Vaccaro's Nike Revolution

A story about how Sonny Vaccaro created innovative marketing strategies to help Nike dominate basketball shoes and apparel.

"Sonny did several genius things to make Nike win. First, he created a high school all-American game called the Dapper Dan Roundball Classic. He'd invite the best players in the country to compete. Then he'd tell all the college coaches, 'If you're scouting, you need to come to this game to see all the best high school players at once.' This is how he found players like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.

Then he figured out how to get college players wearing Nike. You couldn't pay college athletes, but nobody said anything about coaches. He would go to coaches and say, 'Hey, I'm going to give you $10,000 and here's 26 pairs of shoes. Give them out. They happen to be the sizes of most of your guys. They don't have to wear them - you get the $10,000 either way, but we sure hope you would encourage them to wear these shoes.'

He went to Jim Boeheim and all the top college coaches. He turned their equipment costs into revenue and gave them free stuff. In one year, he just traveled city to city, went to campuses, made offers to coaches. He did a land grab across the country before other companies could react. Suddenly Nike was being worn by all the best college players and it was on TV.

Later, he even sued the NCAA with Ed O'Bannon, arguing they were using players' names and likenesses without compensation. He won that case, which led to today's NIL rules allowing college players to get paid."