Yeah, if somebody most of us have never heard of (Eileen Gu) is makin $23M per year in endorsements, you would think Caitlin would be making much more than that.
Caitlin Clark's sponsorship deals before entering the WNBA
- Thread starter Franisdaman
- Start date
Yeah, if somebody most of us have never heard of (Eileen Gu) is makin $23M per year in endorsements, you would think Caitlin would be making much more than that.
The 4 year timeline of Caitlin's Nike partnership:
Oct 10, 2022: Caitlin's initial NIL partnership with Nike started.
Apr 23, 2024: Caitlin signed an 8-year endorsement deal with Nike worth a reported $28 million. This contract, one of the most lucrative in women's basketball history, included a signature shoe and apparel collection.
Sep 29, 2026: Caitlin's debut signature Nike sneaker, the Nike Caitlin 1, is expected to launch, with broader releases during the 2026 holiday season. The shoe will feature a full-size run, including adult ($140), grade school ($115), and preschool ($105) sizes.
Oct 10, 2022: Caitlin's initial NIL partnership with Nike started.
Apr 23, 2024: Caitlin signed an 8-year endorsement deal with Nike worth a reported $28 million. This contract, one of the most lucrative in women's basketball history, included a signature shoe and apparel collection.
Sep 29, 2026: Caitlin's debut signature Nike sneaker, the Nike Caitlin 1, is expected to launch, with broader releases during the 2026 holiday season. The shoe will feature a full-size run, including adult ($140), grade school ($115), and preschool ($105) sizes.
Nike has snoozed when it comes to getting out the Caitlin signature shoe.
You snooze, you lose.
From the linked story:
Nike’s all-time high stock closing price was $177.51 on Nov 5, 2021.
From that peak to Friday, May 15’s low of around $42.00, the stock has fallen over 75% — an extraordinary destruction of shareholder value for one of the most iconic brands in the world.
The 5-year return on Nike stock is -69% — meaning investors who bought 5 years ago have lost two-thirds of their money.
When veteran company man Elliott Hill was named CEO in October 2024, he was seen as “the chosen one” by the investment community, a well-regarded longtime Nike C-suite leader with deep ties to its culture. If anyone was going to jump-start Nike, it was supposed to be Hill.
It hasn’t happened yet for numerous reasons, including brutal competition from rivals making better running sneakers and cost pressures from tariffs and transportation. All of this despite Hill’s deep restructuring of Nike to free up costs and decision making.
One has to wonder how much more rope Hill will get here, especially with the founding Nike family, the Knights, still on the board.
The full story:
finance.yahoo.com
You snooze, you lose.
From the linked story:
Nike’s all-time high stock closing price was $177.51 on Nov 5, 2021.
From that peak to Friday, May 15’s low of around $42.00, the stock has fallen over 75% — an extraordinary destruction of shareholder value for one of the most iconic brands in the world.
The 5-year return on Nike stock is -69% — meaning investors who bought 5 years ago have lost two-thirds of their money.
When veteran company man Elliott Hill was named CEO in October 2024, he was seen as “the chosen one” by the investment community, a well-regarded longtime Nike C-suite leader with deep ties to its culture. If anyone was going to jump-start Nike, it was supposed to be Hill.
It hasn’t happened yet for numerous reasons, including brutal competition from rivals making better running sneakers and cost pressures from tariffs and transportation. All of this despite Hill’s deep restructuring of Nike to free up costs and decision making.
One has to wonder how much more rope Hill will get here, especially with the founding Nike family, the Knights, still on the board.
The full story:
LeBron James was on the Cleveland Cavaliers the last time Nike stock traded at these lows
Nike's stock slide presses on.
finance.yahoo.com
full text of the tweet:
Passing LeBron, Luka, and Wemby in jersey sales truly sounds unreal
But that's exactly what Caitlin Clark has been doing since her WNBA debut.
The latest data shows that the No. 2 spot for the top-selling basketball jerseys since 2024 does NOT belong to an NBA superstar. It belongs to CC and the WNBA.
Here is the official Top 5:
#1: Steph Curry
#2: Caitlin Clark
#3: LeBron James
#4: Luka Doncic
#5: Victor Wembanyama
Think about the sheer gravity of the names she just cleared. We’re talking about a global icon with over two decades of branding, a superstar with an entire continent behind him, and a generational phenom. The Caitlin Clark effect is real
Passing LeBron, Luka, and Wemby in jersey sales truly sounds unreal
But that's exactly what Caitlin Clark has been doing since her WNBA debut.
The latest data shows that the No. 2 spot for the top-selling basketball jerseys since 2024 does NOT belong to an NBA superstar. It belongs to CC and the WNBA.
Here is the official Top 5:
#1: Steph Curry
#2: Caitlin Clark
#3: LeBron James
#4: Luka Doncic
#5: Victor Wembanyama
Think about the sheer gravity of the names she just cleared. We’re talking about a global icon with over two decades of branding, a superstar with an entire continent behind him, and a generational phenom. The Caitlin Clark effect is real
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Three gold medals and three silver medals to go with that in freestyle skiing.
I wonder how many buyers scooped them up for resale? I think this is one of the shoes she's been wearing just in a different color...
Amazing how the NBA players are gobbling up anything they come out with for her.....
They really are idiots.
And, if I were a gambling man, I would put my money on Nike not being prepared for demand and will sell out within a week.
There's no way they get it right.
And, if I were a gambling man, I would put my money on Nike not being prepared for demand and will sell out within a week.
There's no way they get it right.
Amazing, these idiots.
"While Nike remains the world's largest athletic apparel company, revenue fell $5.1 billion, or nearly 10%, in fiscal year 2025. (No. 2 Adidas was up 13.3%.) The company has laid off about 2,000 employees since January alone."
