Source: Russell Athletic
Relationship continues to provide Player Uniforms, Coaches Apparel and Licensed Products
Bowling Green, KY (January 26, 2016) - Little League® and Russell Athletic® announced today a 5-year partnership extension to remain the official uniform provider to the Little League World Series, supplying all on-field apparel and licensed souvenirs. The contract runs through 2020 and is applicable for all nine Little League Baseball and Softball World Series Tournament events.
The renewal extends the brand’s long-standing relationship with Little League Baseball and Softball which now dates back more than thirty years. The partnership will continue to provide Russell Athletic with prominent recognition during all Little League World Series events. The relationship also provides new player uniforms for participants in all nine Little League World Series tournaments as well as additional apparel for players and coaches designed exclusively for Little League each year.
“We are very proud to continue our longstanding relationship with Little League and remain the Official Uniform of the Little League World Series events,” said Matt Murphy, Vice President of Marketing, Russell Athletic. “Our brand is dedicated to the growth of Little League Baseball and Softball around the world, and it’s a privilege to partner with an organization that does so much for youth sports.”
Expanding upon their commitment to provide the highest quality uniforms for all ages and levels of play, Russell Athletic and Little League collaborated to introduce a new local league uniform ordering option, allowing leagues and coaches to customize regular season and tournament uniforms complete with the Little League Official Patch. This new purchasing option makes ordering and receiving Little League uniforms easier and more convenient than ever for coaches, parents and league administrators.LittleLeagueUniforms.com, launched in May 2015, is a one-stop-online shop for designing, customizing and purchasing group orders of Little League baseball and softball uniforms for the nearly 6,000 local programs in the United States. The website is also the only online uniform generator that offers officially-sanctioned Little League patches pre-sewn on each jersey as part of each order.
“Russell Athletic has provided tremendous support for the Little League program since the relationship began over thirty years ago,” said Liz DiLullo Brown, Little League® Vice President of Marketing and Communications. “From providing uniforms to all athletes in the Little League World Series tournaments, to the new uniform ordering option for local leagues, Russell Athletic continues to supply the best options for quality uniforms while still considering the specific needs of Little League and their seasonal operations.”
Russell Athletic and Little League have worked collaboratively to produce uniforms and apparel that are unique each year and offer the best performance features available for young athletes. Following the popular debut of sublimated jersey designs in 2014, the 2015 jerseys continued the trend and featured a unique shoulder sublimation concept that highlighted the representative states or region for each team. Little League® World Series uniforms for 2016 will be unveiled later this summer.
For more than 60 years, Little League International has worked closely with its national sponsors, who help provide valuable support for local Little League programs around the world. Thanks to the support of these corporations, Little League International has been able to create free resources for volunteers, provide direct financial support to local league operations, and keep Little League affiliation costs to a minimum. This includes the $4 million Grow the Game initiative that Little League International launched in 2015 to support community programs around the world and incremental funding for tournament travel expenses for chartered Little League programs.
About RUSSELL BRANDS, LLC
For more than 100 years, Russell Brands, LLC, has supplied America’s athletes and teams with the latest innovations to help them perform at their best and is a leading supplier of apparel and team uniforms at the high school, college and professional levels. Russell’s collegiate licensed products and athletic wear are broadly distributed and marketed through department stores, sports specialty stores, retail chains and college bookstores. For more information, please visit www.RussellAthletic.com,Facebook and Twitter.
About LITTLE LEAGUE
Little League® Baseball and Softball is the world’s largest organized youth sports program, with 2.4 million players and one million adult volunteers in every U.S. state and more than 80 other countries. Founded in 1939, more than 35 million people around the world, from a U.S. president to community leaders to professional athletes, can call themselves Little League graduates. And every year, millions of people follow the hard work, dedication, and sportsmanship that the Little Leaguers display at our nine baseball and softball World Series events, the premier tournaments in youth sports. For more information, visit LittleLeague.org, or follow Little League on Facebook (facebook.com/LittleLeague), Twitter (twitter.com/LittleLeague), and Instagram (Instagram.com/LittleLeague).
