Donald Dell, the legendary sports agent behind Michael Jordans' Nike contract, continues to strike tennis deals

When tennis star Stan Smith signed his first sneakers contract with Adidas in 1973, it was sports agent Donald Dell who signed the contract. The same was true for Michael Jordan and Nike and a litany of other stars, from Arthur Ashe to James Worthy to Pete Sampras.

Dell, one of the leading sporting agents in nations, has a rich history with the sport of tennis and with offerings of sneakers in several sports. While there are many ups and downs in this nearly 50-year history, one constant is the relationship that Dell has had with tennis, including Smith, which he recently signed with a another Adidas deal that guarantees the Stan Smith sneaker will last for a long time. to come up.

Dell's career arc begins with tennis. A high-level player in his own right, Dell was captain of the Davis Cup for the United States in 1968 and 1969 and contributed to the formation of ATP. Lawyer, Dell started his own law firm in 1970, which became a trading company and became ProServ, a sports agency with Smith and Ashe, who had two first clients. I have continued to manage Arthur closely and he has been a very good friend for 27 years, says Dell. Stan Smith has been a handshake client for 46 years. Stan is still a customer today.

Dell remembers that Smith won Wimbledon in 1972 and Horst Dassler, part of the Adidas empire founded by his father Adolf, called Dell about a month later in search of a deal with sneakers. With Robert Haillet, a French player who was the face of Adidas tennis at the time, looking to retire, Adidas wanted a new name and a new face to take the brand and Dassler wanted to seek to develop in the United States. United. This is where the Smith case came in. The Haillet shoe ultimately became the Stan Smith model we know today, one of the best-selling sneakers of all. time.

Dell says it created around eight different contracts for Smith with Adidas, but the most unique one came in 2019 when Adidas came to Dell and asked for an endless contract. This new contract guarantees the continuation of the Stan Smith shoe. It surprised me but made me very happy, says Dell. They have been with Stan for a long time and know him very well.

The beginning of Dell came in 1970 when it started managing athletes. His natural connection to tennis has since been inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, which has led him to Ashe and Smith, but as ProServ began to compete with IMG in the rapidly growing world of sports agencies. Dell s & Was was extended in the late 1970s and 1980s to basketball.

It was a business decision in the sense that tennis exploded with cash prizes, but everything else exploded, he says. Basketball was starting to get popular. The NFL had a television contract. The growth of cable TV in sports developed and increased considerably in the 80s and 90s.

At the very beginning of Dells basketball activity, it was relationships with coaches that created the opportunity. From Notre Dame to North Carolina, Dell says he would tell the coaches that he would not recruit and chase their players until the coach gave him an audience with players in their office only at the end of the year. The relationship between Dells and North Carolina coach Dean Smith has continued to flourish thanks to this agreement. I've had all of the Carolina players for 12 to 13 years, says Dell.

And that's where Jordan's story comes in. I got a call on a Saturday morning from Coach Smith and he said: Donald, I called Mrs. Jordan and Michael on the phone and I want to call you, said Dell. Smith advised Jordan to leave school after his first year and Dell was the relationship manager.

Dell says that even though Converse had a solid relationship with Smith and the Caroline players wore these shoes at college, it was Nike and Adidas who pursued the young player most aggressively. As Jordan discusses signing with Adidas, two Nike employees, Peter Moore and Rob Strasser, stopped at Dells Georgetown's office on a Saturday morning, as did Dells assistant David Falk, all four began to negotiate. Although the details of this meeting have been memorized very differently by different parties for decades, says Dell, I wanted a line of Michael Jordan shoes and they wanted Nike, said Dell. We were arguing for about 30 to 40 minutes and Peter Moore suddenly said something like Air Jordan, says Dell. He just came out of his mouth and everyone was amazed. It was perfect. It was an endorsement, but it was so new and different, and it just grew.

Dell says the original agreement was a standard five-year contract with hundreds of thousands of dollars in warranty and a standard royalty of 5%. After a few years, as the contract approached these final stages, Nike co-founder Phil Knight began negotiating with ProServ for the next five-year contract which took two days. The new contract included the 5% royalty on the Jordan product, but also a 3% royalty on all Nike basketball shoes, according to Dell. That 3% pot grew very quickly and quickly with the growth of Nike, Dell said. Jordan had two capacities to generate income.

As basketball grew, Dell grew with him, building relationships with then commissioner David Stern to allow ProServ to negotiate television deals until the NBA brought back the company. internally. This led Dell to manage the television rights, which it still does today with the French company Lagardere Sports and Entertainment.

As television rights increased, so did the possibilities of offering stadiums and arenas their own offerings. Dell was one of the first to secure a massive naming rights agreement, helping to reach deals with Staples Center, Philips Arena and FedEx Field.

Come to think of it, it was exciting at first and now you feel great doing something for good people, says Dell. He remembers working with Ivan Lendl, Jimmy Connors, Tracy Austin, Gabriela Sabatini while he was at ProServ, a company he sold about 20 years ago. They are really nice people with whom you feel connected and who are part of their success. It is very important to put these athletes with the right people to protect their income. At the end of the day, this is what you are trying to do.

Still a law professor at the University of Virginia, Dell points out that he emphasizes that life is about relationships and trust. If you can do these two things well, you will succeed in everything you do, he says. The best thing for me is the quality and character of the people we represent. They made the world of sport better and bigger. Look what Stan Smith has done.