Source: adidas kicks off Initiative to break down barriers faced by Women and Girls in Sport
Anytime there is an initiative begun by a brand, my first instinct is to discuss the marketing aspects and how it will appeal to fans of the brand as well as those who may not be interested in the brand at all. Unfortunately that’s the way my mind works. I can’t take anything at face value because after all of these years I’ve witnessed and I’ve been a part of a system that only catered to boys. In other words this isn’t an attack, but a request that adidas simply doesn’t do lip service with this new campaign because it is most certainly needed.
adidas has removed the ad they ran during the NFL game (3-10-2019)
The campaign kicked off with a narrated ad during an NFL game.
To highlight the barriers faced by women in sport and to invite the world to join the movement, adidas premiered the She Breaks Barriers film, featuring some of adidas’ most influential female and male athletes* and narrated with musician Pharrell Williams, during NBC’s Sunday Night Football. To further support, adidas released an open letter to its employees and to communities around the country. The letter called on everyone to join the effort and together, level the playing field and co-create the future of women’s sport.
I know that Pharrell is famous and seen as a sensitive voice, but this is the same dude that rapped:
Eligible bachelor, million dollar boat
That’s whiter than what’s spilling down your throatI can exercise you, this can be your Phys. Ed
Cheat on your man ma, that’s how you get ahizzead
See… this is what happens when I think of an ad by a brand. What’s even worse is that less than a month ago I wrote this post:
Like I said it really sucks that instead of celebrating an nationwide campaign that will do incredible things, I’m venting. Here is the list of what adidas is doing:
- Partner with the Global Sport Institute (GSI) at Arizona State University to identify existing barriers to sport for women, examine how to overcome the barriers and explore what equality means for women in sport across opportunity and pay. As an independent research institute, GSI will help adidas tap into existing and new original research and subject matter experts.
- A series of 6 projects in New York and Los Angeles– two of the brand’s global key cities – to co-create solutions to remove barriers for women and girls in sport at the community level. The communities will be called upon for their feedback on what programs are needed most in their community through the #creatorsunite platform.
- In 2019, adidas and Pharrell have committed to a joint initiative dedicated to removing barriers to sport for young women. The program will be designed with insights and feedback from the Global Sport Institute and the engagement from the public following the campaign to ensure maximum impact.
- Sponsorship of the Women’s National Football Conference (WNFC) supporting women playing, coaching and the development of professional women’s football.
- Partnership with Jen Welter, the first female NFL coach, to co-host girls’ flag football camps across the US in 2019 and explore ways to increase access to the sport for young girls.
- Engage in a three-part dialogue with students at Texas A&M to uncover the barriers to sport that exist for women on campus, discuss potential solutions for how adidas can help to remove these barriers and create change by funding initiatives on campus that continue to evolve the future of sport for women in College Station.
- adidas will be a national partner of Girls on the Run through 2021, elevating the brand’s commitment to break barriers to sport for women and girls by inspiring them to boldly pursue their dreams through the power of sport. adidas and Girls on the Run together will increase the opportunities girls have to reach their fullest potential through various touchpoints including by providing apparel and footwear, co-hosting 5K events across the US and more.
adidas is doing a good thing and I shouldn’t complain, but if I don’t write this then where is the watchdog? On YouTube there are comments, but those comments are horrible and they do very little to keep the brand honest. There have to be watchdogs in place to remind the public that the brand should be doing X, Y, and Z.
When I ran Center Court Basketball I sent over 100 guys to college on basketball scholarships. From 2004 to 2010, some players graduated in 2012, 100 guys… not.a.single.girl. As a matter of fact during all of that time I only covered two girls and that was towards the end when one of my students asked if I could come to her track and field event. When I went to the event I videotaped her race and created her a webpage. Center Court Basketball had been changed to CCB Sports Network, but I was transitioning to sneakers full time and I was moving away from grassroots completely.