Wetzel: Caitlin Clark's shoe is here. What took Nike so long?
The Caitlin 1 is expected to be successful. Still, one question persists: What the heck took Nike so long?
www.espn.com
Amazing, these idiots.
"While Nike remains the world's largest athletic apparel company, revenue fell $5.1 billion, or nearly 10%, in fiscal year 2025. (No. 2 Adidas was up 13.3%.) The company has laid off about 2,000 employees since January alone."
Wetzel: Caitlin Clark's shoe is here. What took Nike so long?
The Caitlin 1 is expected to be successful. Still, one question persists: What the heck took Nike so long?
It really does make you wonder why it took Nike 4 years to come out with a Caitlin signature shoe.
Was it all because of political correctness and of fear of being labeled racist?
Certainly has created much speculation. Could be that Aja Wilson became a priority in the early stages of Clark's contract. And, if that was the case (and I'm not definitively saying it was), they gambled on recognizing a long time WNBA star as opposed to going all in on a rising superstar who has generated more cash, more popularity in the women's game, and more media exposure the world has ever seen in the sport. Whatever the case, NIKE is still the leader in sports merchandising, though their "Bottom Line" has taken a significant hit.
And people are realizing that there are cool looking, much more comfortable shoes than Nike.
One big example of Nike shoes not being comfortable: when Carlos Correa was with the Minnesota Twins, he missed 76 games in 2024 with foot problems (persistent plantar fasciitis and foot discomfort). The Twins blamed the Nike shoe. The big issue? Carlos had an endorsement deal with Nike and had to wear a Nike cleat.
In 2024, the Twins paid him $36,100,000. He only played in 86 of the 162 games (the Twins went 82-80 and missed the playoffs).
From the linked article from 2024:
"There still is discomfort when he runs in a straight line," Twins insider Darren Wolfson said Tuesday on Minnesota Sports with Mackey & Judd on SKOR North. "They still can't figure this thing out. There's a sponsorship to his shoe, right? He gets paid a lot of money, he's a Nike guy, right? Still trying to figure out the shoe. You can't make it up, seriously."
"You would think Nike could come up with a shoe, but as of the other day they were still trying to figure out this shoe situation," Wolfson continued. "It's sort of a wait and see, but there's been a good amount of frustration behind the scenes."
It's gotta be the shoes? Cleat issue may be delaying Correa's return
Plus, Joe Ryan seeks a second opinion and Byron Buxton gets a cortisone shot.
www.si.com
Amazing, these idiots.
"While Nike remains the world's largest athletic apparel company, revenue fell $5.1 billion, or nearly 10%, in fiscal year 2025. (No. 2 Adidas was up 13.3%.) The company has laid off about 2,000 employees since January alone."
Wetzel: Caitlin Clark's shoe is here. What took Nike so long?
The Caitlin 1 is expected to be successful. Still, one question persists: What the heck took Nike so long?
Some more excerpts:
For more than 3½ years, though, Nike has mostly kept Clark on the shelf, even as she developed into one of the most popular and marketable athletes in the country.
There was just a single, national standalone Nike commercial -- her "From Anywhere" campaign -- and no signature shoes or apparel, apart from a few T-shirts and pullovers. Branding efforts were minimal, with relatively few promotional efforts or in-store signage to pair Clark to the swoosh. She even received sparse treatment on both the Nike and Nike Basketball social media accounts -- prior to the shoe release, just three posts in 2026, two on X and another on TikTok of a January visit to Nike headquarters.
This from a company that built itself by relentlessly marketing star athletes -- especially in basketball.
"It is one of the biggest failures I've ever seen," says Sonny Vaccaro, the now 86-year-old retired longtime sneaker executive who most famously signed Michael Jordan to Nike in 1984, setting the company's strategy for building off the megastars the public knows by one name -- Kobe, LeBron, Serena, Tiger, Ronaldo, and so on.
"She was bigger [than Jordan] in some ways because she was a known commodity when she entered the WNBA," Vaccaro says of Clark. "The public had grabbed onto her like no one else. She is more than just a basketball player. It makes no sense."
My youngest son had the same issue in high school/college basketball and switched to an Adidas shoe and never had another issue. Hopefully all the "extra engineering" they supposedly put into her shoe will make a difference.And people are realizing that there are cool looking, much more comfortable shoes than Nike.
One big example of Nike shoes not being comfortable: when Carlos Correa was with the Minnesota Twins, he missed 76 games in 2024 with foot problems (persistent plantar fasciitis and foot discomfort). The Twins blamed the Nike shoe. The big issue? Carlos had an endorsement deal with Nike and had to wear a Nike cleat.
In 2024, the Twins paid him $36,100,000. He only played in 86 of the 162 games (the Twins went 82-80 and missed the playoffs).
From the linked article from 2024:
"There still is discomfort when he runs in a straight line," Twins insider Darren Wolfson said Tuesday on Minnesota Sports with Mackey & Judd on SKOR North. "They still can't figure this thing out. There's a sponsorship to his shoe, right? He gets paid a lot of money, he's a Nike guy, right? Still trying to figure out the shoe. You can't make it up, seriously."
"You would think Nike could come up with a shoe, but as of the other day they were still trying to figure out this shoe situation," Wolfson continued. "It's sort of a wait and see, but there's been a good amount of frustration behind the scenes."
It's gotta be the shoes? Cleat issue may be delaying Correa's return
Plus, Joe Ryan seeks a second opinion and Byron Buxton gets a cortisone shot.
It actually looks just like an older pair of Nikes I have (without the raised "C's" of course......