Under Armour: When the Endorser Outgrows the Brand

This is episode 18 of Making Moves, a weekly mini-podcast where Ne-Lo co-founders Ross Hastings and Kieran Antill pick a company making an interesting strategic move and interrogate it. Unscripted, unedited, under 15 minutes. The Under Armour episode was recorded on 21 August 2026.

This week: Under Armour.

Focus move, or forced retreat?

Under Armour is framing its split from The Rock and Project Rock as a return to focus. A year earlier it did the same with Steph Curry. Two breakups, one story: get back to the master brand.

But the backdrop matters. Store closures. Two years of declining results. The first year of decline ended with the Curry split. The second ended with the Rock. When a focus move lines up that neatly with falling numbers, you have to ask who is actually choosing. Framed as focus, it reads more like the other side no longer valuing the relationship as much as it once did. Focus is the story a brand tells when the alternative is admitting a retreat.

Borrowed equity, or an equity exchange?

These deals started simple. Hold my product, I will pay you to hold it. They are far more sophisticated now. Project Rock and the Curry brand are not endorsements, they are brands in their own right, built on the Jordan blueprint.

We read them slightly differently. One view is borrowed equity, where the sponsor becomes bigger than the brand and people buy the shoe because it says Curry, not because it says Under Armour. The other is an equity exchange, a two-way swap where both sides put something in, even if what Under Armour brings is manufactured distribution. Either way the danger is the same. When the exchange becomes imbalanced, you get a breakup. And like SBS Viceland, it is a lesson in having a clear prenup for the day it goes wrong. The question that decides everything is a boring one: who owns the sub-brand?

The Jordan blueprint, and why ownership wins

Jordan is the case everyone copies and few get right. In the eighties Jordan was as global as it got. He arguably became bigger than Nike. That should have been dangerous. It was not, because of how the deal was structured. Nike spun off the Jordan brand and kept ownership. Owned by Nike, run by Nike. An incredible partnership precisely because of who held the keys.

Under Armour looks like the version where that structure was never locked in. If Project Rock can walk and reappear on On or Puma, then Under Armour was never really the brand. It was the factory. Great products, someone else's name, no control over where they go next. That is the risk of following the Nike blueprint without the Nike paperwork.

What does it mean to wear Under Armour?

Here is the harder problem. A return to the master brand only works if the master brand means something. Nike's highest selling piece of apparel is the shirt that says Nike. People buy into the brand itself. Under Armour has never captured that. There is no logo shirt that answers the question of what it means to wear it.

So the press release has a point. Get back to what Under Armour stands for, because it has to stand for something. Without that, the next time it negotiates an equity deal it has nothing to bring. Lose the meaning and you lose your leverage in every future partnership. A retreat to the master brand is only a strategy if there is a brand to retreat to.

The Chinese play: owning the whole chain

The Curry story has a tail worth watching. He has signed with Li-Ning, a Chinese brand borrowing a big American name to build equity in the US. One of the few examples running in that direction. It rhymes with Federer moving to Uniqlo, an end-of-career signing where you are buying a lifestyle figure and their likability, not a rookie.

It also rhymes with BYD in automotive. Full vertical integration, owning the dealerships, controlling the whole value chain end to end, bypassing the western distribution layer entirely. Brand is the sum of every experience, and if you do not control those experiences you cannot control the brand. That is why Apple owns its stores and why BYD owns its. The uncomfortable part for everyone else is that the bit these players still need, the borrowed equity and the positioning, is the easiest bit to buy. You can write a cheque for a name. Building the rest is the hard part, and they already have it.

Making Moves is a weekly mini-podcast from Ne-Lo, Australia's repositioning consultancy. New episodes every Friday.