I consider myself one of the most vocal people in support of the WNBA. Search this site and you find articles on the topic. I actually have a post on why the WNBA is falling short. I probably won’t post it because some of it is problematic, but at the root of the article is one simple fact about why girls don’t continue to pursue sports:
Women’s Sports Are Not Aspirational and That Is The Problem
adidas’ new campaign actually discusses this, but in my opinion the entire campaign has already failed. adidas doesn’t need to spend 100K on a Pharrell narrated video and another 1 – 5 million on the initiatives. Well, actually they do and that’s a start. If adidas wanted to get more girls playing sports – hold on, I wrote this and it’s long, but you will get the point. It’s about the WNBA, but the W is a microcosm for all of women’s sports:
The league is not aspirational. I’ve made the argument that paying the women will solve a lot of the problems with media and interest. I was told that it isn’t that simple to which I replied, “Yes, it is.” Why? This is a nation of people who aspire to be rich. You have entire industries of motivational speakers who in reality are repeating the same things over and over and people are buying their books and buying their merchandise all in the hope that they will go viral, or be rich. TMZ is one of the biggest media companies because they talk about famous people who may not be rich, but they are assumed to be. In the sneaker world kids watch millions of YouTube shows of dudes buying sneakers. People literally watch dudes buy kicks because they want to buy lots of kicks. We love rich people. Rich gets dummies into the White House. I mean if you’re rich you can sing songs and rape underage women and folks will still play your music and go to your concerts (R. Kelly), or watch your films (Not so much thanks to #MeToo), or support your endeavors… okay I’m getting extreme, but my point is we live in an aspirational culture. We want to be rich. There is a reason so many boys compete for spots on high school basketball teams. They want to be rich. There is a reason why men will watch other men play basketball, they want to be the men who are playing the game. Guys want the women the NBA players date. They want the cars and the jewelry and the lifestyle. Men want to be LeBron, women want to be with LeBron.
To a lesser extent men want to be sportscasters because of Stu Scott (RIP). Men want to have legendary sportscaster careers like Bob Costas and host sports shows like Bryant Gumbel. People know that those guys made lots of money talking sports. In other words they got paid and people paid attention because that’s just what we do when fame and money are involved. Now let’s go back and do this same discussion for the NFL and you get the same result. The dudes are rich, they are on tv all of the time, they drive fly cars and have beautiful wives. Men want to be NFL players and women want to be with NFL players. The same goes for Major League Baseball. A Rod dates J Lo… J Lo.
We see the shows of sports wives and the lifestyle is aspirational. Even when the shows are ignorant. Everything about men’s sports is aspirational.
Not so much for women’s sports. Quick, name a woman sportscaster? Name a woman sportscaster who is not a sideline reporter? I obviously can’t see you since this is a post, but you’re Googling right now. In the history of sports if there is an epic, memorable moment tied to a sport, the call was done by a man.
Women have been held out of sports at every level and therefore the sports industry is not aspirational for women. This doesn’t mean that it’s not worthwhile, but it does mean that without an infusion of cash the women’s sportsworld won’t ever become an aspirational life for girls and this means that the WNBA and other women’s sports will remain difficult to grow financially. This is where some dude comes in and does what I would do, you can’t throw money at a problem and fix it… BULLSHIT (Yep I cursed here because it’s bullshit). I wrote a book called F–k Speeches & Inspiration: Where Do I Get The Money To Start?. I wrote the book because I got tired of seeing motivational speakers sell people half truths and I got tired of reading books that didn’t tell me how to get money. I also wrote it because I understand how hard it is to get anyone’s attention if you don’t have any money. Money is the equalizer and it is a fast road to finding solutions. When you have funds you can try different strategies and those tactics typically lead to some form of a breakthrough. Money fixes shit.
Sorry about the cursing, but money really does solve problems. The question is how do you pay the ladies without getting a return on investment? That’s what someone is saying right now. Well, when a person who flips houses buys a house, how do they know it will sell? When a car dealer buys 20 cars, how does he know those will sell? When you wake up in the morning and go to work, how do you know your boss has the money to pay you after 40 hours? You don’t!!!!!
