeits, 1 kit cost like 2 big mac instead of 1/3 of my monthly salary and I don't even have to worry abouy ruining them unlike my real kits since they're ao cheap.
I go on holiday to Turkey and come back with a load of fake tops each time. Paying £100 for football tops is just scandalous and not something I'm ever going to do.
I found this interesting. I do now have an appreciation of the overall design process which goes into producing a kit, but as others have said, I cant see how manufacturers can charge £80 for just a replica shirt! I try to support my Club by buying a replica shirt, but often these dont feel fit for purpose. I wear mine to play footy and the supposed sweat wicking properties leave a lot to be desired. Meet fans halfway. Also look at In House design/local manufacturers, where clubs would be supporting the local economy/community and give fans a choice of designs that they can vote for as the new kit etc? Also I heard what you said about Unethical Counterfeiters but as far as I'm aware Nike etc still has work to do regarding its ethical status
Availability is an issues as well. When Adidas released a limited edition kit for Italy's 125th anniversary it sold out in moments (at a cost of $300!). What's a collector or fan to do when the price is high AND the availability is low.
In the 90s my mom struggled to buy the real thing and kits averaged around £40/£50 back then I say the more options people have the better because most of these top clubs have criminal elements if you dig deep enough.
They’ll never stop it places like dh gate are totally legal due to the rules in China.. my mate got his daughter a Liverpool shirt from dh gate for £12
I can just barely afford new kits for me and my kids each season, and I justify it by knowing that I'm contributing to the club. But I can't fault anyone with a family who can't afford real shirts buying counters for half the price. I do own a number of vintage Arsenal 90s and early 00s kits that I bought in the mid-2000s when real ones were still available but now the price of those kits when they even pop up on a reputable site is insane and there are all kinds of counterfeits available on eBay from places like Ukraine and the Far East.
As a seller of vintage nfl jerseys, I can relate to how saturated the market is with cheap, nasty, fake jerseys. It’s a process in itself to teach customers the key differences to look for.
This turned out to be a good advert for fake kits and how good they are. No mention at all at extortionate prices of real kits. Please have some empathy for fans getting ripped off every year by these greedy corporations.
Love the video, great debate from you all, unfortunately I’ve been stung buying what I thought to be a genuine shirt, then they turned out to be fake, I only buy genuine made shirts be it stadium or player issue ones, thankfully I’ve managed to get some of them when they’re discounted. I’m a big guy, 6’2” tall I normally take 2XL up to a 4XL all depending on the manufacturer?? The Chinese fake shirt makers seem to do Asian sizing. So can never get a fake one in big enough to fit anyway, I’ve been collecting shirts since 1995, so I loved and wish they continued to do home shirts every 2 years instead of every year??
this year's away as next year's third is an easy compromise that still allows clubs to sell two new kits every year. There's also the option to make more interesting pre-match and training wear (at a cheaper price point than match-wear) - few clubs really exploit this option, tho Arsenal is an obvious exception. What I'd really like to see tho is outreach & education from clubs and brands. The perception that clubs are greedy is most pervasive among fans who don't understand the economics or the moral aspects. Simply relying on brand police is shutting the gate after the horse has bolted. Pesonally speaking, i also dont feel the imperative to buy new kit every season. I'm a believer that old kit makes you look more of a veteran, but thats just me 😂
I used to buy only authentic jersey but the prices are outrages especially when you add nameset and badges 120-150) and if you want to resell it nobody wants to pay more than 30$ the replicas last just as long 1/5 of the price with badges and nameset as the authentic nobody can tell and people don’t really care and there not out here checking the tag I’ve had replicas for years in and still in near perfect condition and the quality is amazing basically identical as a football fan it’s about the fact I’m wearing a jersey with a player that I like watching as opposed to caring about the authenticity yes companies should come out with 3 new kits every season as new players transfer we want the new player with the new kit and 3 kits help you get different players on the back
So you pile down to the Manchester United megastore and you want two adults shirts and two kids, all with names, numbers and the premier league patch. What's that setting you back? £354.00. Who is seriously going to pay that in this day and age? I mean a majority will like season ticket holders as they'll have the coin to do it. But others won't. Kids want to keep up with the latest trends etc and put pressure on parents to deliver. But what the kids don't realise is all the outgoings parents have. So what do the parents do? Buy good fakes at less than half the price. Like most have said here, when clubs start dropping the prices the fake business will also slow up! Let's be honest, they're all produced in the same country / warehouse. The profits that these brands and clubs are making is ridiculous! What about 'seconds' that haven't quite made the cut, you telling me they will just destroy them because of slight stitch issue? No chance, no one wants to lose money so they get sold on to people like the 'fake' sellers. You'll find some are fake and some are genuine faulty items.
I collect Blades shirts from 84 to today. Last season I bought the original and snide version. The snide version was better quality, even instances on TV where the club badges came off the player's shirts during the match! Although we did move from adidas to errea😂
TSN did a documentray or part series about this. "Faking It: Cracking down on counterfeits" I'm sure you can find the videos on UA-cam regarding this problem.
If brands attached an NFT to a kit code and then used something like Chainlink's CCIP to register transactions, you would be able to tell instantly if you are buying genuine or not because the NFT would be handed over to your ownership at point of resale.
when the designer of the shirt himself mistakes the fake one for a real one thats pretty clear for me buying an original is not worth it at the exorbitant prices they charge.
