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In January 2019, Seattle Sounders FC replaced Xbox on the front of its jerseys with Zulily, a Seattle-based online retailer seeking to broaden its brand. The club said the choice reflected more than a logo deal: it wanted a local partner committed to community work and willing to sponsor both the Sounders and Seattle Reign FC. Zulily, meanwhile, saw the partnership as a way to build local awareness and reposition itself beyond its early identity as a daily-deals site for mothers and young children.
Why the Sounders moved from Xbox to Zulily
The Sounders announced Zulily as their new multi-year jersey-front partner on January 17, 2019, after a nationwide search. Xbox had appeared on the club’s jerseys since its 2009 MLS debut. In announcing the transition, majority owner Adrian Hanauer thanked Microsoft and Xbox for helping launch the team in MLS; the announcement does not establish that Microsoft ended every other relationship with the club. Sounders FC’s announcement
Hanauer said the search weighed Seattle roots and community commitments alongside the jersey placement. He specifically mentioned youth soccer in Puget Sound and the women’s game, and said Zulily’s willingness to sponsor both the Sounders and Reign stood out. In a GeekWire interview, he characterized Zulily as a local company that was “all in.”
Why Zulily wanted the partnership
For Zulily, the deal was a local brand-awareness play and part of a broader effort to change how shoppers and potential employees understood the company. Its senior vice president of marketing, Kevin Saliba, said the sponsorship supported Zulily’s aim to be seen as a local e-commerce and technology employer. GeekWire reported that the company wanted to move beyond its early daily-deals identity centered on mothers with young children. Saliba put the intended shift this way: “We started as a moms and kids business. We’re much more focused now on women or men, with or without kids.”
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That was Zulily’s positioning in 2019, not a claim about its current catalog. GeekWire also reported at the time that Zulily sold sports apparel, including products from Under Armour and Brooks Running.
What the partnership included
The Sounders’ announcement listed the First Team’s match jerseys, team travel jackets, rain and stadium jackets, and official team polo shirts as sponsor placements. It also described plans for Zulily branding on Sounders Academy jerseys. The club presented the agreement as multi-year; the reported terms and fee were not disclosed.
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Zulily also became the presenting partner and jersey sponsor of Seattle Reign FC, as confirmed in the clubs’ announcements. The arrangement put one Seattle-area sponsor across the city’s two professional soccer clubs and tied the brand to both the men’s and women’s game.
Community commitment and what the numbers do—and do not—show
The announcement came with a joint donation by the Sounders and Zulily to a Seattle Children’s Hospital cancer-research initiative. GeekWire reported the donation as $26,000 in 2019. Hanauer also told GeekWire that more than 40 percent of Sounders fans were women; that was his contemporary description of the fan base, not a current independently verified demographic measure.
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The sponsorship’s financial value was not made public. GeekWire cited a 2017 Soccer365.com estimate of $3 million to $4 million per year for most MLS jersey deals as league-wide context, not as the value of the Sounders–Zulily agreement. It should not be treated as an estimate of this contract.
Hanauer described the hoped-for business logic plainly: “We want to help a company evolve their brand, because if we do that right, they will continue to invest more and more resources into our organization. And our first priority is winning. We want to win and we want to impact the community. Those things work together.” That explains the club’s stated rationale, but the available announcements and interviews do not measure whether the sponsorship changed consumer perceptions, increased Zulily sales, or generated a financial return.
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Keep the later brand changes separate
The Sounders’ own visual identity later evolved for the club’s 50th anniversary: in September 2023 it announced a new crest and adjusted colors for 2024 after fan and community engagement. That was a Sounders identity project, separate from Zulily’s 2019 effort to reposition its retail brand. Sounders FC’s 2023 announcement
Zulily’s corporate and retail story also moved on. Beyond announced in March 2025 that it had agreed to sell 75% of the Zulily brand to Lyons Trading Company, operator of Proozy, retaining a 25% stake. Beyond’s announcement The current Zulily About page describes a new shopping site and lists St. Paul, Minnesota; those later details should not be projected backward onto the Seattle-based sponsor as it was described in 2019. Zulily’s About page
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