TikTok‘s visits to Washington, D.C. are often contentious, but the app has now found a positive way to have a presence in the nation’s capital. It has signed on as a jersey sponsor for the NHL‘s Washington Capitals.
The Caps play their home games just a mile away from the U.S. Capitol building, but fans who visit the Capitol One Arena won’t see the TikTok patch on the local club’s jerseys. Instead, the sponsorship is limited to Washington’s away jerseys.
Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Capitals as well as the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, announced the TikTok sponsorship as part of a multiyear deal with the ByteDance-owned app. In addition to the jersey patches, TikTok will attach its name to segments and signage at the Capitol One Arena. It will also be the presenting sponsor of road games on the Monumental Sports Network and the title sponsor for the Capital’s 50-year anniversary, according to the Washington Post.
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Jersey sponsors are common in soccer, and TikTok previously put its name on the shirts of the celebrity-owned Welsh club Wrexham A.F.C. In the United States, domestic leagues have moved in the same direction; the NHL put its first ads on uniforms in 2010. YouTube star MrBeast tested those waters by putting a Feastables patch on the unis of his hometown NBA team, the Charlotte Hornets, but that partnership was discontinued after a single season.
The deal between Monumental Sports and TikTok figures to have more staying power. The Capitals have about 378,000 followers on TikTok, and the NHL club has used the app to show a different side of its players, including hockey legend Alex Ovechkin.
@capitals Crisis averted, Ovi found gum #babe #ovechkin #bubblegum #hockeytok ♬ original sound – Washington Capitals
“We’ve been on there and really bullish about having a great strategy to connect with fans,” Capitals VP of Digital Media James Hauser told the Washington Post. “This will only increase our connectivity there. We’re having such a great time on the platform, and I think a lot of our fans are, too…On TikTok, the audience is looking for something a little bit different, and they’re not fooled by your traditional content offerings.”
U.S. sports leagues like the NBA, NFL, and PGA have already made considerable inroads within creator communities, and the NHL could be the next frontier for sports influencer partnerships. Some hockey franchises have already teamed up with local creators, and stars like Josh Richards have been involved in leaguewide marketing efforts.
On the civic side of things, the Capitals sponsorship shows that TikTok still wants to be a player in Washington, even as the federal government aims to divest the app from ByteDance or ban it outright. TikTok already spends millions on lobbying efforts; now, it’s found a different way to make its presence known in the nation’s capital.
