(Eileen Blass-USA TODAY Sports)
The "student-athletes" enslaved playing in this year's NCAA Tournament aren't the only ones going to war – the shoe companies are too. With the tourney being the biggest sporting event in North America outside of the Super Bowl, March Madness is a big deal to advertisers. But while the winners and losers on the court are pretty easy to determine, in the boardroom it's less clear.
Luckily I came across a couple of cool articles that help clear up the issue of the winner (so far) of the shoe wars. Sports Business Daily lists each team in the NCAA Tournament's shoe and jersey sponsor, and Forbes has an estimate of how much, in monetary terms, each game played in the tournament is worth to that team's respective sponsor. Here's a breakdown of how much each sponsor has "earned" so far in the tournament (I've included Jordan Brand with Nike's total, and for the schools that have a different sponsors for their jerseys than their shoes, I've split the amount earned in half for each sponsor):
Nike: $103,923,750
adidas: $20,597,500
Under Armour: $7,864,500
Russell Athletic: $2,434,250
No surprise that the swoosh is the big winner so far – Nike had their logo on 52 of the teams in this year's tournament. And of the Sweet Sixteen teams that will be playing later this week, 11 of them are Nike teams. But all is not lost for adidas, as they have four teams left in play, with three of them legit title contenders – Kansas, Louisville, and Indiana. And as each round goes on, the more value it carries for the team's sponsor. Nike won the battle, but the war isn't over yet.
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