Chicago Bulls icon Michael Jordan took the stand Tuesday in his lawsuit against a now defunct supermarket chain that invoked his named without first asking him.
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He insisted he never gave Dominick’s permission to use his name as part of a coupon offer, and didn’t view the ad as consistent with his image.
After an illustrious career as a basketball player and a marketable pitch-man for Nike, Michael Jordan has ascended to the undisputed position of being the most valuable professional athlete of all-time.
Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist testified that the fair market value of Jordan’s image in advertising is at least $10 million. But he did spar with a defence attorney over whether or not he was qualified to compare the value of his major product endorsements with the value of the Dominick’s ad.
Jordan’s agent previously testified that his client does not agree to one-time deals like that one. It might be worth $10 million in some contexts, he said, but not necessarily in a one-off ad. Dressed in a charcoal suit and grey tie, Jordan drew laughs when he said “don’t look” as he put on reading glasses to read an evidence document while he was on the stand.
With jurors back in the courtroom Jordan said, “it didn’t fit the strategy we operated on in terms of signing and evaluating deals”.
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“It was not selling well across the board, which tells me it just wasn’t resonating with consumers”, Botteselle said.
