Hoist with their own petard. To repeat my comment on your conversation with Nate, Nike’s odious company culture that led to this set of ridiculous decisions is not an accident. Years of embracing identity politics through its marketing and internal corporate DEI policies have put it in this position. Ethan has documented some of the external choices they’ve made in marketing, while some internal decisions were covered by Bloomberg. In a 2023 report on BLM’s impact to corporate hiring showed a dramatic shift in Nike’s demographics. It is worth checking this out — evaluating the changes and ratios of particular census categories leads one to believe discriminatory practices at play for such a drastic shift in a two-year span:. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/
Bottom-line, there is no rationalization for a company to favor a Wilson release over Clark’s. As Ethan knows, you can’t make ‘fetch’ happen. As much as the managers and executives at Nike earnestly invest that Aja Wilson be a crossover star, she won’t be. Meanwhile they sideline a billion-dollar athlete to not interfere with the vain and sanctimonious pursuit. Sorry, but this is a case of “Go Woke, Go Broke”.
In an effort to increase diversity, NIKE diversity of color and sex, not diversity of opinion. NIKE has ran with a new value system in which social equity is on par with shareholder equity, if not above.
NIKE has another problem w the NBA and shoes. NBA stars aren't cool anymore. Privileged super-dorks or corporate personalities with little to no personality or authenticity don't sell shoes. ANT resonates so strongly because ANT is cool and exudes authenticity. LeBron, Durant, Curry, Tatum, Giannis are corny dudes. Hell, Kobe was super corny until his end of career media masterclass.
Just as an example...I have never once heard the name Aja Wilson (that I remember) before this podcast brought her up. I have heard Caitlin Clark's name at least 500 times.
Whereas the market used to have final say, it is now racial and gender optics that matter most. When the shoe inevitably fails, it will be blamed on media attention for cc, lack of marketing, and racism.
Many within Nike know Aja's shoe is not going to sell well, but it is more beneficial to appease optics than return profits. This is what DEI and alphabet group control of a company does to your bottom line. Decisions are made by what feels good and not value to the customer or revenue generated.
The Bloomberg article was interesting, but the overall change doesn't look very different from demographic change overall. Nike's changes were crazy though.
At the beginning of the WNBA season Glassspiegel kept retweeting these insane and deranged posts from longtime WNBA media folks and they were so upset that new fans weren't Enjoying Their Game the Right Way. It was so obvious that their interest in the WNBA was about a moral cause and had nothing to do with in game performance. No double that some of that rubbed off on Nike.
It is truly crazy because far-left authoritarians should be celebrating Clark as a grand success - Title IX, the federal government forcing institutions to promote women's sports, incubated Clark into a star, then the WNBA, a 20-year abject market failure, becomes the vehicle to continue showcasing that greatness.
Holy hell, the "experts" actually helped create something of value.
Instead, due to their dumbass flavor of the decade "ideals," let's not celebrate that and continue being antisocial weirdos.
This commercial is not the reason why Nike is crashing. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EzX0OQ8UL-U ). But it being given the green light as the big Olympic spot did evidence the level of incompetence and delusion and avoidance and internal misunderstanding of their own business they were suffering from.
So it’s unsurprising that the company is not doing great and making such obviously poor decisions.
As somebody who never liked Nike (nothing to do with politics), this is great.
Watching that commercial, the governing body with all the flags, making sure all these non-white people enjoy sports as a human right...
Look at who Donahoe's wife is, who she works with, and that organization's ideas on a radical restructuring of society from the top down. The decisions by Nike make perfect sense.
Well written article. The decisions made by Nike defy logic. Nike shareholders should be furious. Regardless of your opinions on who deserves a shoe, the role of Nike management is to create value for shareholders. What they are doing is business management malpractice.
"The idea that she “deserves” a shoe line due to merit is based on a faulty premise, given that there have been great NBA bigs whose style of play just wasn’t conducive to sales.
Even aside from the NBA examples, very few things in life work that way. And in this case, it's not even that it "should" work that way. This isn't an MVP award or rookie of the year where it would be fair to critique the selection based on accomplishments. This is marketing for shoe sales, this is "who makes me want to buy a shoe".
