I think that both parties involved could have handled this better, but at the end of the day, this is one of those dust ups that will actually harm Oiselle the most.
Since Oiselle brought the issue to the public spotlight, I start with that company. We don't know its annual revenues. Supposedly $10 million in 2015 with a goal of $15 million in 2016. It was not reporting a profit as of September, 2016 in online articles. It is a small, somewhat niche group, (women's only running/sportswear), competing with established global brands. So I can see why they need to be selective about how they invest their money. It also makes some sense that a lot of deals will be apparel + travel + medical stipends only.
With the Tori Franklin situation, it "invested" in a runner by contracting to provide certain benefits for a one-year period and the athlete struck it big from a performance standpoint. The athlete wanted more money immediately, Oiselle wanted to work it out for just the next few months with a commitment for at least through USAs so that it could, at the very least, get some return out of its sponsorship. Oiselle feels mistreated because the athlete breached.
Oiselle is not wrong feeling slighted. But I think the way it has handled the situation is poor and unbecoming. The blog post by the founder was not well written and frankly, it glossed over some of the key points to this by giving subjective descriptions to objective numbers. For instance, Oiselle claimed that it had to scrape together some money, but never gave actual numbers. It awarded a bonus, again without giving actual numbers. Just say how much you paid. I think the reason that these numbers were not provided, as alluded to by Wejo, is that these numbers were not very high. Tori Franklin, in one year of sponsorship with Oiselle, made about $8,500.
Oiselle also wanted to use this situation as a sounding board to explain why it will be less able to fund athletes in the future. Because what happens when the next athlete has a breakthrough season and suddenly departs for a bigger sponsor. Oiselle can't afford the millions in legal fees that could be incurred to go against a global brand. Hopefully, they decide to write a penalty clause in their deals moving forward. Just put in an amount for liquidated damages and make that a number you can live with.
But in the end for Oiselle - it needs to be mindful that while it wants to play the "we're the victim" card and explain that this is why it will sponsor less runners - it has also presented itself as a bitter and spoiled child. If you are looking at endorsements and you have options outside of Oiselle, this type of public reaction is the exact reason why an agent may persuade an athlete to pursue any other option available. I think in the long run, how Sally Bergesen handled this will never look good.
Now with Tori Franklin. She's 25 years old who just broke the American record in an event that barely ever receives any kind of attention or coverage, even within the small sliver of attention that T&F gets on a national level. Basically, she has to view this contract as the only opportunity to ever receive any kind of sponsorship money from this sport. Also, this money will help her train. Presumably, with some more money, there could be better training assistance and with that, even better results.
I think that she was put in an awkward position - most likely by Nike. Because Nike wanted her in the swoosh for the US Championships - arguably one of the only major US events where it will get some kind of attention/recognition in 2018. But I'm also sure that Nike is going to pay Ms. Franklin at least 10 times what Oiselle was paying. And can we be honest - anyone when faced with $8,500 versus $85,000 is going to choose the 85K. Living hand to mouth sucks.
Ms. Franklin made the choice that will best prolong her career. She doesn't look great in doing it, however, because she turned her back on the only company that was willing to give her a chance, Oiselle. Where was Nike a couple years ago when Tori Franklin was coming out of college? Sponsoring someone else. Oiselle, which does have a very limited bank account, took the chance. And Tori is basically burning them for it. Because Oiselle's big payoff would have been the American record holder competing in Oiselle at the national championships.
The TL;DR section of this post is - neither side behaved appropriately. Oiselle just put everything in public with a slanted blog post that hides just how little money it was paying Tori Franklin. Tori Franklin, however, didn't have any other options when she signed with a small company willing to take a chance on her, and then bolted as soon as anything else came along. That's not right either.