Do shoe companies actually get a return on sponsorship?

Vaporfly was the only carbon plate shoes when it came out. I have a pair I bought three years ago, although I usually train in NB shoes.

I feel like this is the only quantifiable result, everything else is just general brand awareness. Kipchoge's sub 2 attempts helped bring carbon plate shoes to the mainstream marathoners. For awhile it felt like every hobby marathoner was decked out in Nike super shoes or that a casual runner would at least know the name of vapor/alpha fly.

Agreed. A lot of marketing is just to get people not familiar with the sport familiar with the brand so when you go to the store you have a positive impression of them. For example, people are going to see Noah Lyles win in Adidas in a couple weeks and if they go to a running store they'll thing hmm maybe I'll get Adidas because that Noah Lyles kid wears them and is fast.

There may be a trickle down effect where more hardcore enthusiasts go for something different based pro shop or magazine article references and then they influence others.

One thing for sure is LeBron ain't no Michael Jordan and Nike has lost 75% or more of their market share of the fitness center market over the last 20 years based on my observation. It seems like the only people wearing Nikes are newbies and grandmas at my gym.

No.

End of discussion.

I still dont

Do you just make stuff up?

See Kipchoge Breaking 2 on ROI for shoe sponsorship. Literally all super shoe sales since 2017 stem from that one single marketing event centered around him. 2:00:25 was it? Was it Kipchoge that astounded us or his shoes?

They don't get a return from individual athletes - at least not in track and field - but they do get a return from saturation. On is a really good example as they had nearly zero presence 6-7 years ago. They then invested heavily in both road and track athletes, plus sponsoring events across Europe, and they now have good brand recognition. In the UK at least, On trainers are worn casually by young lads, part of the uniform along with a North Face puffer jacket.

But if you asked someone to name a specific On athlete, they'd struggle.

That's why, if I was heading up a marketing department for a shoe company, I wouldn't pay any distance runner (5000m to marathon) more than $100k. Only Kipchoge is worth it, the rest are there just for brand saturation and aren't really worth anything as individuals. Cheptegei is a double world record holder, multiple gold medallist, but how many non-track fans could pick him out of a line-up? Tbh, i think at least 75% of shoe contracts for distance athletes are just acts of charity

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Sponsoring a specific athlete doesn't move the needle; sponsoring a collection of athletes and having a brand identity for consumers to want to tap into does.

There's no way anyone can't tell me that Nike did not generate million of $$$ off of the Nike zoom kennedy! the contract Bob kennedy had was pennies compared to the amount of revenue generated by the Kennedys

It's brand exposure and it's brand credibility. I mean sure, every now and then you might have a kid that absolutely loves a Sydney McL or a Noah Lyles and wants to run in NB or adi because of them but that makes up a tiny part of the return.

It's more so an event like the Olympics where the casual fan wants to watch the 100m final (as an example) and if there are 6/8 bright pink Nike spikes there that might mean the next time they get inspired to go buy a pair of running shoes, they remember being exposed to the brand and remember it was a credible brand because 3/4 of the worlds fastest athletes were wearing it.

As for calculating a specific ROI? Simply impossible.

Here is a good example with respect to adidas and football(soccer). Do you know what soccer contributes bottom line to the brand? It makes absolutely no money for them - in fact it's actually a bottom line loss for the brand. Yes you read that right and it sounds crazy but it's true. Sure they sell millions of pairs of cleats/boots across their price points - but they sponsorships of players, teams etc totally offset that and by a considerable amount. So adidas soccer basically operates as a marketing/exposure/credibility function - the same way track and field/running product does on an athlete specific basis.

I suspect they do for an extremely small number of megastars (e.g., Bolt - I'm virtually certain that Bolt increased Puma sales by a large amount), but I doubt very much that the median pro runner sponsorship has a measurable impact on any metrics that they can differentiate from random fluctuations in data.

Moreover, if you asked somebody to name a specific On athlete almost everybody who could name one would name Roger Federer.

You can sponsor a typical athlete for less than the cost of a receptionist. So it is not a very big expense and you may earn something from it. Probably more valuable to a business than a receptionist

Michael Jordan, Kipchoge… are exceptions, but they also earn more than your typical receptionist.

I've always wondered this myself and it's interesting to hear this discussion. I do wonder how much they actually crunch numbers or what concrete metrics a brand rep will bring into a meeting with an agent/athlete. Also you have the whole saturation vs star sponsorship. As someone mentioned earlier, sometimes a Diamond League can just be a sea of Nike jerseys and gear. Is that the better play to just sign up anyone who is Olympic final quality and then just blanket the sport so that the brand essentially owns track and field? Or do you sign an individual star like a Bolt or Mondo and trust that they'll stand out from the crowd and make an impression by differentiating their gear (i.e. the pack wears Nike but winners wear Puma)? In such a niche sport I think things like this are really interesting and I'd be curious if anyone had more stories/experience from reps discussing this!

Though obviously not a megastar in the same sense, I imagine Asics has been very pleased with metasky paris sales after Clayton Young jogged it in alongside Mantz. Personally won't buy them but I think it put them on the map as having a viable racer, I saw a pair on a random jogger in the park last week and have noticed them more and more at local races this year

Jogger262 wrote:
notPetePfitzinger wrote:
it's a brand play not a direct sales play
Yeah, it’s brand awareness for the most part. Very difficult to quantify other than the obvious outliers which are almost all Nike athletes (in other sports).
Jordan and Tiger both with their own spinoff brands certainly paid off.
I suppose some young girls choose New Balance due to Coburn, Sisson, St. Pierre, and SML. Probably young Jamaicans still buy Puma because of Bolt.

Heck yeah! I buy Puma because of Bolt!

I remember when I first started rock climbing as a teenager, I went to the store to buy a harness and decided to buy a Black Diamond one because it was the only brand I had ever heard of and figured that meant they must make good quality stuff (I know, I know). And I had heard of it because I had seen a photo of some sponsored climber wearing it. And then by the time I had been climbing for a few years and needed a new harness, I also bought a Black Diamond one, because why switch brands when there were no issues with the one I had?

So yeah, I think it's a lot of small instances of profit that, multiplied across the whole population, add up.