Sheryl Swoopes

In 1993 Nike decided the best way to attract more female customers was to introduce a women's basketball shoe along the lines of the wildly successful Air Jordan. Swoopes had everything going for her, including, a former Nike executive says, "the best basketball name ever."
by Erin Davies

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To understand Swoopes' success, you have to know a little bit about why Nike and other companies partner up with athletes in the first place. In the most basic of terms, marketers use sports stars because consumers know them, admire them, and aspire to be like them. The logic of an endorsement deal is that an athlete's association with a product will make consumers notice it and buy it either because they want to emulate their hero or because a certain kind of transference occurs in which the athlete's positive qualities (such things as courage, charisma, and talent) are projected onto the cereal, shoes, or whatever is being sold. Of course, not every athlete makes this work. The trick for marketers is to find those who can. Though there are always exceptions, whether an athlete gets an endorsement deal depends on four key factors.

Ability
Marketers want only the best athletes to endorse their products. That's because companies want to be associated with winners. The better the athlete, the more likely it is that consumers know him and want to be like him.

Sport
Which sport an athlete plays is important not because of the sport per se but because of the audience it attracts—or to be more precise, because of the size of the audience it attracts. Since marketers want athletes who are well-known, they focus on sports that have a mass following, extensive press coverage, and regular television exposure. Conversely, an athlete who plays a sport that is little seen and rarely written about isn't going to get a deal. (How many women softball stars do you see endorsing soft drinks?) This is why, generally speaking, men's basketball and football players tend to have large endorsement incomes: A lot of people see NBA and NFL players, on TV and in person, on a regular basis, ensuring that those players are instantly recognizable and have a rabid fan base. And when fans are rabid, they're motivated to buy the products their heroes are associated with.

That said, audience size isn't everything. Although more Americans watch pro football than pro basketball—last year the average TV ratings for the NFL and the NBA were 12.9 and 7.6, respectively—marketers seem to give a slight edge to basketball players. Why? "The advantage is there are only five men on the court on each side, and they are in continuous action, so you're getting to watch them all the time," explains Gerald Scully, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. "In football there are eleven men on each side, and they are all covered up with helmets and padding." No surprise, then, that while a few standout position players like Emmitt Smith of the Dallas Cowboys have made lucrative deals, quarterbacks tend to be the NFL's endorsement kings, since they are usually the most visible. Whether an athlete plays a team or an individual sport also affects how marketers can use him because individual-sport athletes have more control over the equipment they use and the apparel they wear. Golfers and tennis players, for example, can choose their own clubs or racket, clothes, and shoes—each of which allows for a separate endorsement deal. An athlete who plays on a team, however, wears a uniform and, at least in the case of football and basketball, shares a ball, which limits marketing opportunities.

Image
Image takes into account personality, appearance, and upbringing. For reasons that are obvious, a likable athlete is preferable to an unlikable one, and a handsome man or a pretty woman is more apt to capture the attention of the consumer, at least temporarily. And while it isn't necessary for an athlete to overcome obstacles before he gets an endorsement deal, it doesn't hurt. Take George Foreman. His boxing prowess and can-do demeanor help him make more money in endorsements than just about any Texas athlete, but the x factor is his log-cabin story: grew up fatherless in Houston's Fifth Ward, lived for a time on the street and committed petty crimes, turned his life around to become the heavyweight champion of the world. Humor, humility, a positive attitude, sincerity, competitiveness, graciousness: These are the things that make us like certain celebrities more than others, and marketers know it. Of course, not every athlete is Michael Jordan. Among NBA stars, the immodest Charles Barkley of the Houston Rockets and the literally colorful Dennis Rodman (late of the Los Angeles Lakers) have earned some serious cash shilling for products ranging from sneakers to sunglasses. But they are truly anomalies—and although Barkley comes across as arrogant and Rodman dresses outrageously, neither has choked a coach, as Latrell Sprewell of the New York Knicks has. Sprewell, not coincidentally, has just one endorsement—not for a major brand name.

Agent
A good agent can be the deciding factor in who gets deals. Just as Hollywood actors depend on agents to get them the right parts in the right movies for the right price, sports stars rely on sports agents to identify endorsement opportunities, sell them to the companies, and negotiate the best price. As you might expect, the harder the sell, the more important good representation is. Since female athletes who play team sports have relatively small audiences and are fairly new to the endorsement game, the agent is an even more important component of the equation.

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