With Independence Blue Cross set to become the Phillies’ first sleeve patch, that’s three Philly sports teams with “IBX” somewhere on the jersey. The Flyers were first, starting with the 2023-2024 season:

As part of the new uniform unveil, the team also announced its first-ever official home jersey patch partner, Philadelphia-based Independence Blue Cross. Through the multi-year deal, Independence Blue Cross, a leading health insurer in Southeastern Pennsylvania, becomes the Official Health Insurance Partner of the Philadelphia Flyers.

…

The partnership will place an Independence Blue Cross logo on the right chest of all Flyers home sweaters as well as the third alternate jersey and will be showcased through team platforms and television broadcasts.

The Union sleeve came next.

In addition to the BIMBO front-of-shirt logo, they added the IBX to the right shoulder in February of this year:

IBX started as a Union sponsor in 2011, then a recent renewal included the sleeve branding, which at least matches the uniform motif. The Flyers’ patch is blue and stands out against the traditional palette, but on the Union kits they matched the font color to BIMBO.

Now it’s the Phillies. There’s no image yet of what the patch will look like, but hopefully it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb. You look at the Braves’ Quikrete patch, for instance, and the bright yellow pops. There’s a little bit of yellow in the Tomahawk logo, but it does look a little out of place otherwise. The Mets’ original patch looked clunky, that square, red and white “New York Presbyterian” logo with the odd dimensions. They pivoted off that and now have a blue rectangle that actually uses NY colors.

The thing about IBX is that they’ve sponsored everything in Philly sports over the years. They’re an Eagles and Sixers sponsor and have longstanding relationships with the Flyers, Phillies, and Union that predate the jersey patches and branding. They’ve been the presenting partner of training camp and various basketball activations, for example.

It does make you sort of laugh and/or cry though, because now IBX is on three of the five team jerseys. How much is too much? Do we need to put fucking IBX on everything? In the Sports Business Journal story from Terry Lefton, this paragraph jumps out:

“It’s an opportunity to further amplify our brand,” said IBX President and CEO Greg Deavens. “Philadelphia is an incredibly competitive health-care market. We have 15 or 16 different (competitive) players. … Having these long-standing, very strong partnerships is a critical ingredient to our overall success.”

Some people roll their eyes when they hear words like “brand” and “competitive” associated with healthcare. A critical service intertwined with the corporate sponsorship game, which is part and parcel for classic American capitalism. If we don’t like it, I guess we can move to England or Canada, or vote for Bernie Sanders.

Nevertheless, this is a slippery slope and there’s no coming back from it. We all realize that, right? You give an inch and it’s never returned. Now the Eagles are the only team in the city without some kind of sponsor logo on the jersey. How long until we do the left shoulder, the other sleeve, and maybe slap something on the side of the Flyers helmet? Our athletes are going to be walking billboards at some point, ala Ricky Bobby or any Mexican soccer team. Cash rules everything around us, CREAM, and it’s not going to stop anytime soon.

By the way, at the Crossing Broad sportsbook, IBX is the betting favorite to replace Wells Fargo as the naming rights sponsor for the building that hosts the Flyers, Sixers, Wings, and Roger Waters for the 40th straight year. “The IBX Center,” it will be called, though we can do the “IBS Center” joke when the first Sixers injury report includes three bouts of gastroenteritis.