With incredible success on the tennis court and effortless charm and charisma off it, Roger Federer is one of the easiest athletes in the world to market. So it was no surprise that a couple of months back, Federer became only the seventh billionaire athlete in the world. But now, in a podcast with Andy Roddick, Federer’s longtime agent Tony Godsick has spoken about a time that Nike decided to end its partnership with the Swiss ace after 24 years together, and other brands were hesitant to take its place.
Federer’s ascent to becoming a billionaire athlete owes a great debt to the deals that his longtime agent Tony Godsick cracked on his behalf. One of those industry-defining deals happened in 2018 when Federer was close to retiring and Nike had opted to end their partnership after 24 years. Now, on Roddick’s Served podcast, Godsick has revealed how he landed—with an assist from Anna Wintour of Vogue magazine’s editor-in-chief—a $300-million contract for a 10-year partnership with Japanese clothing chain Uniqlo, even though Federer was close to retirement in a couple of years.
The Nike-Federer partnership was much more than the tennis legend sporting their iconic swoosh on his bandana. There are anecdotes of Federer even going to Nike’s campus near Beaverton, and serving coffee and doughnuts to employees, giving out gym lessons, handing out lunches and working as a cashier at the campus during his visit. Federer is said to have even played Wii tennis in the lobby of one of the buildings.
Before we come to how Godsick landed Uniqlo for Federer, what happened with his relationship with Nike?
As Roddick noted in the interview, “It doesn’t happen often that you leave Nike and something better happens. It’s normally like you go away from Nike and you’re trying to salvage one more deal on the way out.”
“It only could have happened to Roger just because of his reputation,” Godsick replied before clarifying: “Roger didn’t leave Nike. Nike kind of left him. We were trying to re-sign and they chose not to re-sign. He would have stayed.”
Roger didn’t leave Nike. Nike kind of left him. We were trying to re-sign and they chose not to re-sign. He would have stayed
Godsick said that he spent almost a year, from 2017 onwards, to try and get Nike to offer a deal that his client would like. At that point, Federer’s 10-year-long deal was supposed to run till February 2018.
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“I spent one year from the beginning of 2017 all the way till when it ended trying to renew it. Now, I understand it’s hard to decide to place a value on someone who’s already branded, who’s 36 years old. Most people don’t play past 30 or whatever it is. And so here he is at 36, but we had history and we did a lot of great things together. So I show up on campus at Nike early January of 2017 to try to begin what is in essence a 13-month process to get a new deal. I knew that he hadn’t won a major for four years. I went up there and I said, ‘Listen, guys, we need to redo this contract in a way that rewards him for having the most grand slams at that point in history. He’s auditioned for you already. You know that he’s a wonderful guy. He’s global. He can go to all parts of the world and help sell Nike products. But he’s into fashion and it’s not a fake. You know, you see him at all these fashion shows. He’s always in Paris and London. He’s very close with Anna Wintour. He knows all the designers around the world and he and Mirka (Federer’s wife) genuinely love fashion. So let’s come up with something. I said let’s go after Stan Smith. Let’s go after the Stan Smith silhouette and make a lifestyle shoe. So we actually did create the RF1.’ I remember meeting with a big bunch of people there.”
“Pleased to say that Roger will be with us tomorrow, and we will have a special celebratory moment on Centre Court before play starts, just to honor him as the man holding the most Gentleman’s Singles titles here at Wimbledon,” All England Club chairman Sally Bolton said Monday, the first day of action at the two-week event. (File)
After that meeting, something magical happened, which Godsick thought made it easy for Nike to decide on re-signing Federer: two weeks after that meeting, Federer won the Australian Open.
“I thought this is great. This is going to be easy. And it wasn’t,” he added.
Then, Federer won the Wimbledon.
WATCH: Roger Federer’s agent interviewed by Andy Roddick
“I was starting to get a little bit nervous, you know and a little bit unsure of myself. I’m like this can’t be that hard. I don’t talk to anybody else because I figure I have to get this (the Nike deal) done. So he shows up at the Australian Open. The deal’s up in a month. And what does he do? He wins the Australian Open 2018. So we go from winning no majors to winning three while I need to negotiate. So he’s giving me all the goods. But I can’t get it done. I go up to campus on the last day of the contract and at that point I’ll leave what happened in the meeting to what happened in the meeting. But I left Beaverton, went to the airport without a deal, super upset. I cannot believe this. I’m going to go down as the agent who could not renew (Federer’s deal with Nike). He’s not only the greatest guy, but the greatest tennis player in history,” added Godsick.
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Now, with Federer’s association with Nike ending after 24 years, Godsick and the tennis player decided to go to “the market” to find a new commercial partner. Now, you would imagine that it would be a breeze to find a commercial partner for a player like Federer.
Wrong! As Godsick recounted, brands were not interested.
Then he tried to get a deal with Uniqlo by meeting the founder and CEO of the Japanese brand.
“I’ll never forget I tried to get to meet Mr. Yanai, the founder of Uniqlo. And remember, Novak had been with Uniqlo. So, they were already in tennis but I couldn’t get to Mr. Yanai. Then I had breakfast with Anna Wintour, who I owe a tremendous amount besides being one of my favorite people in the world, at the Mark Hotel in New York City in her table, table 21 in the far right corner and I said, ‘I need a favor. Do you know Mr. Yanai? I can’t get to him.’ So she sent a note and then 12 hours later I had a message back from the assistant of Mr. Yanai saying he understands you want to meet with him about Roger Federer. Can you come to Japan on this day and meet him for 30 minutes? So I call Roger to ask what do I do? He goes you go to Japan for 30 minutes.”
The first thing Yanai (Uniqlo founder) asked me was, ‘Who else are you here to see in Japan?’ then he asked a really good question, which is, ‘Are you here to use me?’
Godsick said that Yanai had one question to ask him about any partnership.
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“The first thing he asked me was, ‘Who else are you here to see in Japan?’ I told him, ‘No one else.’ And so, he said, ‘We’ll give you more time than 30 minutes.’ But then he asked a really good question, which is, ‘Are you here to use me?’ You know, and I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He goes, ‘Well, we had another athlete from Nike whose contract was over. They came down and you know, we made an offer and then Nike matched it. So are you here to do the same thing?’ And I said well if you sort of meet the terms of what Roger wants to do and the vision that we have and aren’t concerned with him playing you know for too much longer and we can do the fashion stuff then it’s up to you.”
He added that while Nike had the right to match an offer, the brand again opted not to.
“Uniqlo had this guy, one of the senior creative directors at Uniqlo, who had a great line. And I wish I had known this at the time. I might have used it with brands. ‘Roger will retire from tennis, but he won’t retire from life.’ And I was like, ‘Yes, they finally understand that there’s life off the court with Roger.’ And I wasn’t able to convince (Nike this). And I get that Nike’s got 750-plus athletes. They’re all about the moment, the stage. So, I get it.”
