There are a few marriages between athletes and sports brands that we don’t fathom ending beyond our wildest dreams. On such was was between Nike and golfing legend Tiger Woods. Earlier, in January ‌2024, the golfing legend shocked the world by announcing the end of his partnership with Nike. 

However, shortly after, a surprising link between Michael Jordan and Woods through their partnership with the sports giant gained attention. According to Campaign Asia, Jordan’s Nike deal played a big part in shaping Tiger’s deal. Here’s how. 

It has been 12 years since Jordan signed a leviathan deal with Nike when the brand signed Woods. Jordan had become a larger-than-life athlete who would eventually take Nike to heights unimaginable.

The brand was then looking for yet another name that possessed Jordanesque charisma. An athlete who would shoulder the entertainment of an entire sports empire to help Nike dominate it. That’s when they found Tiger Woods. 

In 1996, Woods won his third straight US Amateur. Shortly after, he announced that he was dropping out of Stanford and going pro. Remember Jordan’s message in 1995, when he came out of retirement for the first time? “I’m back,” his message read. Tiger announced his decision to go pro in a similar way. “Hello, world,” Woods said in his message.

Nike immediately signed Woods and modeled after Michael Jordan’s lifetime deal with the brand. Tiger helped Nike come to the forefront of golf as it expanded into other sports and diversified its product line. 

The result was similar. With Tiger rocking Nike gear, the brand dominated the sport. Like Jordan, Woods became synonymous with Nike, which began releasing golf shoes and other products that found unprecedented success with Woods as its face. 

How did Tiger Woods and Nike's partnership fall apart?

Woods signed a deal with Nike when he was just 20 years old. During that time, the total worth of the deal was reported to be $500 million over its lifetime. However, while Woods’ announcement came as a big shock to fans, a deeper look made sense of it. 

When Woods' announcement two years ago, The Guardian reported that Nike was looking to cut $2 billion in the upcoming years by scaling down its investment in sports. The process began in 2016, when Nike stopped making golf equipment.

Moreover, after 2019, Woods had not won anything major in his career. After an almost fatal car crash in 2021 that left him with “rods and plates and screws,” Woods was absent as the face of the sport. In 2022, he showed up in FootJoy shoes rather than Nike shoes because of the accident.

Woods’ slow decline in golf could certainly be a factor behind the end of the deal with Nike. But it could also signal the end of an era of lifetime deals between athletes and the brand.

Read more at the Air Jordan Chronicles!

Written by

Nandjee Ranjan

Edited by

Siddharth Rawat