Time to buy up all the New Orleans Hornets gear you can: The NBA team has announced it will become the Pelicans.

“This isn’t something that was just done overnight,” said team owner Tom Benson, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “We are not just changing the name to change the name. The Hornets name came from Charlotte. That fits in with Charlotte. It doesn’t fit into New Orleans, La., or our area here."

He continued: "The Hornets don’t mean anything here. We needed something that symbolizes New Orleans and Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. And nothing does that better than this name.”Continue reading...

Other than Danica Patrick, there may be no other more well-known NASCAR driver to the general public than Dale Earnhardt, Jr. But the 10-time winner of the Sprint Cup series’ Most Popular Driver Award is still having trouble picking up sponsorships for the season, which starts in less than a month. So is the legendary Tony Stewart.

Attendance and TV ratings for NASCAR events have slipped in recent years, and corporations are more tight-fisted with their dollars. "When I first started, the sponsors they got a spot on the car, here's how much it cost them and you went racing,” driver Martin Truex, Jr. told New Hampshire’s WBTV-TV. “Now it's quite a bit different than that. We have to show them the value. They're looking for a lot more value out of their dollar, and we have to figure out a way to show that." 

Hertz Rental Cars is apparently happy with whatever is being promised: The new sponsor has signed a deal with Penske Racing for three years, and is already predicting that the deal will last longer.Continue reading...

It's less than a month before the NBA All-Star Game tips off in Houston — which means it's time for Nike’s marketing department to begin leveraging as many sales as possible from basketball fans.

Today, the sportswear giant announced a series of shoes and sportswear tied to the event that use space as a theme since Houston is the home of NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. 

Nike made a similar space tie-in during last year's All-Star Game in Orlando, Fla.Continue reading...

Nike has routinely shelled out millions to athletes to wear its swoosh and use its equipment during competition. On Monday, the company made its next big play. Following months of rumors, the global athletic brand announced it has signed the world's No. 1 player, Rory McIlroy, to carry Nike forward.

The deal is reported to be worth up to $250 million for McIlroy, 23, over a decade.

The first opportunity McIlroy will have to show off his new Nike duds in a tournament will come on Thursday as he joins fellow Nike big-bucks endorser Tiger Woods to kick off the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship.Continue reading...

Now that the NHL has reached a tentative deal that could see the players (finally!) hit the ice as soon as next week, let us now praise Nike's role in egging the league to put on its skates and cut a deal.

For years, Nike has ridden on the parade floats of champion athletes, signing big names to sneaker deals in order for fans to covet what the stars wear and to showcase their powerhouse athletes in a wide variety of advertisements (and add their names to buildings on the Nike campus in Oregon, too, of course).

However, the athletic wear giant struck a chord last summer when it touted a more populist message ("Find Your Greatness") during the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games. Nike hadn’t signed on to sponsor the Games but its name became forever aligned with England’s big event when it aired a commercial that featured everyday athletes competing in other Londons around the globe and urged those watching to find their own greatness.

As winter rolled around in the Western hemisphere, Nike duly hit another nerve for the average fan and athlete. With more than half of the NHL season cancelled due to a stand-off between wealthy owners and wealthy players, Nike launched a campaign on Dec. 19th keying in on the fact that hockey fans were fed up with the lockout and salary cap war — and the sport and its fans didn't need the NHL to survive.Continue reading...

This was supposed to be an off year for Adidas. After all, its Reebok subsidiary was set to lose the NFL apparel deal that it had had since 2001 to Adidas archrival Nike. Plus, NHL players wear Reebok and that league’s season hasn’t started yet due to financial differences between the owners and players. That’s not a help to an area that generally brings in $132 million annually. So last month, CEO Herbert Hainer had to tell investors that the company was adjusting its sales expectations for the year.

However, the Financial Times notes, Hainer also had some good news to share: “We will see record sales and earnings in 2013,” he said. “All that I hear from the markets is that we are winning market share in each and every country.” And, adjustments or no, things didn’t go badly for the sportswear giant this year. Its stock price is up 40 percent from the same point last year.

The FT attributes the stock price staying strong for Adidas partially because of the strong confidence of Hainer and his “shrewd instinct about where the sports goods business must go next to expand its appeal to customers.” Serving an aging market as well as helping people deal with the obesity epidemic are two areas that are helping the bottom line at Adidas.Continue reading...

You may have noticed "Jordans" trending on Twitter today. Inclement weather across much of the U.S. did not stop Jordan Brand fans from lining up in the cold to pick up the new $185-$225 Air Jordan 11 Retro "Bred" shoe from Nike, one of the most highly anticipated releases of 2012 for sneaker heads. One mob scene in Alabama saw local police using pepper spray to control the crowd, who were vying for one of 36 bands that would allow them to acquire the iconic kicks at a later date. Nike's stock rose 4% this morning, while its latest quarterly earnings report indicates the company intends to "focus resources on driving growth in the NIKE, Jordan, Converse and Hurley brands" going forward.

It’s not cheap to put on a big-name golf tournament, especially when it’s the Tiger Woods World Challenge, which pays out $1 million to whoever finishes first (this year, it was Graeme McDowell, above) and $120,000 to the golfer who finishes in last place.

Eighteen of the top players in the world take part in the event which started in 1999, a decade before he banged his Cadillac Escalade into a fire hydrant and a tree outside his Florida home at 2:30 in the morning and his life began to unravel as news of his many mistresses began to spill out. Woods has since had his personal life opened up for pretty much everybody to see and gone through a divorce. Many of his endorsement deals disappeared (see ya, Accenture, AT&T, Gatorade, and GM) and a few stuck with him (Nike, Electronic Arts). Tiger did his best to lay low for a bit.

And even though it appears that Woods has gotten his golf game back in action and he’s moving forward with his life, there is still some fallout from the scandal. Chevron pulled out as the title sponsor of the World Challenge, which benefits the Tiger Woods Foundation, after last year’s event and “a deal with a major company unexpectedly fell through at the last minute in early September,” according to the Associated Press.Continue reading...