Nike v. New Balance ft. Cooper Flagg. The Best Kind of Brand Beef.
It's fun, lighthearted and not as serious as the internet would have you believe. Here's why it's a win for all parties.
Hi friends, welcome back to another edition of SportsVerse, your favourite newsletter at the intersection of sports, fashion, culture and business. Powered by OffBall.
Sportswear brands taking jabs at each other isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s been happening for decades.
But boy is it fun to watch. I love it when a brand’s marketing team goes out of its way to take shots at a rival, capitalising on the spontaneous and exciting storylines that only sports can conjure up. The more petty the jibe, the better.
In a sneaker market saturated with pretentious campaigns and polished press releases, these kinds of things add a little spice and keep things interesting for folks like us on the sidelines. So far in 2025, we’ve seen some punchy marketing tactics from sneaker brands, with Nike, Adidas and even Crocs getting in on the act yesterday (see below).
Nike wrote the playbook for this particular style of scrappy real-time marketing and was back to its old tricks over the weekend, taking aim at its rivals with a quickly-deleted, controversial post on X about New Balance athlete and generational basketball talent, Cooper Flagg.
SportsVerse is here to tell you why it matters (but also why it doesn’t) and how it’s actually an unlikely win for all parties. Stick around. There’s even a fun Q&A right at the end to make sure y’all are following closely.
But before we get into all that, here are some things my friends at OffBall and I are watching in sports culture this week.
Crocs hit out at Nike yesterday, saying it was “living rent-free” in Nike’s head after comparing the similarities between the Swoosh’s new slides and the classic Crocs silhouette. Very timely considering the topic of this newsletter.
Arsenal is in the news for the new dating program it’s launching, but what caught my eye was the partnership it recently launched with L’Oréal, focused on men’s haircare. It’s the beauty brand’s first-ever football team partnership.
There’s been a lot of talk about a football tournament this summer in London involving the Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica and England national teams. I’m told by sources, however, that England will play no part, and Trinidad & Tobago will be the fourth team in the competition.
The Messy World of Student Endorsement Deals
For those who don’t know (since some of you are based in the UK and other places outside North America), Cooper Flagg is an 18-year-old basketball player at Duke University, one of the premier basketball colleges in the country, currently competing in the final stretch of the prestigious NCAA Division 1 tournament lovingly known as March Madness.
Ahead of his freshman season at Duke last August, Flagg—widely considered a generational talent and future no.1 NBA draft pick—signed a major sneaker endorsement deal with New Balance. It was a coup for New Balance, which beat several rivals to Flagg’s signature, but it came with one rather large catch.
Duke has been a “Nike school” since 1992, meaning all student-athletes are obliged to train and compete in the Swoosh’s clothing and footwear. Now, in the NIL era, where young stars like Flagg can sign endorsement deals while still in college, this can give rise to awkward situations.
It quickly became clear that the public would not see Flagg compete in New Balance sneakers on-court until after his time at Duke, whenever he decides to declare for the NBA.
“Flagg is bolstering his reputation as the game’s brightest young college star, getting paid the big bucks by New Balance, and at 18 years old probably couldn’t care less whether he’s hooping in Nikes, New Balances or $1 flip flops.”
Instead, night-in and night-out, Flagg has been hooping in Nike joints such as the Kobe 6 Protro “All-Star 2.0” silhouette, generating moments of marketing gold for Nike along the way. All while New Balance, already paying Flagg to endorse its products, has to sit by and watch as its new star athlete chalks up MVP performances dressed head-to-toe in the Swoosh.
The “Beef”
Things came to a head when Flagg—a favorite to win the prestigious Naismith Men’s Player of the Year award—secured Duke’s place in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Division 1 basketball tournament last week, dropping 30 points to see his team past Arizona.
Nike, being Nike, had to get involved. The brand replied to a post from the Duke account on X remarking on Flagg’s standout performance with four explosive words: “Powered by the Swoosh” — a not-so-subtle dig that New Balance’s bright young star is a walking Nike billboard. (As
points out, Nike quickly deleted the post, but not before everyone had already seen it).
Like I said, when it comes to these kinds of jibes between brands, the pettier they are, the better. And this was petty as hell. The internet loved it. New Balance, probably less so.
But as is often the case when things like this happen, Flagg-gate has already been over-analysed and unnecessarily scrutinised. Wild conclusions have been drawn by LinkedIn warriors and other internet folk claiming that New Balance is “finished” or that Nike “lashed out” because it feels “threatened” by the moves New Balance is making in basketball.
Neither of those things are true.
Nike, although in a rough patch, is nevertheless a $51 billion corporate behemoth, and New Balance generated sales of $7.8 billion in 2024 after successive years of double-digit revenue growth. No one is going hungry over this.
Yes, there’s no getting around the fact that Flagg is generating a lot of free publicity for Nike. But New Balance would have been fully aware that this was a likely outcome when they moved heaven and earth to sign him last year. They are not worried about the year or two that Flagg is in college wearing Nike gear—he was signed so New Balance could develop the next phase of its basketball category around this bright young star for years, perhaps even decades to come.
On Nike’s part, maybe the dig on X was the knee-jerk reaction of whichever trigger-happy employee was tasked with staffing the account that evening. Or maybe it was always the plan to make an inflammatory comment before not-so-quickly deleting it once everyone had the chance to take their screenshots. I know which scenario I’m betting on.
Regardless, the point is that all this is meant to be FUN. Remember?
Despite what the internet says, there are no losers in this situation (unless the post on X really was sent without prior authorisation, in which case RIP to that employee). Nike is still Nike, the king of basketball. New Balance will have Flagg wearing its shoes on-court the second he reaches the NBA.
And Flagg is bolstering his reputation as the game’s brightest young college star, getting paid the big bucks by New Balance, and at 18 years old probably couldn’t care less whether he’s hooping in Nikes, New Balances or $1 flip flops.
The way things have been going this year, we’re going to see a lot more banter like this between brands who realise that some of the most effective marketing moments are completely free and take mere seconds to create — as long as you keep your eye on the ball.
I’m all for it.
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Until next time!
DYM
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Thanks for reading, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Yeah I can imagine it's a risky business to sign an athlete on an NIL deal for them to potentially go with another brand when they turn pro. I imagine there are provisions baked into Flagg's NB deal that will see it converted into a longer-term signature deal after college.
Super interesting insights on the T&F NIL world — that's one sport I know a little less about. Thanks for sharing!
Truthfully, I don't think Flagg leaves NB once he hits the league. Nike won't give him a sig shoe until he proves himself. They took that chance with Zion (even though he's Jordan brand) and he has sat more than he's played. At Nike he'll be one of the many, while at NB he will be the only. Kawhi's body is breaking down and none of the other basketball athletes they have are of the same caliber. He could be the Curry of NB. It also helps NB's US factories are in Maine.