These clubs are the only organisations that can get away with selling fake tops and get lots of money for it where it's an issue is when you buy fake tops from someone else other than the reputable sellers of the football clubs people have to remember that you're always buying a replica top not the real thing so in my eyes it's a fake and they're fine with doing that I've never bought a fake football top but sick and tired of having to pay £80 for replicas or 120 plus pounds for real ones so from now on I shall be trying to get my hands on some good looking fakes
It comes down to the bottom line of price Many have said no one wants to pay top dollar for a sub-par shirt, like most things the past few years price has gone up and quality has gone down.. I'm a Milan fan and the player version of our away jersey this season feels like fish & chip shop paper This creates markets for counterfeiters and if brands were smart they'd re-release kits themselves If Nike officially released the 2002 Brazil home jersey it would be the #1 seller this year Unfortunately I can't see the price dropping or re-releasing jerseys As always love the video guys keep it up!
My main issue is with retro kits, I am now unsure whats real and whats fake when looking on ebay, I've been looking for the 1996 barcelona away, and I am pretty sure every single one is fake, and the money they want for retro kits is even more than a new kit sometimes.
I think the thing with anything thats counterfeit is that ultimately in most cases you're contributing to organised crime. I've often toyed with the idea of buying a high end fake watch so I don't have to wear my real one out and about with the risk of it being damaged or getting mugged myself but still cant bring myself to do it... As a dad, I buy my little boy a kit on Black Friday when they usually drop by 25% and then thats it. If I want something I'd either wait til the end of the season when they drop in price drastically or buy the training kit which is usually 50% cheaper than even the 'replica kit'.
Instead of "brand protection", how about "consumer protection" or "fan protection"? Who is standing up for the ordinary folks who want to wear their team's colours but cannot afford a shirt that costs £80? Meet the fans halfway and charge a reasonable price. Take a leaf from how music streaming services conquered illegal downloads. Charge a reasonable price and fans will gladly support the brands through legal channels.
The problem in the music industry is streaming services don’t really support bands at all. The fees are so small. There’s definitely a middle ground though, and whether that’s lowering prices, or making new kits less often, brands can 100% do more!
"What about the fan who wants to buy an illegal product but can't"- what a strange argument. You don't NEED to buy the latest kit every year. But agree manufacturers need to do more and prices need to come down.
@@TheKitBreakdown👏
@@TheKitBreakdownAbsolutely this. Using music streaming services is a terrible example. They’re brilliant from a consumer perspective in the short term, but awful for the musicians who get paid barely anything, especially the non-major label independent musicians. And those conditions will actually be worse for consumers in the long term because of the lack of incentive for musicians to create (there are plenty of independent groups who no longer release music because of these conditions already), and it’s also changing how musicians write music due to how services payout on their rates (shorter songs with more concise structure, putting hooks at the start, etc.) which is effecting their creative process and making some popular music even more uniform than it was before. It’s terrible for the musicians.
Mate Google the cost breakdown of a shirt and you might never order 1 again! Adidas make £23.47 profit per £80 top!!! Then the retailers get £26.40! If u buy from the Adidas shop they get both and make £50 profit per top
Great video. While I can understand your frustrations as kit designers, until kits become legitimately affordable for the average fan fakes will continue to become more and more popular.
not just affordable, it just seems that the fan jerseys are expensive and pure unbreatheable plastic, nothing to do with the developed technology made for the players
@@vibortravas2932yeah I bought a fan version Argentina shirt from an Adidas outlet a couple of years ago. I wore it for a BBQ the next day and never sweat so much in my life
I'd never knowingly buy a fake shirt but for the dude to claim that it's morally wrong to buy fake shirts when Nike/Adidas etc use cheap asian labour to make the shirts is laughable.
Also when they cost about £2 to make but will still sell them for £85 or £125
Would defo prefer clubs to keep kits for 2 seasons. Gives kits a much better opportunity to become iconic. Too many forgettable kits these days.
Clubs are definitely like the old guy in the fable with his golden goose. They're strangling their customers that they laughably call "supporters"
@@andrewphippsphillips1455yeah even of the kits fire I'll rather wait until a end of season sale to get it
Good point, a lot of them are forgettable. It's hard to pay big money for a worse looking kit than you already have.
kits become iconic if your team isnt shit. Im a chelsea fan. last iconic kit was when they won the champions league. that kit had the yellow stripe. its remember because that season was a success.
MLS clubs do two seasons a kit.... change home or away every year
As a United fan I think fake kits are great. They let me support United without giving money to the greedy glazers
Football shirts are way too expensive and in developing countries this becomes an even bigger problem. A freaking shirt shouldn't cost like half a monthly minimum salary.
Edit: Btw this video is doing an incredible job on selling fake shirts. No one is gonna feel sorry for these gigantic companies.
The main problem for us isn’t how it affects the companies, but the other aspects involved in these criminal enterprises. Consumers need to be aware of what their £30 football shirt is helping to fund!
@@TheKitBreakdownI hope I don’t come off rude or ignorant, but a moral stance is just not possible in football, atleast top tier football like the PL, or UCL. The very foundation of the sport in many places has been nothing but a facade to hide shady transactions and sports washing, and what not. While the point is true, it’s just a sad reality that, while not optimal is there. I would buy an original kit of a team like York city or Middlesbrough, or some league one team or lower tier teams. Pushing to PL and National teams, it’s a lot harder to justify paying so much.
Word yet the clubs don't care lmao
@@TheKitBreakdown Most of the people involved in the production in the clothing industry are exploited. For one current example, garment makers are attempting to sue Nike for millions in unpaid wages and in 2017 the Guardian reported on 500 workers being hospitalised working for sportswear manufacturers. These companies ARE morally responsible for their supply chains, and to pretend that they offer a more morally conscionable product is to endorse the colonial and capitalist propaganda that people in 'brand protection' are employed to produce. The problem is with the imperialist, capitalist structure of global production - not whether the shirts are cheap enough or if the counterfeit market is too big.
