Basketball legend teams up with NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin to introduce brand Jordan to NASCAR racing......
Apart from the fact that Michael Jordan was one of the greatest basketball players to have ever played the game and broke many records on his way to six NBA championships and 5 regular season MVP honours, he is perhaps the most
successful sports star when it comes to endorsement business.
Jordan has his own brand of sports merchandise by the name of “Air Jordan”, which is a subsidiary of Nike. And over the years, both Nike and Jordan have taken the brand to new markets and earned a lot of money in the process.
Now, brand Jordan might be making his entry into a completely new and different genre of customers. Jordan is taking his brand to NASCAR. It may seem like an odd combination, yet the vision is already in execution as the leading
NASCAR driver, Denny Hamlin, currently wears the “Air Jordan” logo on his shoulder, back, gloves and belt while racing in the NASCAR.
Hamlin is a season ticket holder of the Charlotte Bobcats, the basketball club that Jordan owns. The professional partnership between him and brand Jordan came into being through a personal friendship, which Hamlin explained in
an interview to NBA.com:
“I kind of walked by him at halftime whenever I went to a little bar area behind the court. So he was there one time, and he actually stopped me to congratulate me on my race the previous week. I don’t know if we had won or been
in contention to win. I was like, ‘You watch NASCAR?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I watch it every single week’. So from that point on, we just started a texting conversation for the next few months, and basically I asked permission from him to represent the Jordan
brand in NASCAR.”
The deal could help in the exchange of sports fans, with NASCAR fans being exposed to NBA and vise versa. It also helps in bringing a completely new demographic to the sports. And of course, it would help brand Jordan reach out
to even more customer bases. As one of the greatest basketball players ever, Jordan is not a bad businessman either. Only if he would do something to get the Bobcats out of the deep hole, they find themselves in.
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