How Nike’s Jordan deal changed sports industry: new Ben Affleck and Matt Damon film to tell story
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are to star in a new film about the rise of Nike from upstart trainer brand to global sportswear giant.
The movie will focus on Nike’s unlikely pursuit of a contract basketball star Michael Jordan – a deal which transformed the company’s fortunes and changed the course of the industry.
Affleck will direct the film for Amazon Studios and star as Nike co-founder Phil Knight, with Damon as salesman Sonny Vaccaro, who struck the all-important Jordan contract.
The movie is the latest production to mine the appeal of legendary former Chicago Bulls star Jordan, whose final season was chronicled in popular docuseries The Last Dance.
It also reunites Affleck and Damon, who shot to wider fame as co-stars in the Oscar-winning 1997 picture Good Will Hunting.
Nike was only the third biggest trainer manufacturer when it and the tenacious Vaccaro pursued a deal with Jordan in the mid-1980s.
The ensuing agreement catapulted the US company into the big league and re-wrote the rule-book on the relationship between brands and sportspeople.
Nike’s Air Jordan label, from which the player earned a cut of sales, became an industry phenomenon and one of sports marketing’s most recognisable identities.
Today it is even used as a standalone brand in its own right, appearing instead of the Nike swoosh on the kit of French football club Paris Saint-Germain.
Nike recorded global revenues of $44.5bn (£34.2bn) last year and forecast around $50bn for 2022.
No release date has been set for the as-yet unnamed film, which does not feature Jordan himself, according to Deadline.