Mark Tran in New York Basketball
He is sport’s first $10-billion man. Michael Jordan, the basketball player, has not only built a vast personal fortune but has had a dramatic impact on his sport and sponsors.
The cumulative economic impact over his 13- year career – on ticket sales in the National Basketball Association (NBA), sales of cologne, underwear and TV ratings – totals $10-billion (R53-billion), according to Fortune magazine .
Sports endorsement has been around for ages but no one has combined sporting prowess and commerce into such a potent cocktail as 1,95m Jordan.
One reason is that he came on the scene at a time when media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch turned to sport as a way of winning huge TV audiences, paving the way for sports celebrities to become powerful marketing tools.
Jordan put Nike trainers on the map, starting with TV ads made by film director Spike Lee in the late 1980s.
Fortune estimates Jordan’s impact on Nike at R27,5-billion, half in sales and half in intangible effects on the company’s image.
It is not only Nike that has benefited. Jordan has endorsed hundreds of products including shower curtains, first-aid kits, pencil sharpeners, cake decorations, sleeping bags and biscuits.
Economist Tyler Cowen, who has studied Jordan, said: “It helps sell their product and it makes Michael Jordan more famous.”
In addition to boosting product sales, Jordan has increased TV ratings, gate receipts and sales of NBA goods since 1990, when he led the Chicago Bulls to the first of their five championships.
In a profile this week in New Yorker magazine, Jordan says of the reasons for his success: “It could easily be a matter of timing, where society was looking for something positive. It could easily be a sport that was gradually bursting out into global consciousness at a time when I was at the top.
“And then there’s the connections that I’ve had with corporate America since I started with Coca-Cola and then went to Nike . I really, really can’t give you a sufficient answer.”
NBA commissioner David Stern has his own view: “Here was a very handsome, friendly, eminently decent human being, who is the kind of person you’d like to have as a friend, and who just happens to be the most fiercely competitive athlete of his time and the best basketball player perhaps ever.”
Fortune calculates the impact on NBA attendance at R858-million and TV revenues at $365-million. Though no great shakes as an actor, Jordan can even make money starring opposite Bugs Bunny. His movie Space Jam, sharing the big screen with Warner Brothers’s animated creatures, netted R1,2-billion at the box office and R1,1-billion in video sales.
And recently, Jordan showed why he is considered such a valuable player.
With just 5,2 seconds on the clock the 35- year-old scored a dramatic pull-up jump shot, giving his team, the Chicago Bulls, their sixth NBA championship title in eight years.
Jordan began his run with just 18,5 seconds to go, drove up the centre of the court and barged Utah Jazz defender Bryon Russell out of his way to sink the clinching shot and give the Bulls a breathtaking 87-86 victory. Jordan scored 45 of his team’s points in his 103rd game of this season.
But that match could be Jordan’s swansong, no one is sure yet, and his retirement could have a devastating impact on the companies that have relied on his enormous selling power.