By Smitha Das and Santhosh Ramdoss
This year’s Ben Affleck and Matt Damon movie, Air, is a classic story of American enterprise. It features people and organizations once on the margins but now central to our pop culture narrative: Nike in its early days; marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, ever on the sidelines of the court; and an upstart player named Michael Jordan, who was just launching his NBA career.
By the movie’s end — and in real life — wealth has flourished: for shareholders, for executives and for Michael Jordan and his family.
But here’s a puzzle: Why Jordan, and not many others? He is not the first basketball star to receive a massive sneaker sponsorship, nor the first to sign a player-driven product marketing deal. Yet, the success of the Air Jordan made Michael Jordan one of the richest athletes in the history of the sport and changed the economic trajectory of the Jordan family. What was different about the Air Jordan story?
One word: Ownership. In his deal with Nike, Jordan gets 5% of the earnings from Jordan Brand, netting him more than $1 billion.