Oakley has announced an on-field partnership with the NFL that will see the Luxottica owned sports eyewear brand supply the league’s 32 teams with helmet visors.
As the new NFL season kicks off this week, all players will have the option to wear the lightly tinted Oakley Prizm Clear shields, which are listed as 75% light transmission.
Through the deal Oakley gains an exclusive brand platform. Unusually for such a high-profile sport, player uniforms in the NFL are not sponsored. This means the Oakley logo on the visors will join the jersey manufacturer Nike’s iconic swoosh as only the second player-related commercial element visible on the field of play.
Prior to this partnership, tinted visors were prohibited outside of medical exceptions since 1998. Clear visors have been allowed throughout that period and continue to be so now; meaning players choosing to wear the Oakley Prizm Clear will do so for reasons of vision enhancement rather than safety.
‘Prizm is a light-management technology,’ Wayne Chumbley, head of Oakley’s Vision Performance Lab told Sports Illustrated. ‘We can filter light in a way to leverage your natural visual acuity. So we see colours – red, green and blue – naturally. If you can heighten your sensitivity in areas, it can create a lot of colour contrast which creates a better depth perception scenario for you. So with Prizm Clear, what we’re doing is we’re eliminating areas of colour confusion.’
For NFL fans, Oakley is launching a special edition NFL eyewear collection for all 32 teams in two men’s styles and seven teams in a women’s style.