A franchise cricket shirt carries more separate brands than most sporting kit anywhere. The density follows directly from how few matches the season contains and how the inventory is sliced.
A short season limits any single fee
A franchise plays a modest number of matches across a few weeks. Whatever a sponsor pays is amortised over that small number of appearances, which caps what a single position can command.
A club playing a long domestic season offers far more exposure for one deal, which is why those clubs can sustain a smaller number of larger partnerships.
Franchises compensate by selling more positions rather than by charging more for each, and the shirt becomes the visible record of that strategy.
Positions are defined precisely
Front centre, front lower, back above the number, back below, both sleeves, collar, trousers and helmet are all distinct assets with their own rate and their own contract.
Training kit, warm-up clothing, press-conference apparel and the team bus are sold separately again, extending the inventory beyond match dress.
Each position is valued on how often it appears in broadcast, which is measured after the season and used to reprice for the next one.
Local and category partners fill the remainder
Beyond the principal sponsor, franchises sign partners in defined categories — beverages, travel, financial services, technology — each buying a smaller position and a package of activation rights.
Regional brands buy into franchises representing their home market, since the team offers a concentrated local audience that national advertising reaches less efficiently.
The result is a kit that reads as a directory of the region's businesses alongside one or two national names, which is precisely the intended effect.
League rules govern the layout
The competition specifies which positions may be sold, the maximum dimensions of each, and which categories are reserved for central partners the franchise may not undercut.
Central sponsors of the league itself appear on every team's kit or on the field furniture, and franchise deals are sold subject to those reservations.
Approval processes exist so that a franchise cannot sign a brand competing with a title sponsor, and disputes over category boundaries are settled by the league rather than between clubs.
Density has a diminishing return
Beyond a point, adding marks reduces the value of all of them, since no individual logo is legible or memorable within a crowded field.
Franchises manage this by reserving prominence for the largest payers and grouping smaller partners in areas that appear less often on camera.
The equilibrium is set by what sponsors will tolerate rather than by design preference, and it shifts each season as measurement reports show which positions actually delivered.
