With deals worth "nearly" $8M, Cal Ripken Jr. is MLB's
"cleanup hitter in the endorsement game," according to Mark
Hyman of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. But after Ripken's
longevity streak, currently at 2,478 consecutive games, is
over, "will [corporate advertisers] still pay top dollar to
keep baseball's Iron Man on their teams?" Robert Madrigal,
a professor at the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the
Univ. of OR: "When the streak ends, I think he'll lose quite
a bit of equity in terms of new (deals)." Hyman reports
that a "number of" Ripken's deals expire by the year 2000,
with Starter and Nike ending at the end of '98 and Chevy,
Nabisco and Crestar Bank in '99. While Ripken doesn't have
a contingency with his sponsors regarding the streak, one
sponsor, AlliedSignal Inc., which signed Ripken to endorse
its Fram oil filters, has filmed two commercial spots with
Ripken -- one while the streak continues and one to run
after the streak is over (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 3/13).
STILL IN DEMAND: In late '95, after Ripken broke Lou
Gehrig's record, his marketing arm, The Tufton Group, "was
fielding as many as 150 requests a week from people seeking
endorsement deals." Hyman: "Although that number has
dropped to about 25 a week, Mr. Ripken remains in demand.
He mostly sticks with established companies, and
consistently shows up on lists of the most-popular company
spokesmen" (Mark Hyman, WALL STREET JOURNAL, 3/13).