WNBA is a racist league, it's a group of mostly black player being resentful of the success and popularity of a white player, while being cheered on by woke journalists and leftists. Everyone is afraid to say it, but it's as simple as that.
"Is there a racial aspect to what gets popular, such as when Eminem was all the more a mainstream phenomenon on account of being a White rapper? Perhaps..." You think? Their is a thread of willful ignorance t when it comes to Ethan's coverage and work. I understand calling out the woke crowd and I think Ethan has tried but statements like this ( and having Will Cain as a guest... I cant let that go) make the truth teller angle flimsy. All that being said, I/m team CC and don't think Aja or Sabrina should have a shoe over CC.
It's going to be interesting to see what happens if Juju Watkins blows up anywhere near the same level as Clark did the next 3 years. I doubt she gets as big as Clark, but there's definitely a world where she's very famous by the time she gets to the WNBA. Will she have to wait 10 years to get a shoe deal? Nike just set a weird precedent that they're really not going to want to follow if they get another chance with Juju in a few years...
Thought this was great -- I forget if you mentioned this in this article or your podcast but I keep thinking about the point you brought up about how the whole LEAGUE could miss the Clark windfall. As you mentioned, she could get injured and this could all be over. But also, it could turn out that she's just not that great. Everyone loved her in college because she hit big deep threes. But she hasn't been that great a shooter this year. She went 5/25 when getting swept by the Sun and was outplayed from the three by Marina Mabrey (who I love but who is not getting her own shoe anytime soon). This whole thing is very fragile and and the WNBA doesn't seem to really understand that (for maybe they do and don't care because people are comfortable as they are being a subsidized can't-fail business)
Yeah, he had the PGs from about 2015-2019ish. It was a mid-range shoe that wasn't really marketed towards a premium market. I think when he signed with the Clips, the deal was quietly shelved
Hoist with their own petard. To repeat my comment on your conversation with Nate, Nike’s odious company culture that led to this set of ridiculous decisions is not an accident. Years of embracing identity politics through its marketing and internal corporate DEI policies have put it in this position. Ethan has documented some of the external choices they’ve made in marketing, while some internal decisions were covered by Bloomberg. In a 2023 report on BLM’s impact to corporate hiring showed a dramatic shift in Nike’s demographics. It is worth checking this out — evaluating the changes and ratios of particular census categories leads one to believe discriminatory practices at play for such a drastic shift in a two-year span:. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/
Bottom-line, there is no rationalization for a company to favor a Wilson release over Clark’s. As Ethan knows, you can’t make ‘fetch’ happen. As much as the managers and executives at Nike earnestly invest that Aja Wilson be a crossover star, she won’t be. Meanwhile they sideline a billion-dollar athlete to not interfere with the vain and sanctimonious pursuit. Sorry, but this is a case of “Go Woke, Go Broke”.
In an effort to increase diversity, NIKE diversity of color and sex, not diversity of opinion. NIKE has ran with a new value system in which social equity is on par with shareholder equity, if not above.
NIKE has another problem w the NBA and shoes. NBA stars aren't cool anymore. Privileged super-dorks or corporate personalities with little to no personality or authenticity don't sell shoes. ANT resonates so strongly because ANT is cool and exudes authenticity. LeBron, Durant, Curry, Tatum, Giannis are corny dudes. Hell, Kobe was super corny until his end of career media masterclass.
Just as an example...I have never once heard the name Aja Wilson (that I remember) before this podcast brought her up. I have heard Caitlin Clark's name at least 500 times.
Whereas the market used to have final say, it is now racial and gender optics that matter most. When the shoe inevitably fails, it will be blamed on media attention for cc, lack of marketing, and racism.
Many within Nike know Aja's shoe is not going to sell well, but it is more beneficial to appease optics than return profits. This is what DEI and alphabet group control of a company does to your bottom line. Decisions are made by what feels good and not value to the customer or revenue generated.
The Bloomberg article was interesting, but the overall change doesn't look very different from demographic change overall. Nike's changes were crazy though.
This shit is why I subscribe
At the beginning of the WNBA season Glassspiegel kept retweeting these insane and deranged posts from longtime WNBA media folks and they were so upset that new fans weren't Enjoying Their Game the Right Way. It was so obvious that their interest in the WNBA was about a moral cause and had nothing to do with in game performance. No double that some of that rubbed off on Nike.