Someone has to step up and make the investment because the WNBA is never going to make any money if the money isn’t poured into the most important aspect of the game, the women!!!!!! Think about it like this, if your daughter heard Candace Parker’s contract is worth 1 Million a year and Candace does a video of her sneaker closet and garage with a couple of fly rides, what will happen tomorrow? Your daughter is going to be like, “Take me to the gym.” Don’t believe me? Serena Williams is severely underpaid compared to her male counterparts, but she is PAID. What’s happened to the women’s game in tennis? You have Sloane Stephens, Madison Keys, Cori Gauff (a 14 year old phenom). Girl’s are trying to become the next Serena. Why? Serena has clothing lines. Serena shows up in Beyonce videos. Serena married a billionaire (okay bad example, but not really). Tennis has become aspirational for a generation of girls. That’s because there is money there. Someone has to invest the money and time and whatever it is has more potential to grow.
Gaming is a great example. While people argue that eSports earned its way to a following, the first eSports tournaments and leagues were born of the companies that created the product. Nintendo created leagues in the 90s. That’s investment. The rise of gaming was not because some kids jumped online. There was heavy investment and there continues to be and none of the current investments have a return coming any time soon. Michael Jordan just invested into eSports, “The basketball Hall of Famer and owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets is joining an investor group putting $26 million into AXiomatic Gaming” (Bloomberg). He’s not going to see any of that money back immediately. Yet people want to argue that dropping 26 Million into the salary of WNBA players will bankrupt the league and there won’t be a return on the money. FOH!!! Think about it, there are 12 WNBA teams with 15 roster spots, that’s 180 players. A 26 Million dollar investment would be $144,444 per year for every player. No WNBA player would have to go overseas to afford a living. Now take the average attendance of 7000 per game for 34 games. That’s 238,000 people per season. Season ticket price is 5 bucks a game at the lowest level. For an entire season at 5 bucks per game a team earns 1,190,000 bucks x 12 teams = 14,280,000.
That places the WNBA at – 11,720,000
The league signed a deal with ESPN at 12 Million a year. This means on ticket revenue and the television deal the league is at 23,700,000 a year.
Add in revenues from concessions and merchandise, the league can operate at break even with a 26 Million dollar investment. On the surface this looks like it could never be profitable, but when you take a beat to think about it, I established this entire summary on the same investment that MJ poured into an eSports venture. I didn’t look at potential social media advertising revenue, team sponsorships (jersey deals are 1 million a year. That’s an additional 12 Million a year which places the league at a profit), licensing deals or any of the additional things that could come into play. At 5 bucks per game, the television contract, and jersey sponsorships the league could turn a profit on a 26 Million dollar investment into player salaries. The additional revenue creates an additional chance for an investor to turn a profit at the lowest ticket price.
I’m not a math guru, but you get the picture.
Conclusion
The above is only a part of the post I’ve been working on, but it gets to core of what I’m saying about adidas. Tomorrow adidas could launch a media company on YouTube for women’s track and field athletes. All runners in the 10 week league earn a salary of 80,000 a year. The top three women earn an additional 250,000 bonus. adidas can sell advertising to recoup their initial investment and advertising rights to the championship event for the track and field tournament.
adidas could stop right now and pull all of the American women basketball players back to the country to add another show to their media channel on YouTube discussing health and fitness with workouts teaching women how to become more physically fit. They could pay those athletes 50,000 to operate the YouTube channel. As the views for the channel increase they recoup their investment and the women on the channel become aspirational.
What I’ve basically taken a long time to write is that if adidas has an advertising brand of 5 Billion a year they could make a decision to make all of their women athletes small independent media companies or build off-season media opportunities around the ladies for what they probably gave Yeezy as an endorser. Imagine, adidas could pay endorsers, give signature shoes and save sports by paying the ladies. Guess what? Once you pay the first lady, other brands have to step up and then everyone else follows suit.
Don’t think so? Fork out the money and see 🙂