So, what's your theory, if not simple biz economics?
That it must be worth giving up to $100k each to dozens (hundreds) of kids to route them to certain schools in order to have some perceived advantage in signing them as an eventual pro multiplied by the long shot chance they become a Lebron/KD type of market force. It doesn’t seem to me that math works, but it must unless i’m missing something.
Nike, Adidas and UA combined for more than $50 billion in sales in 2016 -
spreading a coupe mil around the top 50 every year may actually be the proverbial rounding error
Absolutely, but I'd distinguish Nike from the others. Nike's already won multiple times. Adidas and UA are still hoping for their investment in lottery tickets to hit. That's where I question for how long and how much they'd keep w/that strategy.
You also have to add in the money they're paying to schools to have places to stash their lottery tickets. But to your point, it's still not that much because I'm sure that out of, for example, the $197m over 12 years that ku puts out that they'll get from adidas, a decent amount of that is in product, which costs adidas essentially nothing.