Giving charity is apparently the way to retired tennis great Andre Agassi’s heart. He left Nike eight years ago after a 17-year relationship to join the folks at Adidas, partially because the company was willing to put more financial oomph into Agassi’s foundation than Nike was.

But it looks like the tide has turned back in Nike’s favor and is shooting Agassi back into the spotlight. The company announced Monday that the 43-year-old Agassi is back in the fold, Yahoo! Sports reports, and Agassi celebrated the event by posting an image of himself under a huge Nike swoosh with the caption “Back Home” on his Facebook page—a bit of a dig to nearly 8-year sponsor Adidas.Continue reading...

Apple's latest iPhone 5 commercial — starring U.S. tennis stars Venus Williams and Serena Williams — landed with a thud on January 1st, touting the iOS 6 "Do Not Disturb" feature just as users discovered bugs were still being worked out.

"巴黎，我来了" Translation: "Paris, Here I come."

That was the message Li Na posted on her Facebook page on May 25th. The message captioned a photo of a blue sky, likely of the view from her flight. On June 4th, as news of China focuses on, let's say, less proud moments, Li Na will challenge to make the quarterfinals for the French Open, the grand slam event she won last year. It was a single championship win that put $42 million in endorsement deals in her pocket and made Li the second highest earning female athlete in the world.

Ah, pity Michael Chang.Continue reading...

When you’re a celeb athlete, being the best in the world at something isn’t good enough. You’ve got to build your brand. After all, those playing days are only going to last so long and the good life shouldn’t just end because you’re dealing with whatever stresses your body has taken on during your athletic career.

Venus Williams is getting back into the act. She had launched a clothing line for Steve & Barry’s years ago but that retailer went into liquidation in 2008. Now she’s back.

As Women’s Wear Daily notes, she has “partnered with brands including Ralph Lauren and Gilt Group” in the past, and is now relaunching her personally designed apparel collection EleVen, which is, no surprise, geared for on and off the court.Continue reading...

Japanese pro tennis player Kei Nishikori, ranked 26th in the world, made it all the way to the quarterfinals of the Australian Open before being taken down by Andy Murray, the world’s fourth best.

Nishikori’s excellent tournament will raise him up to 20th in the world and surely has a few executives at sponsor Fast Retailing Co. and its famous retail subsidiary, Uniqlo, smiling a whole lot these days, one year into a five-year deal brokered by IMG. The same probably can’t be said for Sony, which didn’t renew a sponsorship deal last November, and Adidas, which wasn’t aggressive enough and lost its deal with Nishikori to Uniqlo.

Even though Nishikori lost the match to Murray, it was likely watched by 55 million more viewers than it would have been if Nishikori wasn’t in it. “Japan’s public broadcaster NHK purchased the rights to air” the match, Bloomberg reports, which grew the viewing audience exponentially.Continue reading...

Above, watch Roger Federer — who's busy at the Australian Open this week — and Nike design director Taylor Hatfield, discuss the redesigned Nike Zoom Vapor 9 Tour. More below.Continue reading...

Sony Ericsson, the world’s fourth-largest mobile-phone manufacturer, had such success recently with a tennis sponsorship that it is pouring money, time, and energy into a partnership with the UEFA Champions League, a competition of the top European soccer clubs.

The UK's Marketing Week reports that Sony Ericsson will “include a number of social media campaigns, which the company says have been successful in building brand awareness and driving sales of the Xperia handset range.”

The move follows the brand's successful campaign with women's tennis champ Maria Sharapova (and a group of aspiring Sharapovas) that kicked off earlier this year, a WTA-backed effort that relied heavily on fan interaction with the players on Twitter and Facebook.Continue reading...

What can one shaving brand (Gillette) do with 3,000 litres of paint, 2,800 square meters of field, 1,000 litres of foam, laser-guided robots and Roger Federer? Give the tennis star the biggest (and if not closest, certainly most unique) shave of his life.

Knocking on 90,000 hits since Gillette UK posted the video as a Wimbledon kick-off viral clip, the brand recreated Federer's face in a giant field in London. After the paint went on, foam was sprayed on his beard area, and then mowed off, followed by a giant Gillette razor. The Facebook stunt was green in more ways than one: the paint used was 100% biodegradable, and the foam used was also non-toxic and biodegradable.Continue reading...