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A crowd greets Muhammad Ali as he helps launch Adidas’ "Impossible Is Nothing" ad campaign in 2004.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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After what many called the most far-reaching memorial since Princess Diana’s two decades ago, or perhaps even JFK’s more than 50 years prior, there was little skepticism that Muhammad Ali’s name and celebrity will be as indelible as anyone’s.
As the stately service concluded, thoughts turned to Ali’s legacy, both as an athlete and a man, and whether anyone could rival his notoriety and reputation inside or outside of sports.
“Here was a longtime champion who stood for so much more than sports,” said Doug Shabelman, president of Burns Entertainment & Sports Marketing. “If LeBron [James] or [Tom] Brady ever really get hard into politics, would they have the same impact? I don’t think so. Social media and the internet means everything and everybody is so much more fleeting now, and there is no cause as big as the [Vietnam] War was then.”
One of sports’ most consistent and appealing themes is the joy of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds. After achieving that both in the boxing ring as a three-time heavyweight champion and in the Supreme Court case that affirmed his right to avoid military service as a consciousness objector, Ali ultimately did so again in the court of public opinion. He transformed himself through the years from a man seen as divisive at an exceptionally polarized time, to someone deemed worthy of lighting the Olympic flame and a man familiar with world leaders.
“Being around him, you found out quickly that Ali probably had more connections in higher places than anyone on the planet,” said Joe Flannery, former vice president and global general manager of Adidas’ Originals Division, who signed Ali to an equipment and endorsement deal in the mid-1990s, which included a lead role in Adidas’ 2004 “Impossible Is Nothing” brand campaign.
Ali’s inner circle included “heads of state, religious and political leaders, and once they find out you were in that Ali inner circle, all pretenses were dropped,” said Flannery, now general manager of outdoor apparel and equipment brand Marmot, who attended the services last week in Louisville, Ky.
Asked for comparisons, industry types cited Jackie Robinson and Jim Brown. Neither were as polarizing, nor did they have Ali’s global celebrity, but all three used the usually apolitical platform of sports to advance their causes.
“I can see parallels with Ali to Nelson Mandela,” said Phil de Picciotto, Octagon founder and president. “They both went from being polarizing to becoming beloved and great connectors of humanity.”
Ali’s name will forever be linked with some of the most divisive issues of the 1960s, including the rise of the black power and anti-war movements. He was a model for a generation of outspoken athletes, and rode a potent and unprecedented mix of TV and sports to global renown the equal of a U.S. president, Mother Teresa or a pop star with the magnitude of Michael Jackson.
“Ali will have more acceptance now than in his own lifetime,” said Barry Frank, a 40-plus-year IMG veteran, who represented “The Greatest” during separate stints in the 1960s and ’70s. “He’s being remembered as a statesman in his own right.”
Just after his death, it seemed everyone in the sports industry had an Ali story. As those anecdotes started disappearing from Facebook last week and the eulogies subsided, the question of Ali’s enduring commercial appeal was raised. If Chuck Taylor, an otherwise obscure shoe salesman from the 1920s and ’30s, can still have his name on millions of Converse sneakers sold by Nike annually, what’s the commercial future for one of the most famous and revered names on the planet in Muhammad Ali?
Agent David Falk, who engineered much of Michael Jordan’s marketing success, noted that Ali’s last fight was 35 years ago “and we’re still talking about him.”
“A guy who made his living doing something as violent as boxing became an enduring symbol of pacifism,” Falk said. “There will always be a market for that.”
Ali’s lengthy list of TV commercials includes pitches for Pizza Hut, Dr Pepper and D-Con roach killer. Brands seeking to borrow some of his iconoclastic style have used him in brand anthems, like Porsche and Apple, which featured Ali on its website last week. Commercially, those sorts of efforts should be Ali’s most enduring legacy.
“Ali’s so well-known globally, I don’t think his window as a corporate icon is over,” Falk said. “Think about companies that want to show that they are different or that they bring people together. He’s so popular, you also wonder if he’s not the man who could be a unifying force between Muslims and the West.”
As for straight product licensing, there was a fair amount of skepticism across the industry.
“Ali stood for much more than any athlete ever has,” said former Modell’s Sporting Goods President Seth Horowitz, who had the same title at Everlast. “But kids today move so quickly through celebrities, so it is difficult for any athlete past his prime to endure commercially.”
Michael Stone, chairman of New York licensing agency The Beanstalk Group, was another who didn’t see a big future in Ali-branded product. “There is this amazing affection for him,” said Stone, whose agency handles licensing for the likes of Procter & Gamble and AT&T, “but I don’t believe consumers are going to be interested in buying stuff with his name on it in great numbers.”
Authentic Brands Group CEO Jamie Salter, whose company owns a majority of the rights to Ali’s intellectual property, argued that the reach and coverage of last week’s funeral and memorial service was a game changer.
“The younger generation is now going to remember Muhammad Ali,” Salter said. “Over the past week or so, the age demographic that knows and admired him has gone down to 5- and 6-year-olds.”
Last week, Under Armour’s website said its Ali apparel collection was sold out. On the memorabilia side, where a signed Ali photo or glove easily commands $2,000 and up, demand was also spiking. Ali was easily the top seller on Fanaticsauthentic.com.
“We’ve sold more [Ali memorabilia] in the last week than we have sold in the past year,” said Victor Shaffer, executive vice president of Fanatics Authentic, which also operates the e-commerce store Ali.com, which was offering 20 percent discounts and free shipping with every $50 purchase on the day of the funeral last week. “Baseball has so much history that it’s got the most cachet with collectors for signed merchandise. Ali is one of very few whose prices can stand up to baseball immortals like Ruth, Mantle and Williams. We’re going to see a spike for a while and then ongoing demand for Ali.”
Memorabilia king Brandon Steiner has 30 years of history and business with Ali, including having “The Champ” under an exclusive memorabilia contract in the early 2000s. Still, Steiner was not as sanguine about the continued potential for Ali memorabilia.
“There will always be a [memorabilia] market for someone as well known as Ali, but he signed a lot, he was a server, and he loved people, so there’s still a lot of inventory out there,” Steiner said.
Salter said ABG will have the final word.
“We have the biggest collection and we are the estate,” he said, “so in terms of authentication I would advise people to go to Ali.com.”
