@JayHawkFanToo, nice argument, but it has some basic problems with it.
First, I am not assuming anything about Wiggins relationship with Adidas. I am simply using them as an example, so you were imputing that, not me. Wigs was reputedly once a Nike lean, who then chose to play D1 for a coach and school contracted with Nike. I can certainly see why one might suspect that signals some shift in his leanings, but it doesn't signal anything definite and I don't know why anyone would say for certain that it does. Maybe other's have you thinking about certainties, but not me.
Next, your analysis seems too static. It assumes that there will be no shift away from knock offs in foreign markets and that kind of static assumption has historically tended to be a mistake. As developing societies and markets integrate into the global trading system and become more and more indoctrinated to branding through media, and as contract law slowly, inexorably makes itself increasingly felt in these regions, originals slowly make inroads into the knock off business. So that static assumption will probably not hold water over the next 10-20 years of Andrew's endorsing life, if he infact becomes a charismatic star capable of pitching products successfully.
Next, you remark on Andrew being introverted, as if that were a done deal. Again, you are looking at things from a static point of view. Michael Jordan was reputedly very introverted and almost monomaniacally focused on basketball in college and very early in his career. It was apparently not until Jordan and his brain trust began to realize there was much more money in branding Michael Jordan the endorser than in playing basketball, that Jordan began to recast himself and devote a lot of hard work to becoming not just Michael Jordan the basketball player, but Michael Jordan, the brand. Andrew Wiggins appears to me to have every bit as much personality as Michael Jordan had at a similar stage. Probably more than some and less than other recent great athletes at the same age. But almost every great athlete I can think of that reaches a level at which becoming a mega endorser becomes a feasible career path to pursue does a ton of work and developing his skills at acting in an endorsement capacity, so, here again, I find your take a victim of its own static assumptions.
Next, you look at the pie chart of where the sales come from and again make a static assumption of percentages by region not changing (or at least not discussing that change) that I think completely mistakes the future trends of sports shoes and apparel sales and market shares and penetrations. Each of the areas that you site as small pie slices-Latin America and Asia--are forecasted to explode the next 10-20 years of Andrew's potential endorsement career and IMHO potentially exceed Europe and USA combined. So: here again you are thinking statically and in a Western-centric way that appears to prevent you from seeing the drivers that are going to make regional and global market endorsers such incredibly valuable (and rich) individuals down the road. And contracts tend to be a reconciliation of both signatories expectations of the present worth of future net benefits, modified for competitive pressures altering those expectations down stream.
Next, IMHO you completely ignore one of Andrew's potentially biggest advantages as an endorser. Unlike American athletes, Andrew is a Canadian citizen and so a citizen of the Common Weath of Great Britain, which is a preferred trading block of states with a population of around 1.5 billion persons, if I recall correctly. To my knowledge, Andrew is the first such citizen of that trading block to emerge as a potential basketball superstar capable of being a indigenous conduit to market directly to that trading block. And in an era of regional and global trade being decisive to creating desired economies of scale, being able to appeal to the first or second or third largest economic entity in the world with an endorser that can look in the camera and smile and say, "For the good of the Commonwealth chaps, I think you could do worse than lacing up a pair of these "FILL IN THE BRAND YOU THINK ANDREW WILL SIGN WITH." [Cut to him slamming on baskets in front of land marks representing as many common wealth members as possible followed by, oh, I dunno, you pick someone, like the Queen, or Prince Harry, or some other legendary athletes from the Common Wealth saying...] "Good show, Andrew, way to posterize it, sir."
Now, I'm being heavy handed here to make the point. Highly skilled PR and ad agencies would probably do it with way more sophistication and it would be done with a systematic, 10-20 marketing strategy in mind.
The one point I do utterly agree with you on is that the firm/firms that contract with Andrew and hire those that craft this global marketing campaign are NOT going to give him one red cent sooner than they have to. But that is typical of all business dealings. And here is the thing about even that. The global market over the next 10-20 years is going to be so incomprehensibly vast, probably exceeding my POV by an order of magnitude, that individual shoeco brands we recognize are really just small fry front men in the biz now that could be gobbled up, plus other players will likely enter, as global capital investment competes to dress the planet in petroleum.
Now, it would follow that were you to dress the planet in petroleum, then the energy companies would probably become key players sooner or later. Who knows? The energy companies might get into the retail end of it the same way they decide to be in the retail gasoline business through franchises using a shared brand. It is not utterly beyond possibility that you could one day buy a pair of Shell Wiggins shoes, or BP sports apparel. Nothing is written on this. It all depends on many things we cannot now forecast including the extent to which the auto industry shifts to electricity and the heating industry turns to LNG. If both of these industries go that way, then the sunk costs in retailing petroleum could easily dictate using petroleum in ways that largely take over other producer markets (e.g., natural fiber clothing and natural skin shoes could completely be replaced by petroleum shoes and apparel, not just sports shoes and apparel.) In such a world, a product endorser would no longer just be promoting sports shoes and sports apparel, but the really huge global markets of all shoes and clothing for all kinds of wear.
Really, I have no idea if Andrew will probably be the guy that hits the jackpot in this global shoe and apparel endorsement game that is unfolding as surely as you and I are tickling pixels on machines made of materials that largely didn't even exist 20 years ago (nano particles in our keyboards and screen cases that our nose hairs can't even filter, you know).
The world is a very, very, VERY big place that is very, very, VERY dynamic and suddenly nonlinear at times when technology is moving rapidly and institutions of international trade have been rewritten extensively of late to "get on with it, chaps."
Regardless, I am grateful that you took the time to read, and then write about this topic. The game is caught up in this globalization in myriad ways most don't begin to grasp yet. I know I've only thought about this one tiny part of basketball's globalization, and at that only briefly without analytic resources. It is flipping awesome what could be happening to the game 20 years from now.
But to even begin to get a handle on it one has to begin to think in terms of changing trends and changing underlying relationships that will drive the change.
Andrew might be just a hair too soon.
Or he might never become quite good enough as a player to capture the imagination of the globe.
But someone will.
And it might be him.
Or Joel.
Or someone we don't know of yet.
Rock Chalk!
(Note: I apologize if I sounded harsh. I did not mean to be harsh and I do not feel anything but gratitude to you for taking the time to think and write about this issue. It is going to take a lot of aliases thinking and writing a lot even to begin to understand it in a meaningful way. I probably made a mistake discussing it in terms of Andrew. Perhaps it would help you and others to think and write about this issue with a hypothetical potential great player named "John Doe." Either way, the numbers involved are apparently vast and apparently about to expand by orders of magnitude. )
