Michael Jordan's retirement from the NBA came as a shock to the entire sports world. After winning an unprecedented third straight NBA title the man who many people touted as the greatest to ever play the game, not to mention king of all endorsements, retired stating that he had accomplished everything and had nothing left to prove. With the NBA no longer having a marquee player,
             ratings diminished around the league. Then came the surprise of Michael Jordan's return , just over a year and a half later. More surprising than that, however, was the fact that he returned wearing the number forty-five on his jersey instead of his patented twenty-three. This forced most fans with number twenty-three jerseys to keep up with the latest and purchase a number forty- five. Not only did Jordan help the licensing business with this number switch, but because of his return, he vastly increased sales of all his endorsed products. Thus, with showing how one man could single-handedly create sales around the country, Michael Jordan proved how important certain icons, like himself, are in society.
             Jordan's importance to the game and the market were portrayed best in his return from retirement. "NBC's overnight [television] ratings for March 19, the date of Jordan's return...hit 13.4 ranking the event in top-five, all-time for an NBA regular season game" (Sporting Goods Business, 1995). Consider it: Michael Jordan's first game out of retirement, ranked among the top five TV ratings in the history of the NBA. No player in the history of the sport could have had that much of an impact. Not only did he increase TV ratings, but again took back his title of "most influential marketing machine in the history of sports." According to Time magazine, Jordan's return to the NBA was worth close to $4 billion to the companies whose products he endorsed. Their rise in stocks varied from Gatorade's 2.3 percen
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