As for that claim that its unfair because Nike don't run sweatshops - erm, "a 2018 report by the Clean Clothes Campaign, found that Adidas and Nike still pay “poverty” wages to workers."
The fact that these fakes can undercut the market with similar quality while still remaining profitable just highlights the greed involved when setting the prices of the official kits
Not all counterfits are made equal.... but some are amazing
A kit lasting 2 seasons would be ideal, I’d probably buy more often then too!
I think the mls does that
Fortaleza and Ceara are some of fiercest rivals in Brazil but united in a initiative to solve the issue of piracy in the most amicable way possible with their fans.
Both clubs are from the northwest region of Brazil, where people usually are poorer, so the fake jerseys flooded the markets and sell much more than the originals until they launched the "POP" jerseys, which have more reasonable price and quality for the average to actually purchase and support their team directly instead of criminals.
And Fortaleza went even further and gave discounts to fans who retrieved their fake jerseys in their official stores if they bought a new one there. It was an instant success, and now during their matches you hardly see any of the pirate jerseys. It coincides with the most prosperous era of Fortaleza's history, which makes it much more beautiful.
This could only be done because their kits are made at home, and I doubt any of the brands that dominate the sports market would be willing to release "POP" jerseys for every team anytime soon; but it goes to show that the clubs could be a bit more passionate for their supporters as much as they are for their team. Sure, the million dollar contract is awesome for the clubs, but if they can produce at home (totally or partially) and have an approximate profit or more than they get with Adidas, Nike, Kappa or whatever... why they just don't do that already?
It's much like the illegal streaming of football. People don't want to do it, people want they authentic product but ultimately it's becoming unaffordable for many. £70-£80 for a stadium jersey that is, let's be honest, getting almost like a fake version of a real kit. Couple that with how sensitive modern jerseys are to washing machines - plastic sponsors seem to come off/crack very easily. Football isn't a "rich man's" sport. If you're buying for children, buying for yourself to play 5 a side, etc., the price of a full kit is hard to justify at the minute.
This is all very true! Brands and companies need to think about the consumers as well as their finances
@@TheKitBreakdown sometimes not think but respect the consumers. The football fans love the designers and want to wear their "work". In Croatia, the national team jerseys would always stay at top prices 70-80 Euros (even 3-4 year jerseys), and it would get people angry that original Croatian jerseys in England, Canada,... would cost 5 pounds and stay full price in Croatia
@vibortravas2932 they don't care we are just a number or plot on a spread sheet to show their profit margins. I worked at a major sporting goods store in the states while in college. All these shirts are marked up 100 to 110% for retail. Distributors are paying a fraction of that which shows you the true value of the shirt. The shirts are so cheap that the retailer still makes profit on top of the brands and clubs. So even when you see the shirt go on "sale" thats still probably 50% mark up on the actual price. This guy was just spitting bs rubbish he knows the truth.
@vibortravas2932 sounds like the Croatia football team treats their fans more like money machines rather than loyal fans
@@shawklan27 realistically about 99% treat their fans this way
Just to make a point on your theory on the palace shirt, I can guarantee absolutely no one is paying double the price for those minor details that you as a designer might consider fundamental differences, the average consumer doesn’t care about those tiny details, if the badge is just ludicrously bad then yes they might go with a genuine.
as someone who has bought knock off shirts and have many of them, I haven’t even seen many of the real ones to know the difference in material and designs, so if you don’t know you can’t care and my final point, anyone considering buying knock offs isn’t doing it with the thought process of which is better, they’re most likely doing it because they either can’t afford or like me just point blank refuse to spend a fortune on a shirt every single year, the real ones also don’t last, the sponsors, PL badges and name on nearly all tops have fallen off, in my experience the quality of genuine shirts is actually atrocious too.
My kids have fake kits, they get them dirty and use them all the time. If I spent more I would be dead precious and careful with when they wear them. Also a full kids kit with name, number and logo, shorts and socks for £12.
Hit the nail on the head with the retro section. It's a product you simply can't get anywhere else - the club version is missing kit manufacturers and sponsors, and is still expensive. You can find 99% accurate counterfeit versions for £20. Add to that, a retro version avoids the "needing the new kit every season" problem
As soon as Player vs Replica kits began selling regularly in stores, it was game over for me. The vast difference in the Replicas, coupled with its rising cost, evaporated the magic of buying a Replica.
I bought some Code 7 Nike shirts, circa 2003, and there is barely a difference to the replicas I have of the very same shirts. Now, however, the FAKE player-edition kits online are almost impossible to differentiate to the authentic player-edition shirts, and are 1/8 the price of just a Replica.
A new home every year, a new away shirt but the previous season's away becomes the third. United between 2006-2014 did this, the only expectation being the 07-09 home being kept for 2 seasons (released a new third shirt with an away instead). Home shirts are worn in at least half games minimum, whilst some away/thirds are maybe used 5 times a season if that. Gives a best of both worlds
i get the designer being mad about being copied but is not like he gets royalties from the authentics that are sold, if anything having your creation massively counterfeited means you did a great job
Counterfeited well.....
Can I just say, I really appreciate the honesty you guys show in this video. So many commentaries on this issue get preachy about the illegality and immorality of fakes, without acknowledging the financial issue facing working families. So, I'm really glad you guys didn't just blindly defend the manufacturers and their pricing. Hopefully a happy medium can be found, where we can still support official products but at a reasonable price.
On a side note, I think returning to a two year rotation for new shirts would really help. Paying out 100 quid for a new shirt is still too much but if it was one new kit per year instead of three or four then it would be a good start.
