A growing number of top women athletes, including Simone Biles and former Olympians, have been choosing to strike new types of deals with smaller activewear brands instead of traditional sponsors like Nike
Alexi Pappas, a former Nike athlete who competed in the 2016 Olympic Games, who is now sponsored by Champion, in Nafplio, Greece, July 17, 2021. Smaller brands are working with athletes in different ways, like giving them equity or roles in developing products, and are paying more attention to their personal stories. (Maria Mavropoulou/The New York Times)
Athleta, the activewear brand for women and girls owned by Gap Inc., had never sponsored an athlete when it approached six-time Olympic champion sprinter Allyson Felix in 2019, shortly after she took Nike to task for its pay practices for pregnant runners.
The smaller company was interested in supporting Felix’s career, and said it would not penalize her for losing races or choosing to have more children. (Nike changed its policy for pregnant athletes after the criticism by Felix, whose contract with the company ended in 2017.) She said that she liked that Athleta was led by women and that it appreciated that she was a mother as well as an athlete.
“It’s a very pressured situation to be sponsored traditionally in track and field — it’s about numbers if you don’t perform, reductions and all of these things,†Felix, who will compete in the Tokyo Games next week, said in an interview. With Athleta, she added, “I felt like I had more value as a person and that was something I hadn’t experienced before.â€
A growing number of top women athletes, including Simone Biles and former Olympians, have been choosing to strike new types of deals with smaller activewear brands instead of traditional sponsors like Nike. Several young female runners say that smaller brands are willing to work with them in different ways, like bringing them on as employees, giving them equity or involving them in new products, and that they are paying more attention to their personal stories and Instagram accounts than their race performance.
©2019 New York Times News Service