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NIKE Unveils Additional Alliance for 12 Years With NBA & WNBA

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NIKE Inc. (NKE - Free Report) has been making efforts to offer a seamless experience. In the latest development, NIKE, along with the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), has unveiled a 12-year extension of the merchandising, outfitting, marketing and content partnership. NKE and the National Basketball Players Association have expanded their group license agreement, with the former becoming an official partner of the latter.

The latest extension follows the eight-year global outfitting, marketing and content partnership in 2015. This made NIKE the official on-court outfitter starting the 2017-2018 NBA season. The company has been an NBA partner since 1992, WNBA’s marketing partner since 1997 and NBA G League’s marketing partner since the 2017-2018 season.

More Details on The Latest Announcement

The latest alliance looks forward to making new pathways and innovations, alongside bringing key opportunities for the ambitious players and their fans. This extension reinforces the athletic footwear and accessories dealer’s leading position in the global basketball space. Via the extension, NKE has been the exclusive on-court uniform and apparel provider for the NBA, WNBA and NBA G League. 

The recent announcement highlights NKE’s rights extension over 12 additional seasons to sketch and manufacture NBA, WNBA and G League uniforms, on-court apparel and fan apparel, hence improving the basketball sport for the next generation. This global extension boasts new content-related initiatives, commitment to grassroots basketball and continued development of a joint membership program that provides benefits to fans of the brands via differentiated products, content and experiences. 

The latest extension brings an opportunity to reinforce avenues for development and improve touchpoints across the fanbase, as well as showcase the WNBA globally. NIKE has been strengthening its investment in the WNBA.

All the partners, along with Nike, look forward to expanding basketball for the next generation by introducing programs and resources to make top-class youth basketball accessible and scalable, with broad-based access to coaching, training and on-court development curriculum. This also focuses on creating basketball programming and resources, apart from improving the playing experience for girls .

NIKE is focused on boosting its established presence in the marquee league events, comprising WNBA All-Star, NBA Global Games, NBA All-Star, the NBA Draft Combine, the WNBA Draft, WNBA Changemakers, the NBA Draft by State Farm, NBA 2K Summer League as well as NBA G League Fall Invitational.

What Else Should You Know About NIKE?

NIKE is intensifying its focus on sports and speeding up the introduction and expansion of new products and innovations. The company is also enhancing its storytelling efforts with greater impact and boldness while elevating the overall marketplace to strengthen brand distinction and align with consumer preferences. Focus on its sports performance product category has been the key to its strategy. Notably, the performance category grew double-digits in fourth-quarter fiscal 2024, with significant gains in many of its key sports.

NIKE’s multiyear innovation cycle has been mainly focused on increasing its speed to the consumer. For years, the company has used Express Lane to facilitate short-lead-time replenishment and hyperlocal design. It expects to continue leveraging the same. It has developed a new approach across the entire product creation process.

 

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Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

 

However, shares of the Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) company have lost 12.5% in the past six months compared with the industry’s 3.1% decline. The company has been experiencing weaker sales trends across its lifestyle products for a while. Its lifestyle business, which includes men's, women's and Jordan, reported a decline in the most recent quarter. The reduced lifestyle products sales also significantly impacted the company’s digital sales during the quarter. These limitations, coupled with shifts in consumer traffic in Greater China, weakness in EMEA and other regions and adverse currency trends, have been weighing on its performance.

Key Consumer Discretionary Picks

Some better-ranked companies are G-III Apparel Group (GIII - Free Report) , Crocs (CROX - Free Report) and lululemon athletica (LULU - Free Report) .

G-III Apparel sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here

GIII Apparel has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 118.2%, on average. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for GIII’s current financial-year sales indicates an increase of 3.3% from the year-ago period’s reported level.

Crocs carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. CROX has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 14.9%, on average. 

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Crocs’ current financial-year sales and earnings per share (EPS) indicates increases of 4.2% and 7%, respectively, from the year-ago period’s levels.

lululemon athletica is a yoga-inspired athletic apparel company. LULU has a Zacks Rank of 2 at present.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for lululemon athletica’s current financial-year sales and EPS indicates growth of 9.2% and 9.8%, respectively, from the year-ago corresponding figures. LULU has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 7.9%, on average.


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