Really fascinating video thanks gents.
As has been said loads by others, the main driver for this is price, and if the fakes are getting so good an expert can't spot them, why would the average fan care?
The point on families is spot on. I support a championship club and its £55 for a kids mini kit, even with marketing and mark ups its disgusting and unjustified.
Had no idea about how bad the working conditions are and where the money goes. That said, is there any legitimate evidence of this? The cynical side of me says brands could just be peddling that as propaganda to make consumers be 'ethical'.
I took a punt on a retro 70s Manchester United shirt and was astounded by how good the quality was. Let's face it, once you move your manufacturing to the car east, you lose control over it.
Great episode again lads. Think it would be great if you could get an over the table camera? Like a birds eye view where we can really see the details you pick out when looking at the shirts
A kit one every two years would better in my opinion. At least the home and away. In a way it would help reduce the amount of purchases made for the counterfeits, since it would the supporters time to save up for new kit. Maybe the third kit could change yearly.
I think we’ve got to the point where people are used to and even excited by the prospect of new kits every season. As with tv subscriptions, the kit manufacturers are pushing the prices to levels where people will go rogue to save some money.
One more thing, why don’t manufacturers (Adidas in particular) produce official replica jerseys of old classics? They could do this with federations and clubs they still have contracts with (Germany, Spain, Argentina etc..)They’ve done it a bit, but they could in effect rerelease and resell their a lot of their back catalogue.
Well said in your latter point. I think a lot of Newcastle United fans will be hopeful that with the return of Adidas, retro kits such as the 1995-97 top in this video, the '97 & the '99 Newcastle Brown Ale sponsored tops will be re-released.... Ask a lot of youngsters (who were not even born when the iconic first 3 home shirts) and I can assure you they will have all wanted to have a newer version of something their parents will have worn when originally for sale
Just found your channel. Loved this video. As an avid kit collector especially older kits. It’s is getting harder and harder. Great content. Cheers!
I'll never buy fakes, and I don't think anyone needs a shirt desperately enough to buy a fake (do you need the latest one every year?) but the clubs and manufacturers absolutely dont help the issue. As you say in this video, why do clubs need to release a suite of new kits every year? In response to the question Craig, I'd prefer a new home kit every two seasons, and happy to rotate away/third kits so you have fewer releases. And manufacturers could do more- the difference in price is just astronomical. You can buy a fake vapour knit shirt for about 10% the cost of an authentic, and as you show the fabric is almost indistinguishable, so how is the genuine one SO much more expensive? Any more info on that would be great. I understand that Nike and Adidas are held to account with the factories they use but I'm not sure I'm convinced they are 'ethical' anyway- ethical enough to justify 10x the cost? I doubt the people making them are paid less than local minimum wage which is a pittance. If the big manufacturers could prove me wrong that would be great, but it feels as though there's a reason clothing companies don't make films about their factories.
Thanks for the comments!
Let us look into some of what you’ve asked!
There’s a video by the athletic interest that covers this, and there are several costs involved as well. But I definitely agree, it’s certainly an option, and having like 4 kits release in a year is definitely not optimal.
Thanks!
Thanks Kris - really kind of you and your support helps us create new content!
Atleast back in the day, clubs and nations started to lengthen the time their kits would be in use/circulation for. I remember in the early 00s, clubs would use away or 3rd kits for 2 seasons in a row, and would state their life span on the purchase ticket or upon the shirt itself(Arsenal 03/05 + England). Back in the 90s, many home and away shirts could be used for 2 seasons in a row easily. The quality of these items would actually be much better than the stuff made in the far east nowadays(whether thats authentic or counterfit). If a team decided to wear the same shirt for 2-3 years now and advertised it as "saving the planet/materials", while saving supporters money, i believe fans would get behind it much more. The greed in the game is very real and the counterfit market exists because of it.
Absolutely! And it would help designers too as they’d be able to get more creative rather than churning out kits constantly!
@@TheKitBreakdown Sustainable, sexy and money saving, while lasting longer than the usual. Produce a few extra to cover 2 seasons, advertise and market it in a proper way(making sure the design is less copy+paste and more unique compared to todays stuff). And charge a little less. What about a reversible shirt?! Home one side and away/3rd the other. Now there's a job for you lads!!
18:54 MLS still does this and it makes sense.
Nike counterfeits are super easy to tell though. Its all about where the tag is and what the wash tag says. Always Google the product code line below the size- fakes don't even have the size anyway
Would only buy retro kits, something that u simply can't get hold of anymore
Great watch as always lads. Would have loved for the reactions to the quality to be wholly different, but unfortunately the reality is they can be quite similar at times.
Great to have a go-to clip for the work the likes of Nike do to ensure workers are looked after. Always thrown up at sellers like myself when we mention fakes.
For the last few years I've alternated between buying an official kit from the club shop one year, to a counterfeit the next. The quality is so similar that I can't justify paying the full club shop price every year. Great video as always lads.
1:59 What so you don't get paid by the club/brand for your design?
Did the person who designed and the person who approved the purple and blue cross on the England collar get fired?
I wouldn't buy a real or fake one with a purple Saint George Cross on it.
3:17 PMSL laughing at morally wrong. So it's morally OK to charge £140 for an England shirt?
6:05 Less corporate greed from counterfeiters.
6:05 Yes mate. No teams have ever worn a yellow shirt before 2002. In fact, did yellow even exist before 2002?
