How Nike and other Brands Make Millions Marketing Star Athletes
TIGER WOODS: When Tiger Woods fails to win a "major" (the Masters, the British Open, the U.S. Open or the PGA Championship) it makes big news. When he wins a major tournament, it's what the media, Tiger's fans, and the sporting public expect. He is that good, and that dominant a player. He is clearly the best player in the world. But he is also the best-paid player, and Nike is one of the main reasons he makes so much money.Tiger earns about $90 million a year, according to an article in Golf Digest (Morrice 2006), and a large part of his earnings come through endorsements. Tiger wears the Nike "swoosh" logo on his hat and on his shirts. He endorses Nike, Nike golf clubs, along with Buick automobiles, and several other products. The Nike driver Tiger endorses (Nike SasQuatch) costs $350. Marketing professionals find Tiger Woods to be one of the most powerful spokespersons in the sporting world, not just because he is so successful (he has won 11 major tournaments, and has his eye on Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 major tournament wins), but because he is a gentleman and says all the right things. An article in Time magazine in April, 2007 (Park, 2007), points out that in 1996, Nike was producing sports shoes of many styles (incl
Bob Wood, one of the Nike officials who was part of the decision to lavish millions of dollars on Tiger Woods, said that investors ". Nike has ten lines of golf clubs on the market now, ten series of golf balls, and several different styles of golf shoes and "an array of course-worthy golf apparel. "Nike stock fell 5%," journalist Alice Park writes in Time. Comparing sports sponsorships to all other sponsorships internationally shows just how important sports marketing is. The collaboration of Michael Jordan and Nike "discloses the extent to which contemporary society is constituted by image and spectacle and mediated by the institutions of consumer culture," Kellner explains. MICHAEL JORDAN: Michael Jordan is another example of how Nike and other marketers used a superstar athlete to promote its products. As for Beckham, who endorses Adidas and Pepsi, he has 200 official David Beckham fan clubs, totally over 53 million members, according to the Yu article; moreover, Beckham is known as the husband of Victoria Adams, a former Spice Girl, which places him in magazines having to do with lifestyle, fashion, music, and movies (he is the focus of a young girl's attention in the movie "Bend it like Beckham"). " That apparel is worn by not only Tiger, of course, but also it is also worn by twenty-two other players on the PGA tour, including Justin Leonard, Paul Azinger, Roy Sabbatini, and others. And that is, that the increasing commercialization of sports, and sports products along with endorsers who help sell those products takes the average person away from the worries of everyday life. The point of this essay is very much in line with what Kellner is saying about Nike and superstars like Jordan (and Tiger Woods). " The first line of Nike clubs, the ProCombo irons, were aimed at the top 2% of the 27 million golfers who play each year in America. How good was the product? It was at least as good as its main endorser, Tiger Woods. " Falk became quite an international marketing icon himself when he negotiated a $30 million contract for Jordan in 1996-98 (to play basketball).
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