What is Sebastian Coe’s relationship with Nike?
Coe signed his first endorsement deal with Nike in 1978 and, barring a short period when he switched to the Italian company Diadora towards the end of his track career, has had a relationship with the US giant ever since. But he only signed his latest contract, to be a global ambassador for its anti-obesity foundation Designed to Move, in 2012. The fee, understood to be worth around £100,000 a year, is paid through CSM, the sports marketing company he chairs. But the newly elected IAAF president has links and informal relationships with other Nike executives stretching back decades.
What is Designed to Move?
Launched in the UK with a reception at the House of Commons in 2012, the Nike project is designed to combat childhood obesity. Paula Radcliffe, another longstanding Nike athlete, is also involved.
Why could the relationship be perceived as a conflict of interest?
Nike has wide-ranging and controversial links with athletics, to the extent where it can sometimes seem as if the sport is endorsing the brand rather than the other way round. The company has been embroiled in recent controversies over doping allegations levelled at its Project Oregon training base and its lead coach, Alberto Salazar; its decision to back the twice-banned sprinter Justin Gatlin; the omission of Nick Symmonds from the US team for this year’s world championships because he rejected an edict to wear its kit at official functions, which were defined to include just being in the team hotel; and the decision to award the 2021 world championships to Eugene without a vote. To name but a few.
What is Coe’s defence for not giving up his Nike deal?
Immediately after the presidential election Coe was defensive about his Nike links. He pointed out that he had managed to deal with Nike’s rivals perfectly happily throughout his career, not least when Adidas was a main sponsor of London 2012. He also said that he had a team around him who would ensure there was no conflict of interest and offered up a convoluted definition of what constituted one. Those close to him also point out, not unreasonably, that he could not have been expected to give up the contract before he knew whether he was likely to win a tight election against his fellow vice-president Sergey Bubka. But his combative tone was a mistake.
Asked by the Guardian whether he would reconsider the relationship he said: “No. Because I don’t see that at any stage it’s ever been a conflict with anything I’ve done.”
Since September his tone has shifted slightly and he has said he will look again at the relationship in due course. But he is equally determined that he will not be bounced into a decision when he believes he should be concentrating on the bigger problem of saving his sport in the depths of an unprecedented crisis.
Unfortunately, the Nike issue is clouding his attempts to do so and causing some to question his judgment. It has also become a big distraction at a time when he is said to be working 18-hour days firefighting in the wake of revelations of systemic doping in Russia and corruption at the highest levels of the organisation.
Is this part of a bigger issue?
Coe has always been a master of keeping various balls in the air. Relying on a small team of advisers, he has sought to balance his commercial interests with his public profile – sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But critics claim that his portfolio existence was always bound to lead to conflicts at some stage. And with CSM’s wide‑ranging client list, it has already caused other problems for him – it variously drew up the masterplan for the controversial Baku 2015 European Games, held under the shadow of a brutal human rights crackdown, and recommended that the athletics track at Crystal Palace be torn up.
Why is the IAAF position unpaid?
Unlike at Fifa, where Sepp Blatter has never confirmed a salary strongly rumoured to be worth up to $10m a year, Lamine Diack – held earlier this month by French police over corruption allegations – has never taken an annual wage. This promoted a grace-and-favour culture at the International Association of Athletics Federations’ headquarters in Monaco that went hand in hand with all the overblown pomposity of international sporting bodies. Diack took advantage of a villa, an apartment at the Fairmont and generous expenses. Coe insists he is trying to change all that with a reform programme and corporate governance review that will take the IAAF back to basics. That could also lead to a salary for the president, a move that few would disagree with if it went hand in hand with a corporate structure more suited to the 21st century. In turn, that might give Coe more scope to drop some of his other business interests.
What will happen next?
Coe must surely realise he has squandered valuable goodwill through his intransigence on the Nike issue. It is also detracting from his wider mission to lead his sport out of its current crisis and chipping away at public trust in his ability to do so.
The most sensible outcome might be for him to drop his formal link with Nike as part of a wider review of his other interests, which might also see him passing on the British Olympic Association chairmanship to Hugh Robertson after the Rio Olympics, and for the IAAF to start paying a proper executive salary to its president. As so often, it is Coe’s refusal to see that there is a problem that has become more damaging than his link with the company in the first place.