This is a great and very informative video, but it would be even better if we could see close ups of all the details you talk about. Its hard for us to fully appreciate the differences if we cant see them.
a kit change every two years (with home and away staggered) would be the ideal solution in my opinion and the outgoing away kit could be kept on an extra year as the third kit - I'm sure that has been done a few times before (thinking the Man United "V" pattern kit - I'm sure they kept the white shirt with red V as the third kit for the following season though the sponsor changed I think)
its insane how similar fake shirts are now, especially the player versions, they honestly fooled me when I saw them a few years back
Would love to see shifts going back to 2 seasons. One thing that doesn’t get talked about is the environmental impact of releasing 3 new shifts every year. Also to note the argument for the price of new shirts is partly due to the technology is doubtful. I’m sure football shifts of the past were also at the height of the technology for there era. I used to regularly buy my teams new shirt but not anymore. The price is ridiculous now and I’ve not even mentioned the players kits.
How much more "technology" can be garnered from shirts these days. Vapo tech, climalite etc.
The fact is real kits are too expensive for most of the fanbase they are made for, the fake market is making the same kits that are the same quality as the original, you can say it's fake but it's the same design, material, feel and look as the original and if you think fakes are shit quality you obviously aren't buying them from a good supplier, there are loads of website that sell top quality fake kits for half the price of the original and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
If I buy one, it's still the authentic one. From a collecter's point of view, a fake one just isn't right. However I do understand people not wanting to pay £80 - £100 for a shirt, especially in a family with kids where you'll have to buy several every year. I read a rumour that Nike was considering going back to the old ways and keeping the home kit for 2 years, which would be my preference.
Aside from this, does anybody know what's stopping the counterfeiters to put the correct productcode on a shirt? That's my number one go to when I'm buying old shirts at places like Vinted. I just ask a picture of the internal label and by this I know (at least I hope) that it's an authentic one. Would be a nightmare if the counterfeiters start using the correct productcodes.
Agreed, once they get those labels right we have no chance. It will affect the whole industry those as genuine retailers would end up selling the fakes, as even experts wouldnt be able to tell the difference (as this video shows).
It’s quite a scary thought! We were shocked at how good these fakes were, and how some were impossible to tell even with the authentic shirt to compare it to. It’s going to get more and more difficult
If brands would charge affordable prices people would probably support the legit stuff. Another bugbear I have is that if I want a vintage shirt, a brand might do a "tribute" that is not identical, usually in a very limited edition that sells out in hours and costs even more than a current run shirt. The last time adidas did a retro Arsenal range, it was all sold out before I had the chance to even look at it. They will release two or three new shirts every season, some sort of high priced, limited special edition retro thing and then they'll add a new leisure range on top of that. You can only milk the fans so much.
I'd prefer to go back to a new shirt every other year, but alternate home and away each year. So you get new home one season, next season you get the away one. My gripe is that if these fake companies can make these nearly as good as the original but charge peanuts in comparison then the disconnect is surely the greed of big corporations charging through the nose. Ones ethically wrong, ones morally wrong.
I bloody LOVE this channel!!!
I tend to only buy authentic kits when theyre 40-50% off, which is why all of my kits are outdated but that doesnt matter really, im not obsessed with being up to date anyway.
Got fakes in better condition than the real ones.
I usually wait till the end of the season to buy kits when the manufacturers like Nike and Adidas start slashing the prices. Still get a real kit and don't have to break the bank. Only exceptions would be if I want one with a name on the back or if I'm attending a match in person. Makes it feel a little more special and worth paying the price at that moment.
My favourite tactic is to wait until kit manufacturers change. I think I got a couple of reasonably priced Nike Man United shirts (now without the Chrysler logo) in about 2015 just before the switch to Adidas.
I used to do this. Plus if you buy at the end of the season and you can still get name printing, you can get a player who had a good season and it’s like a little memento of the year they had. The last shirt I ever bought was at the end of the season Rashford came through so I have a Rashford 49 kit which is a nice reminder of his rise to fame.
Can't blame people for buying fakes when official replicas cost a staggering £70-£50 on average when even fakes are almost on par quality wise with dem replicas clubs release on retail.
*Edit: it's crazy because I managed to snag a napoli home replica shirt for 49 euros which is around £43 despite them being recent serie A winners and champions league participants. So it comes down to greed nothing more. 😤
To bring my perspective on buying kits, as a fan of certain clubs there’s another spanner in the works. I’m a United fan and I don’t wanna give the Glazers any more money than they’ve already leeched off us, and I’m sure there’s plenty of fans of other clubs feel the same way. I personally haven’t bought a kit in years. In that situation I can see people going for a counterfeit, maybe buying one of the fake retro kits, almost as a way to get back at the owners. But then the people who suffer are the people who put hard work into creating the kit, and the people working in the dodgy counterfeit factories.
Every two years for me - made the whole ‘new kit’ thing more exciting and surely made designers jobs easier in terms of a coming up with a new look every year
The biggest joke is the reason why the counterfeits are so good is because they are usually made in the same factories as the authentic ones, by the same people. This guy talking about the counterfeiters working standards and employees treatment like Nike and adidas don’t use the same factories with employees with the same conditions.
It’s very simple Nike pay a company let’s say their hours are 7am -7pm. Well the factory owner or a manager opens the factory from 8pm - 4am to make a little extra on the side. Same factory, same employees, same materials. Quality control a bit looser. How else are these counterfeits able to make such good fakes?
Even the so called experts find it hard to tell the difference.
Clubs/manufacturers definitely release far too many kits - not to mention training gear - but a home shirt every two seasons probably still wouldn't do much to encourage me to buy. It's still far too much; I'd still refuse on principle.
I've bought from Chinese sellers but will stop doing that now too, having learned of the humanitarian issues that come with it. Therefore my shirt piggy bank will be saved for genuine retros from now on. NUFC away 97/98 is the object of my affections atm!
