From Ben Roethlisberger to Tiger Woods: Why Nike Didn't Flee

April 15, 2010 — -- One disgraced sports star. Two corporate sponsors. Two rather different reactions.

Days after Tiger Woods' much-dissected Nike commercial hit the airwaves, the scandals tainting NFL star Ben Roethlisberger have shined another spotlight on the inconsistent nature of the sports endorsement business.

Roethlisberger this week lost his contract with food marketing company PLB Sports but retained the support of Nike. In recent months, Woods' own scandals cost him several big-name sponsorships but he managed to hang on to deals with Nike, EA Sports and Upper Deck.

Sports and marketing experts say that, sometimes, the difference between keeping and losing a sponsorship depends less on an athlete's behavior than on a corporation's marketing strategy. In the sporting goods industry, athletic achievements can overshadow off-the-field adversity.

"The standard by which the industry judges an athlete has much more to do with their performance than their personal qualities," said Matt Powell, an analyst with research firm Sports One Source.

Nike, for instance, has a history of sticking by superstar athletes despite unseemly headlines -- in addition to golf champion Woods and two-time Super Bowl winner Roethlisberger, Nike maintained its relationship with Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant after a rape allegation surfaced against the NBA star in 2003. (The case was later dropped.)

Standing by a disgraced athlete is a gamble, but "Nike has the ability to have a long-term investment in these athletes -- they can wait out the storm, stomach the volatility," said Boyce Watkins, a faculty affiliate at the College Sport Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "They felt that these guys were eventually going to get back to the top and they were ultimately correct."

Sports One Source studied Nike golf products and found that in the 13 weeks before Woods' scandal broke and in the 13 weeks after, sales remained constant, Powell said.

"It's pretty clear that Tiger's problems have not had an impact on Nike's business in retail," Powell said.

In recent years, it seems, only Michael Vick's behavior has proven offensive enough to warrant a deal-breaker with Nike. In 2007, Nike ended its contract with the then-Atlanta Falcons quarterback after he pleaded guilty to felony charges for running a dogfighting ring.

"(W)e consider any cruelty to animals inhumane, abhorrent and unacceptable," the company said in 2007.