The Wheaties Principle: How Players Market Themselves and Their Likeness

We’re back for the week four edition of my sports business blog and were continuing in being specific within the industry. This edition is all about how professional athletes market themselves, and how they earn sponsorships and advertising time with a multitude of businesses. To make this part of the business more appealing, I like to call how this process works “The Wheaties Principle.”

I call it the Wheaties Principle because one of the first major advertising campaigns for sports was the Wheaties cereal box campaign, and it was considered a very big honor to be featured on the cover of the Wheaties box. Athletes from Michael Jordan, to Steph Curry have made appearances on this infamous box, and the campaign is still running today. Although we as an audience simply just appreciate the campaign and follow who shows up on the box, I want to look deeper into the business side of advertising and sponsorship, and explain how each and every athlete gets on not only the Wheaties box, but also how they end up with all their other sponsorships and advertisement deals as well.

The advertising and sponsorship side of the sports business industry works pretty much the same as every other part of the industry in the sense that it all revolves around the money. Millions upon millions of dollars are spent in advertising for sports and numerous athletes are at the focal point of these campaigns.

As we get into the process of how this all works, it is important to know that the sports marketing side of sports business is a very broad forum. Since we as a population watch sports through so many different channels, advertisers and other marketers can pretty much do whatever they please. This creates a scenario where many athletes can get involved in this process and earn sponsorship money off the court, field, diamond, etc.

Now, the overall process of how advertising works and how sponsorships are obtained is very simple. For the big name athletes, the companies come to them for their services, and ask them to take part in their advertising campaign. Then it all comes down to negotiation between athlete, prospective company, and agent. Although you would think that the athlete would have the final say, the agent of the athlete will typically have a heavy influence in which direction the athlete decides to go. Once the agent and athlete have decided on a company, they then begin the contract negotiation that includes the length of the contract and how much the compensation will be.

Now, this seems like a very simple type of business, and it is, until you get to the money involved. The advertising industry in sports drops hundreds of millions on their athletes in order to keep them for an elongated period of time. The most lucrative deals that are made, as far as sponsorships go, are typically the sneaker contracts for basketball players.

Players like Kevin Durant, Lebron James, and Steph Curry have all signed multi-year contracts with their main sponsors (Nike and Under Armour) for hundreds of millions. Durant’s contract was the highest of the three deals, reaching a total of 300 million over a ten year period. Although sneaker deals are the most lucrative, let’s not discredit the fact that many other athletes are getting paid for sponsorships in many other areas. Many other very popular athletes have signed their own massive sponsorship deals, and have created their own fortune off the field, respectively.

One of the more popular and well known changes in the sports ad-world was the takeover of the “Head and Shoulders” campaign by Odell Beckham Jr. from Troy Polamalu. This created massive buzz in the sports business world because the former Steeler safety had spear-headed the campaign for years as his persona featured a full head of insanely long locks. This example just shows that the advertisement industry in sports does not just apply to apparel and merchandise, but however, it open to anything and everything that can be bought or donated toward.

Overall, when it comes to sponsorships and advertising deal for athletes, they pretty much get to choose what they do. However, the agent plays a big role in this decision as he looks out for the players image, but most of all the money talks. Typically in sports, the company that offers the most money to a potential client will normally win that player’s services for their brand or specific good or service. Next week I will be continuing the dive into the depths of the sports business industry by taking a look at how Agents work for athletes. Agents are a crucial part of an athlete’s team and their duties go much further than simply speaking to the press, stay tuned…