Love the channel.
I'll admit that I do buy fake kits from time to time, especially if I love the look of a retro kit but can't afford the £150+ price. If new shirts were reasonably priced I'd have no trouble buying them. However, £80 for a replica and £110 for a pro version is simply ridiculous. You can get 8 fakes for that with little difference to the untrained eye! I see both sides though and if I like the design of a kit enough I'll get the official one and support the brands/designers.
Great video and insight on something we know very little about, keep up the good work.
We totally get that for sure, it’s really not easy for consumers. The main point with this video is to make sure you at least can make an informed decision. We totally understand the financial aspect and there’s no judgement here! Just make sure you’re careful with quality of the shirt etc as they don’t have to meet standards that authentic ones do, and can lead to some dodgy materials or toxins being in the shirts.
Knowledge is power, so they say! 🙌
@@TheKitBreakdown Definitely agree with what you've said here. Craig's trouble to spot the fakes says a lot about the quality they're putting out. Unbelievable how they get some of them so close. Hopefully more information comes to light about the conditions and mechanics of their trade to make that decision.
@@TheKitBreakdownwell said
The truth is that the individual shirt costs the manufacturer far less than they are charging the fans, until that changes and these manufacturers stop ripping off fans and exploiting them then the counterfeit trade is going to continue, there is absolutely no reason to charge £75-90 for any football shirt and that cost is on top of the expense of a season ticket, travel to games etc. I think you should try to put pressure on Nike/Adidas/Puma etc. to actually charge affordable prices for their shirts. I have a few fakes because I wasn't prepared to pay those kind of prices for something I might wear 2 or 3 times.
Thanks for this. Quite an interesting discussion. It's something that I've discussed before in the classes I teach. I work as a academic in a business school (University of Essex). This has come up both in modules on Business Ethics, and more frequently in the module I teach on Management in the Creative & Cultural Industries. One year during student presentations a woman brought in a selection of Louis Vuitton handbags and asked the class to try and tell which ones were real or fake. And much like the discussion here it was really hard to tell unless you knew very specific things to look for.
When I discus this with students we often end up having similar discussions. I'm often struck by some of the student counter arguments in defense. For instance I've had students argue that counterfeits even while not directly making money for a brand still enhance its reputation and image by being counterfeited. I've listened to people argue that too much of the cost for branded goods is for Intellectual Property Rights, and thus if more money goes to the people physically making them they might even be thought of as more ethical.
But aside from that in the video you make a few empirical claims that I was wondering if you could provide some more evidence for, as in references, sources, etc...
1. Claiming that the common argument that many counterfeits are made in the same factories as 'legitimate' items is not true. What's the source on that? My hunch here is this argument arises precisely because of how hard it can often be to tell the difference between 'real' and 'fake' such that it seems quite intuitive the same people and processes must be used.
2. Counterfeit production is involved in drugs and guns, but not in the cool outlaw way, more like the exploitative way. Again some sources for this would be cool, because that's sounds totally plausible, but it also could easily sound like scaremongering (thinking here of anti-drug campaigns that often make claims about all sorts of malfeasance connected to the production of illegal narcotics, sometimes true, and sometimes in a very baseless way).
To the first point, Craig himself, as he has been involved with finding factories in Asia to produce Nike Football products as their Global Creative Director. So that’s from first hand experience. So when he talks about working conditions etc, it’s because he knows first hand that a lot of the myths spread to justify counterfeits just aren’t true. The counterfeiters also manage to produce such good fakes as they can get hold of the original products, deconstruct them, and copy them. It’s happening on such a scale with a level of sophistication that makes it difficult for a consumer to spot differences in final products.
On the second point, this is all experience that Ben has had when dealing with these counterfeiters first hand. The counterfeit products trade is just one arm of many organised crime groups, “mafias” etc. that helps finance their other operations. This is something that Ben would be able to talk into better than us, though.
I think part of the issue is that when Ben describes the problem with the counterfeit industry, many people will (arguably justifiably) say the brands are guilty of the same things (immorality, worker exploitation, shareholder profiteering, waste, carbon footprint, poor quality etc) and the only real difference is the difference in scale and legality.
Combine that with the extortionate prices brands charge for official products annually, the countless 3rd/special versions, the lack of retro re-makes combined with the insane prices for original retros, and then the low prices for counterfeit versions that to the untrained eye look very similar, and it's a perfect storm that makes it all understandable.
Much like the music industry in the '90s and '00s, the industry has created the conditions for a problem it now needs to solve.
It purely comes down to price. I’ve stopped buying current kits and purely buy retro, because they’re almost half the price. It would be interesting to see the rise in price across the years because it feels like it was only a few years ago that you’d pay around £50, whereas now you’re looking at around £70 for a Villa top.
I support a lower league club and most of the time we keep our home kits for 2 seasons, presumably for cost reasons just as much as any other.
Another good thing about having kits for 2 years is it gives them a chance to become iconic and memorable. When you have 3 new ones a year you don’t remember half of them.
MLS does that as well.
Here's an idea. Why not consider not charging such an obscene amount for the "genuine" kits?
Exactly the designer doesn’t even know how much they sell the real ones and couldn’t tell the difference between a good fake. £80 for fan (replica), £110 for player (authentic) compared to £15 max. It’s not the choice of paying £20 or £30 extra for the real deal it’s the choice between paying an extra £60 or £90.
The only criminals are people trying to sell counterfeit ones as real and all the companies posting record profits when everyone is struggling to make ends meet.
Totally agree that amount charged for football shirts has driven counterfeit market. I definitely see more match going fans buying counterfeit.