It is truly crazy because far-left authoritarians should be celebrating Clark as a grand success - Title IX, the federal government forcing institutions to promote women's sports, incubated Clark into a star, then the WNBA, a 20-year abject market failure, becomes the vehicle to continue showcasing that greatness.
Holy hell, the "experts" actually helped create something of value.
Instead, due to their dumbass flavor of the decade "ideals," let's not celebrate that and continue being antisocial weirdos.
What happens when Woke becomes a religion.
This commercial is not the reason why Nike is crashing. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EzX0OQ8UL-U ). But it being given the green light as the big Olympic spot did evidence the level of incompetence and delusion and avoidance and internal misunderstanding of their own business they were suffering from.
So it’s unsurprising that the company is not doing great and making such obviously poor decisions.
As somebody who never liked Nike (nothing to do with politics), this is great.
Watching that commercial, the governing body with all the flags, making sure all these non-white people enjoy sports as a human right...
Look at who Donahoe's wife is, who she works with, and that organization's ideas on a radical restructuring of society from the top down. The decisions by Nike make perfect sense.
Well written article. The decisions made by Nike defy logic. Nike shareholders should be furious. Regardless of your opinions on who deserves a shoe, the role of Nike management is to create value for shareholders. What they are doing is business management malpractice.
"The idea that she “deserves” a shoe line due to merit is based on a faulty premise, given that there have been great NBA bigs whose style of play just wasn’t conducive to sales.
Even aside from the NBA examples, very few things in life work that way. And in this case, it's not even that it "should" work that way. This isn't an MVP award or rookie of the year where it would be fair to critique the selection based on accomplishments. This is marketing for shoe sales, this is "who makes me want to buy a shoe".
WNBA is a racist league, it's a group of mostly black player being resentful of the success and popularity of a white player, while being cheered on by woke journalists and leftists. Everyone is afraid to say it, but it's as simple as that.
"Is there a racial aspect to what gets popular, such as when Eminem was all the more a mainstream phenomenon on account of being a White rapper? Perhaps..." You think? Their is a thread of willful ignorance t when it comes to Ethan's coverage and work. I understand calling out the woke crowd and I think Ethan has tried but statements like this ( and having Will Cain as a guest... I cant let that go) make the truth teller angle flimsy. All that being said, I/m team CC and don't think Aja or Sabrina should have a shoe over CC.
It's going to be interesting to see what happens if Juju Watkins blows up anywhere near the same level as Clark did the next 3 years. I doubt she gets as big as Clark, but there's definitely a world where she's very famous by the time she gets to the WNBA. Will she have to wait 10 years to get a shoe deal? Nike just set a weird precedent that they're really not going to want to follow if they get another chance with Juju in a few years...
Yo Ethan, Jason Whitlock shouts you out on his show as a real one. Keep up the great work
And here we go, Nike has already signed Juju to an extension:
https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/41684352/sources-usc-juju-watkins-nike-reach-lucrative-extension
How much of wnba corporate leadership is composed of former players/coaches?
Could imagine many are too close To the player experience which leads to emphasizing Aja over cc
Thought this was great -- I forget if you mentioned this in this article or your podcast but I keep thinking about the point you brought up about how the whole LEAGUE could miss the Clark windfall. As you mentioned, she could get injured and this could all be over. But also, it could turn out that she's just not that great. Everyone loved her in college because she hit big deep threes. But she hasn't been that great a shooter this year. She went 5/25 when getting swept by the Sun and was outplayed from the three by Marina Mabrey (who I love but who is not getting her own shoe anytime soon). This whole thing is very fragile and and the WNBA doesn't seem to really understand that (for maybe they do and don't care because people are comfortable as they are being a subsidized can't-fail business)
apparently paul george has/had a Nike signature shoe?
Yeah, he had the PGs from about 2015-2019ish. It was a mid-range shoe that wasn't really marketed towards a premium market. I think when he signed with the Clips, the deal was quietly shelved
Sure. But LBJ has a shoe and it sells well … not really the same situation.