This post derived from the original discussion on new tech from adidas and Under Armour basketball divisions:
Buy my books on the sneaker industry: https://amzn.to/3lD82gb
There are a couple of statements in this video and I end it with an Uh… Okay from Fila.
The first statement addresses why Under Armour didn’t need to maintain its relationship with UCLA. I fail to dive into the fact that Etop Udo Ema is the man in Los Angeles and that adidas has a stronghold on the region for basketball, but Nike is deeply embedded in the region as well with LeBron moving there and with the legendary Oakland Soldiers team and upstarts Team Whynot and The Truth.
The article on Under Armour goes into greater detail than I did in this video:
Under Armour Breaking Up With UCLA is Emblematic of a Broken Marketing Machine
The second part of this video goes into why Basketball Shoes are still important although sales are declining. The most important discussion I left out for this topic is the professionalization of youth sports in North America. I do jump into the fact that Tencent paid 1.5 Billion for the rights to the NBA in China. Basketball in the U.S. is a marketing tool that functions as a loss leader:
Tencent renews partnership with NBA to stream games in China — Quartz (qz.com)
The final aspect of the video is the #upthebeat challenge for Fila: https://fila.newsmarket.com/latest-news/all/fila-usa-casts-its-community-to–upthebeat-and-end-the-year-on-a-high-note/s/25e5d3ba-01b2-4a11-9065-948b7c613e74
