Strategy June 30, 2026

Tees or Towels? NBA Playoff Promo Sparks Debate

For the past few months, NBA fans have been arguing online over whether teams should give out T-shirts or rally towels. Counselor took a look at which proved more popular over the course of the 2026 playoffs.

By  Emily Wilson

Key Takeaways

• Rising T-shirt costs have more NBA teams weighing rally towels, though shirts remained the most common playoff giveaway in 2026.

• Creative, well-designed giveaways help boost fan engagement, with colorful T-shirts and clever messaging encouraging fans to participate.

• Fast-turn production is critical during the playoffs, with suppliers and decorators often fulfilling orders in fewer than 72 hours..

The New York Knicks were crowned NBA champions in June, marking the end of the NBA playoffs. Over the course of the two playoff months, fans argued online over officiating, players and coaches – and even debated whether arenas should give out rally towels or T-shirts for playoff promo.

arena with fiesta shirts

The San Antonio Spurs created a visual statement with T-shirts for a “fiesta”-themed giveaway at a playoff game this year. (photo courtesy of Isaiah Alonzo/San Antonio Spurs)

The core of the argument: Fans want T-shirts in theory, but they may not always wear them. Yet arenas that don’t give out T-shirts as a result tend to be labeled “cheap.”

According to suppliers and distributors involved in the NBA playoff merchandise space, cost of the product is often the driving factor in decision-making.

T-shirts have become less common as giveaways after the COVID-19 pandemic and recent tariffs raised prices of blank T-shirts and screen printing, says Chris Ferriter, president and co-founder of Miami-based Sobe Promos (asi/245603).

“Nobody wants to spend $100,000 to get 2,000 XL T-shirts, where maybe 8% of the people who get them can actually wear them, so they’ve gone to rally towels,” Ferriter says. “Once prices went up, nobody’s going back down. I think that’s the new norm.”

T-shirts cost around $1.75 before COVID, Ferriter says, and now, they sell for between $4 and $5 each. Rally towels, on the other hand, only cost around $1.

Still, in the 2026 NBA playoffs, T-shirts were the most common giveaway, being present at nearly two-thirds of the games, according to a Counselor analysis of playoff promo. Nearly 40% of NBA playoff games had rally towels.

Only one team never gave away a T-shirt – the Denver Nuggets, who hosted three home games and lost in the first round to the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Some teams are generous and will give away both. The New York Knicks and the Cleveland Cavaliers combined for nine games where fans walked away with both a shirt and a towel.

The Cavs made it to the third round of the playoffs and were ultimately swept by the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals. Though their fans likely ended the season disappointed, fans arriving to the arena received one of the more expensive giveaways – Cleveland was the only team to give away a T-shirt at every playoff home game.

The Cavs’ social media team even poked fun at the discourse multiple times – imploring fans to “wear the damn shirt.” The team also had some memorable, bold copy – some rally towels had the phrase “Let them **c**** know” – inviting fans to read between the lines.

“Those plays on words are great. I think those are awesome when people do that, but I don’t think enough teams are that audacious or that forward,” Ferriter says.

Cost isn’t the only factor teams use when planning stadium giveaways. Superstition also plays a role, according to Bill Feldberg, vice president of business development at Counselor Top 40 distributor Something Inked (asi/329822), which has worked in the NBA giveaway market for over a decade.

“Teams are also very superstitious, that however they start is how they finish,” Feldberg says. “They’re doing a giveaway to create an atmosphere and hopefully more of a home-court advantage.”

One team that did a good job with giveaways this year, adds Feldberg, was the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs had a couple of T-shirt giveaway nights that were “fiesta” themed, with three different colored T-shirts distributed across the arena. The result was a pink, yellow and teal mosaic appearance, and it had its intended effect because the fans wore them, Feldberg says.

Generally, notes Feldberg, smaller markets like San Antonio or Oklahoma City are easier to target with creative T-shirts because those are often the only professional teams in the area, and fans are more excited.

The Spurs gave away T-shirts for the team’s first five playoff home games. After that, they gave away T-shirts twice over the next seven games. For the team’s last home game, a loss to the New York Knicks that cost them the finals, the giveaway was a fan banner or a cardboard noisemaker.

Something Inked was the distributor for the Spurs – Feldberg says the giveaway for that game was never planned to be a T-shirt. He adds that teams have never changed the giveaway based on series score (in this case, the Spurs were down 3-1 to the Knicks).

Based on data from the 2026 NBA playoffs, T-shirts were increasingly more likely to be given out as the rounds went on.

If fans attended a game in the first round, there was nearly a 60% chance they’d be receiving a T-shirt. In the conference finals (round three), that likelihood jumped to 80%. In the finals, 60% of games had a T-shirt giveaway: Both Knicks home games did, whereas the Spurs only gave away a T-shirt once.

It’s nearly impossible to predict how many home games a team will host over the course of a playoff run, and many teams order promo in advance. But that also leaves a high possibility that teams will need to place orders with a short turnaround, based on how long series go.

Thomas Ackerman, vice president of intelligent revenue and sales innovation at Pro Towels (asi/79750), says producing most of the rally towels for the NBA and NHL playoffs this season was “hectic.”

Ackerman describes a day where they had towels being produced for the NBA Finals on one set of equipment, and towels going to the NHL Stanley Cup Finals on the other.

“It’s a smooth operation, and we’re built for those,” Ackerman says. “We call them hot markets, where you’re really running under 48 to 72 hours’ notice to get these things produced.”

Pro Towels produced 20,000 towels for an NBA Finals game in under 24 hours on the day Ackerman mentions.

Rally towels are cheaper than T-shirts, making them popular options in later games in any given series. T-shirts were most common in the first and third games of a series – the first home game of either team. Rally towels became more common as series got longer. In game seven, rally towels and T-shirts were equally likely for fans to receive.

T-shirts were also given away in five out of six play-in games, which are single elimination games for each conference’s number-seven through number-ten seeds to earn a chance to make a playoff series.

Another factor to consider is end-user behavior: Will fans really wear an extra-large T-shirt on a regular basis? Rally towels may be kept and used for a longer time, promo pros say. Ackerman says microfiber towels are becoming more popular as opposed to standard cotton because they can showcase more detailed artwork, like a screen-printed photo, and are better quality than cotton.

“Being able to do it on a microfiber towel really stands out more, and it allows the customer to truly appreciate the art that went into it,” Ackerman says. “People hang them up. They collect them.”

Whether it’s a T-shirt or a towel, the true power of stadium giveaways aren’t just the impact they make in the arena – it’s also a strong memento and lasting keepsake of what might be a once-in-a-lifetime memory for fans.