For years now, there has been a common thread anytime a professional sports team has celebrated a championship. If you look hard enough, and sometimes you don’t even have to look that hard, you will see a WWE championship belt in locker rooms covered with champagne and on a parade route, be it by boat or by car. That’s because WWE has been creating and sending these titles to the winning teams in hopes of them doing exactly that, flashing the hardware on TV for the world to see. It’s been a great marketing move and now, one that every WWE and MLB fan can now celebrate with as well.
On August 19th, WWE and Major League Baseball announced a new multi-year partnership that will see the creation of 30 MLB-inspired WWE Championship replica titles and accessories representing all of the league’s MLB clubs and logos. The new line of merchandise will roll out in 2022 and will be available for all fans to purchase. But more than that, the partnership will see WWE and MLB collaborate to create specialty title belts for some of MLB’s marquee events such as the World Series, All-Star Game, and Home Run Derby. The two will also collaborate on unique side plates and custom Lucha Libre masks featuring special team-specific branding.
.@MLB and WWE announced today a multi-year partnership to create MLB-inspired #WWEChampionship replica titles, coming to stores in 2022!
For more 👉 https://t.co/1G4Gg4boVl pic.twitter.com/1Xpx024sEt
— WWE (@WWE) August 19, 2021
“At MLB we are constantly looking to serve our fans with the most unique products possible so that they can support their favorite Clubs and players in the ways they want,” said Denis Nolan, MLB Senior Vice President, Global Consumer Products in WWE’s official release. “We often see baseball fans and players bringing their MLB and WWE fandom together at games and online, so this is a natural development for us to work together and offer the highest quality, official co-branded items for fans around the world.”
“We’ve been continually amazed by the reaction to custom WWE Championship title belts, and we’re excited this partnership will allow us to make them widely available to fans,” said Kevin Moore, WWE Senior Vice President, Direct-to-Consumer Products.
While WWE’s tradition of creating replica belts will live on through this partnership, it should be noted that this also marks the first official licensing agreement between WWE and one of the major U.S. sports leagues for the creation of replica title belts. Should all go well, it may not be long until we see similar agreements popping up across the U.S.’ other major sporting leagues such as the NBA, NHL, and NFL, which has already received some custom WWE hardware for its Thanksgiving Football Game, as part of WWE’s partnership with FOX.
