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In addition to a media (advertising) budget of about $1 billion per year, Nike is said to spend a similar amount sponsoring teams, individual athletes to endorse their products, and organizations like USATF.
Over the last decade or so they have made some unfortunate choices, in spite of which Nike continues to be the dominant manufacturer of sports apparel. Adidas has a similar budget, and has avoided any scandals as far as I am aware, but has annual revenues of about $20 billion as opposed to about $28 billion for Nike.
Nike sponsorship disasters:
1) Lance Armstrong: finally caught after years of cheating with a variety of performance enhancing drugs and blood doping, Armstrong was also revealed as a manipulative liar who intimidated his team members. Stripped of all titles.
2) Marion Jones: tested positive for EPO and later admitted lying about steroid use over a period of several years. Found guilty of perjury and also fraud with her second husband, doping sprinter Tim Montgomery, in a counterfeit check scheme involving millions of dollars. Spent time in prison but almost unbelievably was appointed by the Obama government to represent the US in Serbia and Croatia as an ambassador.
3) Tiger Woods: bad tempered, foul mouthed and abrasive personality who caused one of the worst sex scandals in the history of sports. He then made a Nike commercial which exploited the memory of his father Earl, who had recently died.
4) Michael Vick: served 21 months in prison for bankrolling a dog fighting ring on his property.
5) Kobe Bryant: accused of raping a 19 year old girl he admitted having sex with her but claimed it was consensual.
6) Justin Gatlin: banned from athletics for 4 years after a positive test for testosterone in April 2006.
7) Oscar Pistorius: awaiting sentencing on the charge of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. One Nike advertisement featuring Pistorius used a theme statement "I am the bullet in the chamber".
Given these disasters it seems Nike has been unusually unlucky in this area, but has not suffered the sort of adverse effects one might expect.
Can anyone explain this?
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