This SportTechie Legal article was written by Brittany Berckes, a lawyer in the Entertainment, Music & Sports practice of Loeb & Loeb LLP.
Brands have known for more than a century that sports and celebrities sell. In the 1880s, for example, tobacco company, Allen & Ginter, featured famous baseball players on trading cards included in the company’s cigarette packages. Nowadays, social media provides everyone with a public platform, and brands are not only using celebrities as endorsers, but also non-celebrity “influencers” who have their own sizeable social media followings.
One sports brand tapping into non-celebrity influencers is the sports fashion company Adidas.