Trailmix on ACG ahem Nike re-entering the Trail Running Space

Matt Walsh with the commentary:

If Nike wanted to start investing in the sport (which it historically hasn’t despite what our current revisionist historians tell you), it could change the entire playing field.

Thank you for that little side stab at the folks proclaiming that ACG and/or NIKE were in any way influential in the outdoor space over the past few decades. In sport yes, in the outdoor space, no.

Despite the influx of sponsorship money and high-profile activations, Nike’s path to dominating trail running is far less straightforward than it looks. Trail running is not a category that responds cleanly to scale; it’s a sport built on subculture, community, and credibility. The moment a brand moves too fast, the community tends to push back. You saw this with UTMB’s Ironman announcement, a technically strong commercial move that created backlash precisely because it felt imposed, commercial and degrading to the spirit of the sport. Nike risks a similar cultural rejection in a sport that has an allergy to heavy-handed commercialism.

We’ve been over this several times before but the reality is that trail running is still a participatory sport foremost and not a spectator sport – and that’s where ultimately the money is for big brands. If ACG now throws up banners at Broken Arrow and puts up an eye-popping prize purse for the elites it doesn’t make the sport more “watchable”. And for the rest of the field – which still pays with their entries for these events to exist – the improvement of Nike arriving at our sport isn’t felt – or event meant. UTMB struggles with this whenever they take over an already existing event. What is the net benefit to the average runner when the banners of the previous sponsors are being replaced with the blue UTMB ones? Just access to stones?

Buzz Burrel comments on Matt’s post with the comparison to Michael Jordan:

M Jordan will earn more this year – 25 years after he retired! – than all MUT runners combined.

Yes, but not because Jordan was THAT much better of an athlete, or person, but because the sport of professional basketball draws people into arenas to watch. There’s money to be made of people NOT actually participating in the sport themselves. In trail running we’re still a million miles away from this. Broken Arrow has been working on this since its inception: how do you get spectators out on course in remote Olympic Valley. I had a conversation with a Tahoe-native, and huge fan of Broken Arrow and even she had to admit that outside of folks running the race or working in the industry getting people to “spectate” or passively participate is still very very hard. But that’s where the money is made these big brands in almost ANY sport. So, it will be seen if Nike is in it to support the average runner or if they just throw up some banners and call it a day.

PS: My thought is that Nike/ACG is in trail running with an eye on the Olympics. They haven’t had a presence in any ‘outdoor/adventure’ sports and trail running being a cousin to running gives Nike an easy in. So with Salomon having made its stated goal to be the brand pushing trail running into the Olympics, maybe this is more a competitive move against Salomon as supposed to HOKA, which aligned to UTMB might be more interested in keeping the sport out of the Olympics to not distract from the annual spectacle in Chamonix.