Maraú Península: Michael Jordan’s Advertising Empire

Sunday, February 5

Michael Jordan’s Advertising Empire

An illustration of Michael Jordan tying a tie while wearing a yellow suit

Net Worth

How the greatest player in the history of basketball became the greatest brand in the history of sports.

Barring surprises, the N.B.A. superstar LeBron James will further cement his place in basketball history this week by surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the league’s all-time highest scorer. In 1998, The New Yorker published a profile of another member of the pantheon: Michael Jordan, who at the time was indisputably the best player alive. Equally notable to the writer—the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.—was Jordan’s growing empire as a corporate pitchman, which had become a passion of its own. “The man’s grandeur on the court—the dunks, the jump shots, the steals, the midair acrobatics—has tended to obscure another historic achievement,” Gates observed. “As a twentieth-century sports hero, he has plausible competition from Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali; as an agent of brand equity, he is without peer.” The ensuing article captures the drive and personality that enabled Jordan’s dual successes; it also shares a remarkable (but still only partial) list of all the products that Jordan managed to promote, his reason for not endorsing a condom brand, and his logic for resisting pressure to make a shoe commercial with Oliver Stone.

Jordan, who will turn sixty later this month, remains one of the most recognizable athletes in the world. James, two years younger now than Jordan was at his retirement, seems likely to follow a similar path.

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