There can only be so much tension in ‘Air’. The new drama depicts Nike’s 1984 quest to sign then-rookie Michael Jordan to an endorsement deal, and everyone knows Nike will eventually find its man. Some viewers are no doubt wearing Swoosh embellished Air Jordan sneakers.
Still, late in the film, the filmmakers conjure up a poignant moment. With wits and determination, Sonny Vaccaro, the Nike manager played by Matt Damon, secured Jordan’s deal – until Jordan’s mother, Deloris Jordan (Viola Davis), makes an additional demand: her son must not only receive a $250,000 compensation , but also a cut from every sneaker sold.
“A shoe is just a shoe,” she tells Vaccaro, “until my son steps into it.”
This seemingly minor nuance, more than just a plot development, embodies one of the central themes of “Air”: the value a talented individual brings to a company and the importance of compensating them for what they are worth.
“He created that value,” Damon, also a producer, said in an interview. “Yeah, they had some great advertising campaigns, right? But Michael Jordan going out and being the best player every night is what gives the boot meaning.”
The lesson of “Air” can also be applied to the new company that produced it. Artists Equity was co-founded by Damon and his old friend Ben Affleck to make movies that earn more money for their artistic talent. “Air” — directed by Affleck, who also plays Nike co-founder and CEO Phil Knight — was purposely the company’s first project.
“Thematically it was good in terms of what we’re trying to do with the new company,” Damon said of “Air.”
He elaborated: “Sonny, like us, believes that the people who value something deserve to share in the revenue and be compensated, and rather than it being extractive, it’s a partnership.”
The message of “Air” could help explain why it has been embraced by critics and audiences alike. It turns Michael Jordan from an extraordinary athlete into a stand-in for the viewer. “He’s not the underdog compared to the common man, but he’s still someone people can relate to,” said Thilo Kunkel, a Temple University professor who studies athlete branding.
In real life, it was Nike who initially offered Jordan a share of the business — it was “the bait on the fishhook,” Vaccaro said in an interview. Nike had been desperate to outbid its larger rivals, Converse and Adidas, in order to secure the rights to a player it predicted would be a generational talent.
The film closely reflects reality, Vaccaro added, portraying this proposal as important to Deloris Jordan, the central decision-maker in her household. “She reminded me 10 times before you saw it in the last scene,” Vaccaro said, adding, “The only reason we survived and we won was because he had a piece.”
Vaccaro’s career in basketball and shoes is so rich that a movie was almost made years ago about a completely different period in his life (he was said to have been played by James Gandolfini). Vaccaro started organizing high school all-star games in the 1960s. At Nike, he not only helped bring Jordan in, he also prepared contracts with college basketball coaches that donned Nike sneakers to their players, as NCAA rules prevented the athletes from making their own deals. In the 90s he signed Kobe Bryant to Adidas.
But the real Vaccaro took the morals of “Air” to heart during his late-career shift from shoe company veteran to gadfly who helped college athletes win the right to sign their own endorsement deals.
In 2007, he retired from the sneaker business (his resume also listed Reebok) and became an advocate for college players’ rights. For lawyers seeking to sue about colleges profiting from their players’ names, images and likenesses, Vaccaro helped find an ideal lead plaintiff: former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon. The lawsuit filed in 2009 known as the O’Bannon case, along with other lawsuits, state legislation and a reversal in public opinion – itself cultivated in part by Vaccaro, an easy and colorful quote for journalists – led to that in 2021 the NCAA began to have college athletes sign endorsement agreements.
“To enable me to reach Eddie O’Bannon — it never would have happened without me being with Michael Jordan,” Vaccaro said.
Jay Bilas, an ESPN basketball commentator, sees a connection between Jordan’s securing a portion of his Nike business and Vaccaro’s lobbying to help college athletes earn more profits that they help generate.
“It’s the same analysis,” said Bilas, who played basketball for Duke University when Jordan was on the arch-rival University of North Carolina Tar Heels. “Whether it’s an hourly worker negotiating with McDonald’s or doctors and nurses negotiating with a hospital system, it is always true that the company is going to make substantially more than the employee. Everyone in America, in a free market system, deserves the right to bargain for their fair value.”
At the film’s premiere last month, Damon said, the audience “burst into applause” at the end when on-screen text described Vaccaro’s involvement in the O’Bannon case.
“Thematically it was right for the movie, but it was also perfect for Sonny,” said Damon.
“The obvious thing he was going to do was go and fight for them,” Damon added. “It matches how you see him throughout the movie, genuinely caring — it’s not just business for him. This is his passion and it is his love. There is a moral that justifies it.”
Damon is engaged in a similar venture. He and Affleck replaced filmmakers with athletes in Vaccaro’s equation, and, backed by $100 million from a private investment firm, started Artists Equity last year to give filmmakers back some of the project profits that disappeared when Hollywood transitioned to streaming and studios scaled back. on the most generous deals.
According to Artists Equity, turning filmmakers — from stars like Damon and Davis to directors, cinematographers and editors — into something less like employees and more like financial partners will give them an incentive to make better movies more efficiently.
“‘Profit participation’ is the key phrase,” says Jason Squire, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. “If they comply, it will be a wonderful, refreshed model for this part of the business.”
For its part, “Air” appears to be a financial success. The film was acquired by Amazon for $130 million. It opened exclusively in theaters last Wednesday (before becoming available on Amazon’s streaming platform), beating expectations with a box office hovering around $20 million.
Affleck’s argument for the model could have come from Deloris Jordan. “This company has never stimulated and congruent the interest of the artist and the financiers,” he said at a conference in the New York Times last year. Referring to his wife, the pop star and actress Jennifer Lopez, he added: “The people who primarily create value on the sales side and on the audience side are these artists who have worked their entire careers – just like my wife – to build a name, a reputation, a connection with fans that has real value, and often that value isn’t reflected in the deals.”
There is something ironic in the argument that people are being cheated by the old way of doing business. Michael Jordan, Matt Damon – these are some of the more enviable people on the planet.
But anyone who bought a pair of Air Jordans or watched the Chicago Bulls win six world championships in the 1990s can testify that Jordan deserved a lot of credit.
And by handing over a small percentage of Air Jordan’s profits to its namesake, Nike didn’t exactly suffer. Along with the applause-generating revelation of Vaccaro’s successful advocacy on behalf of college athletes, the viewer of “Air” learns at the end of the film that Nike bought its former rival Converse on its way to becoming the juggernaut it is today. . Last year, Nike said Jordan Brand brought in $5 billion in annual revenue.
“Ben says it like Phil Knight’s character,” Damon said. “He says, ‘If this kid makes a lot of money off this deal, that’s the best thing that’s ever happened to Nike.’ Right? It really was a deal that benefited everyone. Absolutely everyone won.”
