UCLA and Adidas have reached a tentative agreement to extend the
school’s shoe-apparel contract for another six years,
athletic department representatives confirmed last week.
Officials from the athletic department and the sports apparel
giant are finalizing the details of the new contract which would
become effective July 1, 2005, and UCLA hopes to have a deal in
place by Oct. 1, barring any last-minute complications.
Although exact details were not disclosed, the agreement is
substantially similar to the existing deal and is expected to be
slightly more lucrative than the current contract, a six-year,
$18.95 million deal that will expire after the 2004-2005 academic
year.
“We are very pleased to wear these three strips for the
next six years,” said UCLA Associate Athletic Director Glenn
Toth, who is in charge of corporate development and spearheaded the
negotiation process. “We have had minimal issues with Adidas
products.”
An Adidas representative declined to comment.
Toth said UCLA did have preliminary communications with several
of Adidas’ rivals but never seriously considered making the
switch. Nike, which sponsors roughly 30 Division I school’s
varsity programs, would have been the most likely alternative, but
Toth said that the university’s philosophy was much more
compatible with Adidas than any of its competitors.
“Adidas, once again, was deemed the best partner,”
he said.
“It comes down to would you rather be 1 of 30 or 1 of 6.
Adidas has made us feel very much like a priority to
them.”
Had UCLA decided to make a swap, the transition would have been
extremely difficult.
A contract with either Reebok or Nike would need to be finalized
by October of 2004 to order products and equipment in time for the
fall season of 2005.
That would have left the school with a lame-duck contract with
Adidas for a full year and with the added expense of ordering
all-new products for every UCLA varsity team.
Making a switch also might have upset some of UCLA’s
coaches, many of whom have a long-standing relationship with
Adidas.
Men’s basketball coach Ben Howland has been associated
with Adidas since he was at Pittsburgh, while women’s coach
Kathy Olivier and other longtime Bruin coaches have kept close ties
with the shoe-apparel corporation since UCLA ditched Reebok for it
in 1998.
Having a tentative agreement in place will also help coaches
entice top recruits, who often take into account a school’s
sponsor when deciding where to go to college.
“The recruits definitely want to know what product
you’re with, and I think Adidas is a plus,” Olivier
said. “You’d either want to be Adidas or Nike, and I
always thought Adidas was the best.”
Despite its recent struggles in the revenue-producing sports,
UCLA is generally considered an attractive partner by shoe-apparel
companies. The university has a successful track record in
football, basketball and the Olympic sports, and its teams
frequently appear on national television or locally in the
lucrative Los Angeles market.
A shoe-apparel contract with Adidas offsets what would otherwise
be a hard-dollar expense for UCLA ““ supplying the athletic
department with money and equipment.
The money is not ear-marked for any particular expense, but is
put towards the department’s general operating fund.
Including UCLA, Adidas shares similar all-encompassing
partnerships with six schools, including Notre Dame, Tennessee and
Pittsburgh.