Adrian Peterson Losing Sponsorship
Adrian Peterson Losing Sponsorship
The NFL have suffered severe public relations issues with the Ray Rice I=incidence and lately with the Adrian Peterson child abuse allegations. According to the article, Adrian Peterson has been dropped by some of his biggest sponsors including Nike and Castrol motor oil, a unit of BP. These companies dropped their sponsorship deals after pictures surfaced of Adrian Peterson’s 4-year son, who had severe bruises all over his body. Furthermore, the Minnesota Vikings, the team that Adrian Peterson plays for, has essentially halted Adrian’s participation in team activities including their weekly games. Unlike Ray Rice who was completely suspended from the NFL and his team, the Vikings are reluctant to fully let Adrian Peterson go. They still have a tie to one of their best running backs in history, albeit a weak tie. The article alludes to the fact that Nike had typically not rescinded their deal with athletes going through some sort of criminal charges or social criticism. So the question essentially is, why are companies so eager and swift to rescind their ties to an athlete especially in the past year?
The solution lies with the fluidity of information among individuals, companies, and teams in modern day America. Before the incidence the relationship between Adrian Peterson, NFL, consumers, and companies can be described by Fig 1.
Fig 1
Fig 2
As the Fig 1 demonstrates, there existed a relatively strong tie (S) between the different nodes before the child abuse allegations. However after the allegations, the relationship morphed to be like Fig. 2. This is not a structurally balanced network. This is because this network cannot be separated into two sides of positive relationships with only weak relations connecting the two sides. The success of the NFL as well as the companies is very dependent on the desires of the consumers. Thus to make this network structurally balanced, both the NFL, Nike and Castrol Oil has to relinquish its tie to Adrian. This move by NFL and companies is fairly predictable in our world today since the consumers are carefully monitoring the actions of these institutions. Furthermore, the consumers want the decisions of the NFL and companies to align with their interests.
This is the eventual relationship that formed is the network below. This brought stability back to the sports world and help preserve the interest of consumers, NFL and the companies.
http://www.clickondetroit.com/consumer/adrian-peterson-loses-big-castrol-endorsement-deal/28093752