Why an ostrich is showing up on MLB batting helmets

When Major League Baseball players set up to the plate for postseason games next month, their batting helmets will all be sporting a new logo for the first time.

After introducing ads on jersey sleeves last year, the MLB just announced the first ads to appear on its batting helmets in the U.S. Strauss, a German workwear brand, will be the league’s official workwear partner and as part of that partnership, its logo of an ostrich (“strauss” is German for ostrich) will grace MLB helmets in the postseason and in regular season games in Europe. The Strauss logo, which shows an abstracted ostrich with wings like the Wu Tang Clan logo, will live on the side of the helmet along with the Strauss wordmark, while the team logos will be shown on the front.

Strauss sees the partnership as important to raising brand awareness after entering the U.S. market last year. CEO Henning Strauss said in a statement the company was “proud” to be the MLB’s first batting helmet advertiser in the U.S. and “excited to join the baseball tradition and help the American pastime grow back home in Europe.”

The company sees a crossover between its customers and sports fans, and in Europe it’s partnered before with the Union of European Football Associations, or UEFA, and teams like Bayern Munich and Liverpool FC. It partnered with Los Angeles Football Club for the 2024 season, and as part of its MLB partnership, the German brand will also be the presenting sponsor of an MLB digital content series about stolen bases, and its logo will be on batting helmets for minor league teams all season long. Strauss will be on postseason MLB batting helmets through 2027.

North American pro sports leagues uniforms have become more open to advertising since the NBA began accepting ads on jerseys in 2017. The NHL and MLB now both allow on-jersey advertising, and while the NFL is a holdout, at the college level, the National Collegiate Athletic Association decided this year to allow sponsor logos on football fields.

The growth of such sponsorships speaks to the large audiences sporting events draw and how eager advertisers are to reach them. The MLB’s batting helmets are just the latest ad space to open up, joining the league’s jersey sleeve patches. That might seem like a lot now considering the only logos that used to be allowed on MLB uniforms were logos for the team, league, and Nike, the MLB’s official supplier. As stock car racing uniforms show, though, there’s still plenty of room for more.