The phenomenon of football kits being leaked days or sometimes weeks in advance is a curious one.
If it happened to a different club once every couple of years, one could write it off as a simple mistake but the truth of it is that it happens very often.
For some of the more popular clubs, it’s an annual case of certain brands and sports apparel retailers “accidentally” leaking what the kit for the season ahead will look like before any official unveiling.
The “accident” presented itself again earlier this week, when Liverpool’s new home kit was unintentionally leaked by a retailer and Manchester United’s new home shirt was re-leaked on a popular football strip website.
The ever-increasing frequency with which that happens prompted Phil Delves, fan and aficionado of football kits, to tweet out a theory on why certain websites might unintentionally “leak” images of teams’ new jerseys, shorts and socks.
Phil wrote: “Have you ever wondered why some sites ‘accidentally’ list new shirts weeks ahead of everyone else, year after year? Why isn’t someone in the company passing on some learnings so that the next guy won’t press the red button prematurely?
“Well, it’s not an accident…”
Sites like Sports Direct and Lovell Soccer list new shirts way before the official release of a kit, in order to gain traction on price comparison sites and SERPS (search engine results pages).
By briefing listing the new kits, sites can get their product pages…
[THREAD]
— Phil Delves (@phildelves) July 29, 2020
…indexed on Google, and listed on comparison sites like @footydotcom_. I don't have any data to show, but the general principle is that the earlier you can get a page indexed, the better chance you have of ranking higher on SERPS when people come to look for the kit.
[THREAD] pic.twitter.com/ZIL2JrhTUZ
— Phil Delves (@phildelves) July 29, 2020
He continued: “It’s strange that brands don’t do anything to clamp down on this sort of practice , but at the same time leaks are so prevalent now that you virtually never see any ‘new’ information from these ‘leaks’. But anyway, just wanted to share this short story.”
How true or not the theory proves to be likely won’t be known any time soon but it’s certainly not beyond the realms of possibility.