On Wednesday, Oct. 11, Reebok named Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson as president and vice president of basketball. The newly created positions are the brand’s attempt to regain a foothold in sports by leaning into two of its biggest historical endorsers.
“Looking back on my career with Reebok and in basketball, this appointment means everything to me,” O’Neal told WWD. “It’s a reminder of where I’ve come from and what I’ve built. I’m just motivated to make an impact and bring the brand back to the place it belongs in basketball.”
Shaq And AI Together Again At Reebok
Shaq hinted at the new role with an Instagram post that featured a photo of himself wearing a 2024 Shaq for President T-shirt. The shirt will be sold by Reebok with Reebok Basketball on the back. The four-time NBA champion is also happy to be working with Iverson.
“AI [Allen Iverson] is a founding father of Reebok Basketball and has left a lasting impact on the game and its surrounding culture. There is no one I’d rather work with to bring in a new generation of ballers to Reebok than him. Shaq and AI back at it — feels good.”
It’s a great nostalgia play for Reebok, and if the marketing plans, shoe designs and lifestyle apparel are aesthetically pleasing and coalesce, this could work. The company has lofty ambitions. They want to hit $10 billion in global sales in 2027.
Reebok is owned by Authentic Brands Group, which purchased the company from Adidas in August 2022 for €2.1 billion. At the time of the acquisition, Reebok had global retail sales of $3.7 billion and Authentic projected the brand would hit $5 billion in sales by the next year. According to Nick Woodhouse, president and chief marketing officer of Authentic, they’ve exceeded that number.
“We’re going to be very close to $6 billion in ’23,” Woodhouse said, pointing to strength in apparel as well as “better global distribution, and just bringing more heat to the brand.”
Can Reebok Regain A Foothold In Basketball?
In his new role Shaq will oversee the brand’s basketball category and work to build partnerships with athletes and organizations. Shaq will also work on product creation, marketing, participate in events, oversee player recruitment and help negotiate deals on behalf of the brand.
Shaq has built a large business portfolio that has only grown since he retired from the game. He is used to getting directly involved in projects. This will be somewhat new for AI, and it remains to be seen how involved he will be beyond events and campaigns.
“He’ll [Shaq] be involved in every area,” Todd Krinsky, CEO of Reebok, said. “I clearly have a team running the business here in Boston, but we’ll be taking the direction from Shaquille. This is not a figurehead role. He has a lot of ideas and some things he has strong conviction on. But on other things, he really just wants to listen and learn, and ideate with us on how we should do things. This is a major opportunity for a brand that has rich, rich heritage [in basketball] to get back into one of the biggest global sports in the world.”
The partnerships and next generation basketball stars Shaq is able to recruit will go a long way in establishing the brand in the basketball category again.
New Balance, which doesn’t have the basketball tradition Reebok does, has a nice stable of basketball talent and is growing in the category. Shaq and the team should note that growth is possible and there is a real opportunity for the brand.
