Custom team jerseys

Sublimation is the only decoration method where the design becomes part of the fabric. Under heat, the ink converts directly to a gas and bonds into the polyester fibre, so there is nothing sitting on the surface to crack, peel, or stiffen. A sublimated number looks identical in month one and month twelve, which is the whole argument for using it on a garment that gets washed after every use.

It also removes the per-colour cost that shapes every other method. A full-colour gradient, a photographic panel, or edge-to-edge colour that runs off the hem costs the same as a single-colour design, because there are no screens to set up. That is why jerseys can carry designs that would be unaffordable on a screen-printed tee.

The constraint is the fabric. Sublimation needs polyester to bond to, so it does not work on cotton, and it cannot print white, because the process adds colour rather than opacity. Any white in your design is the fabric showing through, which is worth understanding before you finalize artwork on a coloured base.

Numbers and player names are sublimated with the rest of the design rather than added afterwards, which means each jersey is individually laid out before production. That sounds like it should be expensive and it largely is not, because there is no per-piece setup the way there is with screens or embroidery: a fifty-jersey roster with fifty different names and numbers prints as one job.

What it does require is a locked roster. Because personalization happens at the printing stage rather than after it, a name added or corrected after production starts is a new jersey, not an alteration. Collect the roster, the numbers, and the sizes together in one form and confirm all three before you approve the mockup.

We lay out every name and number in the mockup so you can check spellings and digits before anything is produced. It is the single most useful five minutes anyone spends on a jersey order.

Jersey pricing behaves differently from the rest of the catalogue because the design complexity does not affect the price. A one-colour jersey and a full-colour jersey with side panels, a gradient, and per-player names cost the same, which is unusual and worth planning around: if you are going to sublimate at all, there is no financial reason to hold back on the design.

The cost drivers are quantity and the blank. Because there is no screen setup to amortize, the per-piece price falls less dramatically with volume than on a screen-printed garment, though it still falls. For a school with several teams, ordering them together on one run is worth more than ordering each team separately.

School and club programmes usually order jerseys against a season deadline, and the roster is the bottleneck rather than production. Numbers get reassigned, players join late, and sizes come back incomplete. Build a week of slack into the timeline for that specifically, because the production time itself is predictable and the roster collection is not.

Corporate leagues and charity tournaments order jerseys as a one-off, and the usual mistake is treating them like a t-shirt order: picking a design that would work screen printed and leaving the method's advantages unused. If you are sublimating, use the full colour and the edge-to-edge coverage, because they are free.

Supporter jerseys sold alongside a team programme are a genuine fundraising item for schools, since a jersey carries a higher sale price than a tee and the margin scales with it. Our school spirit wear page covers how those programmes are usually run.

Jerseys usually sit alongside performance shirts for training and warm-ups, where the same polyester fabric is decorated more simply and costs less.

For the layer that goes over competition kit, joggers and hoodies are what most programmes add, and caps round out a team lineup.