Tiger Woods, Nike and the end of the all-encompassing athlete-brand marriage

TThe announcement that Tiger Woods and Nike have ended their 27-year commercial partnership came as no surprise to anyone paying attention. It’s been almost ten years since Nike, that said in a recent earnings call it will target $2 billion in cost savings over the next three years, stopped making golf equipment, including balls, clubs and bags. And Woods’ limited schedule following his grueling litany of surgeries, both before and after his career-threatening car accident in February 2021, has left the 15-time champion less visible than ever.

But there’s a specific finality to Monday’s deliberate uncoupling, which came a week after Woods’ 48th birthday, that marks the end of an era in the sports world: the death of the kind of all-encompassing marriage between athletes and brands that has truly changed the world flooded. cultural mainstream. The obvious template is Nike’s tie-up with Michael Jordan, a leviathan deal whose humble origins were playfully dramatized on screen last year. Indeed, Phil Knight spent three years aggressively recruiting Woods based on the Jordan proof of concept: that a single charismatic athlete, touched with divine gifts, could carry an entire sports-entertainment empire on his shoulders. “Everyone was looking for the next Michael Jordan, and they were looking on the basketball court,” the Nike chairman said at the time. “And he walked the fairway the whole time.”

Woods was already among the biggest names in all of the sport when, just days after coming from five strokes behind to win his third consecutive US Amateur in 1996, he announced that he was leaving Stanford University and in two words: “Hello World.” Considering the current state of the newspaper industry, let’s say Nike’s three pages spread in the Wall Street Journal the announcement of his arrival would not make the same impression today.

He immediately responded to the dizzying hype, winning four tour events in his first eight months, including the groundbreaking Masters victory in 1997 that launched his already high profile into the stratosphere. Woods quickly delivered a return on the investment that far exceeded the original terms of $40 million over five years. Calling him the most dominant athlete in the world, which he was, only underestimated his broader significance. He was larger than life, the rare chosen one who not only met but exceeded all expectations and captivated the world, winning majors by record margins and conjuring up one unforgettable moment after another. Some of them Nike couldn’t have scripted any better in a backstage area, for example his unforgettable chip-in from the rough environment during the final round of the 2005 Masters, where the ball hung on the rim for over a second, with the company’s ‘swoosh’ logo in perfect view, before falling into the cup.

Woods’ most recent 10-year deal with Nike was reportedly worth around $200 million, but what people will remember years from now is the commercial iconography. Nike’s creative collaboration with ad agency Wieden+Kennedy created campaigns that managed to transcend the transactional nature of advertising into the realm of pop art. For every Jugglingthe playful 30-second spot where Tiger plays a little keepie-uppie with an iron before finally hitting the ball into the distance, or Golf is not difficultwhere he could flex his comedic chops, there were others who pushed the boundaries of the mainstream and even flirted with the avant-garde, such as the 60-second spot consisting of entirely from one swing in slow motion against a spartan black background. Never, which debuted prior to the 2008 US Open (where he would score an extraordinary 19-hole playoff victory), relied on a voiceover from Tiger’s father, Earl, who had died of cancer two years earlier. Even when they are the most overwrought – like the famous ones I am Tiger Forest spot, which borrowed liberally from the coda of Spike Lee’s 1993 magnum opus Malcolm X – they were serious enough in their exaggeration to succeed. (That all these carefully crafted myths would be shattered when Woods’ personal life imploded in one of history’s biggest tabloid scandals in 2009 makes the work all the more compelling.)

People got excited when a new Tiger ad appeared, an excitement only fueled by its scarcity in the pre-YouTube era, when the only way to see it was through a television broadcast. The golden age of the Woods-Nike partnership overlaps with the final days of American monoculture, giving their work a platform and reach that no longer exists. Traditional network TV audiences were already fragmenting before being forgotten by the rise of streaming services. People simply don’t watch TV like they used to, especially young people. It’s unlikely that some of Nike and W+K’s biggest coups – be they the… Commercial airport of Brazil prior to the 1998 World Cup or the that affect McIlroy-Wood’s spot – would have been given the space to make the same impact in the current media landscape.

The signposts for this break have been there for years. In 2018, Nike athlete Roger Federer — one of the few sports stars whose association with a brand felt as permanent as Woods — left Nike after 24 years for Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo on a 10-year contract worth $300 million. Elsewhere, there’s evidence that rappers and entertainers have been gaining ground, if not surpassing them, as sneaker ambassadors, whether it’s Adidas going all-in on Kanye West in his push for the youth market or, to a lesser extent, Jack Harlow taking the billing shares with LA Clippers. star Kawhi Leonard at New Balance.

LeBron James is Nike for life, which is remarkable given his overarching disruptive embrace of athletes as individual brands. Kevin Durant too. The same for David Beckham and Adidas. But they are the last of a dying breed in a changing media landscape. And for all their reach and untold wealth, none of them have an I Am Tiger Woods.