A picture from one of Nike’s campaigns in the year 2015 went viral recently and fans cannot stop talking about it. The image features some of the best tennis players to have graced the game ever, including the likes of Serena Williams and Andre Agassi.
The image is from the year 2015 before the US Open went off. It featured a total of 11 players, who, at that time represented around 86 Grand Slam singles titles. Presently, 99 Grand Slam singles titles can be found in this one image.
Apart from Agassi and Serena, other legends such as Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras and Maria Sharapova were also part of this rare photo. Other players such as Nick Kyrgios, Madison Keys, Grigor Dimitrov and Eugenie Bouchard made it too.
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Fans went down memory lane as they could not stop discussing about how such legendary players got together on one platform to celebrate and enjoy the sport.
It is from the event organized by Nike to mark 20 years of its 1995 street tennis advertisement featuring former American tennis stars Sampras and Agassi. A tennis court was built by Nike in New York’s Greenwich Village and legends of the sport were invited to play and recreate the ad.
It also showed the power of Nike, who managed to bring stars of the sport together to take part in an exhibition event. The brand was lucky to benefit from two of the greatest rivalries in men’s sport, i.e. Agassi-Sampras and Federer-Nadal. While in women’s sport, two of the richest athletes of all-time in the women’s game, Serena and Sharapova were under them too.
Presently as well, the brand is associated with young and budding tennis talents like Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Holger Rune and Naomi Osaka among others. They have always tried to capitalize on the popularity of these players and used it as an extensive marketing tool.
Recently, they decided to put Alcaraz’s 2024 Wimbledon Nike Vapor 11 player-edition shoe on their website for retail availability. This was a major move by the brand, who knew how profitable it could be for them given the people would go all out to buy it.
At the same time, it helped Alcaraz as well who received even more recognition due to this step. Before Alcaraz, this privilege was given to players like Federer, Nadal and Osaka.
Thus, Nike’s association with tennis players is something that has been running for ages and will continue to run in the future as the brand has no intentions to stop it. Interestingly, during the US Open 2024 fan week, they could make the most of Agassi, McEnroe and Alcaraz sharing the same court in a men’s doubles exhibition match also starring Novak Djokovic.