I'd definitely prefer two year cycle for home shirts, Brentford did do that for their home and it looks like theyre doing it for their away this year
Im a big cr7 and messi fan since 2006 i regularly buy my jerseys in auctions on ebay and the very first thing i ask is for the product code and i also ask them to measure it why because most fakes the sizing is off and the fakes never get the code right. Some people are amazes by my collection and they ask me if they are all real and im proud to say yes as all have a product code to back it up and i can tell right off the bat which shirt is a fake by the stitching the color of the jersey and the placement of the team badge or sponsor nowadays its hard but i always tell people a real shirt is more of a investment than a fake. A few months ago i sold a messi jersey for 435 it was from his debut season at Barcelona and thats my most expensive sale so far I've made
an authentic one here where I live costs around 30% of the minimum wage
I think of something that I would call a Toni Kroos model: clubs can release a new home shirt each two years, a new away shirt each 1.5 years, but in a secondary colour of this club, and a new third kit with any design possible, also each 1.5 years, but in different half of a year (for example, let the club introduce new away at the beginning of 23/24 season and new third at the beginning of the year 2024).
This blokes job involves not going to the root of the cause - the clubs and companies he works for.
My first consideration would be the pricing of kid size shirts needs to be massively reduced. If an adult wants to buy a shirt, I don’t see why they can’t pay the going rate (although 70 quid is a bit much) but having to buy for kids at the current pricing is actually disgraceful. The club, the kit manufacturer and the shirt sponsors all get indirect advertising from supporters walking around wearing the shirt so why can’t they factor that into the cost of the replica (maybe a way to subsidise the cost for the walking advertisement). Anyway it’s too pricey currently, and as the gents have repeatedly said, kits are getting churned out every year and really are not innovative or good - so maybe stagger releases for a start.
I bought a retro man united tracksuit jacket from the club shop last year for £65
First wash, the badge fell off, as it was glued on.
I complained and all i was offered was 10% off my next order.
I paid a seamstress £10 to sew it back on.
I will never ever spend my hard earned cash on anything original again.
I'd say too, if even you don't have dependents looking a shirt, buying even two a year is extortionate and especially in contrast to template shirts which are much cheaper. I'd love to see a lower price cotton version of these modern kits
Hi guys, great video as ever. So a significant amount of shirt sale revenue comes from the sponsorship/licensing money from the kit manufactures (as opposed to actual profit on the sales), if I remember what I've seen before?
Wondering what your thoughts are on a medium club accepting a loss in revenue to drive shirt sales, from a marketing perspctive?
If a club took on a 40m loss from selling shirts for cheap, could it make the returnd in the long term?
I would personally prefer an alternate year release between the home kit & away kit. Just like the 90s to early 2000s. I'm so glad that adidas & sometimes umbro are releasing remakes of their retro shiirts.
Late but great topic, keeping kits for 2 seasons vs now was good pointer.
Fans are getting ripped off. Make the authentic kits affordable and people wouldn’t buy fakes.
They still would cause they are getting THAT good at counterfeiting
34:47 interesting to see the guy who designed the kit explain how he feels about a fake. Loving the show.
Thanks a lot 🙌
I would rather my club released a kit once every two years. I am a kit collector and love buying kits but I couldn’t imagine being a Napoli fan the last couple seasons.
I live in developing country, been a Newcastle fan since 2010 and I've never bought a kit brand new fresh from announcement... mostly bought my replica kits used after 2-3 season late (authentic one usually dont even last a season so no need to bother looking for them). For the newest kit I always buy fake counterfeits, 1 kit cost like 2 big mac instead of 1/3 of my monthly salary and I don't even have to worry abouy ruining them unlike my real kits since they're ao cheap.
I go on holiday to Turkey and come back with a load of fake tops each time. Paying £100 for football tops is just scandalous and not something I'm ever going to do.
I found this interesting. I do now have an appreciation of the overall design process which goes into producing a kit, but as others have said, I cant see how manufacturers can charge £80 for just a replica shirt!
I try to support my Club by buying a replica shirt, but often these dont feel fit for purpose. I wear mine to play footy and the supposed sweat wicking properties leave a lot to be desired.
Meet fans halfway. Also look at In House design/local manufacturers, where clubs would be supporting the local economy/community and give fans a choice of designs that they can vote for as the new kit etc?
Also I heard what you said about Unethical Counterfeiters but as far as I'm aware Nike etc still has work to do regarding its ethical status
Availability is an issues as well. When Adidas released a limited edition kit for Italy's 125th anniversary it sold out in moments (at a cost of $300!). What's a collector or fan to do when the price is high AND the availability is low.
It’s a great point! It’s tough on the consumers
In the 90s my mom struggled to buy the real thing and kits averaged around £40/£50 back then I say the more options people have the better because most of these top clubs have criminal elements if you dig deep enough.
They’ll never stop it places like dh gate are totally legal due to the rules in China.. my mate got his daughter a Liverpool shirt from dh gate for £12
Great video, really informative
I'm still leaning towards reversible home/away kits at a slightly higher value.
Possibly even staggering the interior 2nd/3rd away.
I can just barely afford new kits for me and my kids each season, and I justify it by knowing that I'm contributing to the club. But I can't fault anyone with a family who can't afford real shirts buying counters for half the price. I do own a number of vintage Arsenal 90s and early 00s kits that I bought in the mid-2000s when real ones were still available but now the price of those kits when they even pop up on a reputable site is insane and there are all kinds of counterfeits available on eBay from places like Ukraine and the Far East.
As a seller of vintage nfl jerseys, I can relate to how saturated the market is with cheap, nasty, fake jerseys. It’s a process in itself to teach customers the key differences to look for.
I bought a lovely AIK away shirt with Larsson on the back, had a retro Nike logo....ten pound.
This turned out to be a good advert for fake kits and how good they are.
No mention at all at extortionate prices of real kits. Please have some empathy for fans getting ripped off every year by these greedy corporations.
Love the video, great debate from you all, unfortunately I’ve been stung buying what I thought to be a genuine shirt, then they turned out to be fake, I only buy genuine made shirts be it stadium or player issue ones, thankfully I’ve managed to get some of them when they’re discounted. I’m a big guy, 6’2” tall I normally take 2XL up to a 4XL all depending on the manufacturer?? The Chinese fake shirt makers seem to do Asian sizing. So can never get a fake one in big enough to fit anyway, I’ve been collecting shirts since 1995, so I loved and wish they continued to do home shirts every 2 years instead of every year??
this year's away as next year's third is an easy compromise that still allows clubs to sell two new kits every year. There's also the option to make more interesting pre-match and training wear (at a cheaper price point than match-wear) - few clubs really exploit this option, tho Arsenal is an obvious exception.
What I'd really like to see tho is outreach & education from clubs and brands. The perception that clubs are greedy is most pervasive among fans who don't understand the economics or the moral aspects. Simply relying on brand police is shutting the gate after the horse has bolted.
Pesonally speaking, i also dont feel the imperative to buy new kit every season. I'm a believer that old kit makes you look more of a veteran, but thats just me 😂
I used to buy only authentic jersey but the prices are outrages especially when you add nameset and badges 120-150) and if you want to resell it nobody wants to pay more than 30$ the replicas last just as long 1/5 of the price with badges and nameset as the authentic nobody can tell and people don’t really care and there not out here checking the tag I’ve had replicas for years in and still in near perfect condition and the quality is amazing basically identical as a football fan it’s about the fact I’m wearing a jersey with a player that I like watching as opposed to caring about the authenticity yes companies should come out with 3 new kits every season as new players transfer we want the new player with the new kit and 3 kits help you get different players on the back
So you pile down to the Manchester United megastore and you want two adults shirts and two kids, all with names, numbers and the premier league patch. What's that setting you back? £354.00.
Who is seriously going to pay that in this day and age? I mean a majority will like season ticket holders as they'll have the coin to do it.
But others won't.
Kids want to keep up with the latest trends etc and put pressure on parents to deliver. But what the kids don't realise is all the outgoings parents have. So what do the parents do? Buy good fakes at less than half the price.
Like most have said here, when clubs start dropping the prices the fake business will also slow up!
Let's be honest, they're all produced in the same country / warehouse. The profits that these brands and clubs are making is ridiculous!
What about 'seconds' that haven't quite made the cut, you telling me they will just destroy them because of slight stitch issue? No chance, no one wants to lose money so they get sold on to people like the 'fake' sellers. You'll find some are fake and some are genuine faulty items.
1 every 2 years without a doubt! I’m in a position I can afford to buy all the kits but I’d rather be only having to buy one once every 2 years
They aren't ever 30 quid though... They are 12 maybe 14... Compared to 85 95
I collect Blades shirts from 84 to today. Last season I bought the original and snide version. The snide version was better quality, even instances on TV where the club badges came off the player's shirts during the match! Although we did move from adidas to errea😂
TSN did a documentray or part series about this. "Faking It: Cracking down on counterfeits" I'm sure you can find the videos on UA-cam regarding this problem.
If brands attached an NFT to a kit code and then used something like Chainlink's CCIP to register transactions, you would be able to tell instantly if you are buying genuine or not because the NFT would be handed over to your ownership at point of resale.
I've had two genuine Napoli shirts with pen scribble on the labels. I even used their authentication tools to make sure the shirts were genuine.
when the designer of the shirt himself mistakes the fake one for a real one thats pretty clear for me buying an original is not worth it at the exorbitant prices they charge.
These clubs are the only organisations that can get away with selling fake tops and get lots of money for it where it's an issue is when you buy fake tops from someone else other than the reputable sellers of the football clubs people have to remember that you're always buying a replica top not the real thing so in my eyes it's a fake and they're fine with doing that I've never bought a fake football top but sick and tired of having to pay £80 for replicas or 120 plus pounds for real ones so from now on I shall be trying to get my hands on some good looking fakes
Why is a kids shirt 80 Euro? That is the crime! And stay with one shirt design for 5 years!
It comes down to the bottom line of price
Many have said no one wants to pay top dollar for a sub-par shirt, like most things the past few years price has gone up and quality has gone down.. I'm a Milan fan and the player version of our away jersey this season feels like fish & chip shop paper
This creates markets for counterfeiters and if brands were smart they'd re-release kits themselves
If Nike officially released the 2002 Brazil home jersey it would be the #1 seller this year
Unfortunately I can't see the price dropping or re-releasing jerseys
As always love the video guys keep it up!
My main issue is with retro kits, I am now unsure whats real and whats fake when looking on ebay, I've been looking for the 1996 barcelona away, and I am pretty sure every single one is fake, and the money they want for retro kits is even more than a new kit sometimes.
It’s definitely a huge problem!
Please do a video on the coventry city kit issues
I think the thing with anything thats counterfeit is that ultimately in most cases you're contributing to organised crime. I've often toyed with the idea of buying a high end fake watch so I don't have to wear my real one out and about with the risk of it being damaged or getting mugged myself but still cant bring myself to do it...
As a dad, I buy my little boy a kit on Black Friday when they usually drop by 25% and then thats it. If I want something I'd either wait til the end of the season when they drop in price drastically or buy the training kit which is usually 50% cheaper than even the 'replica kit'.