With Nike’s help, Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong cancer charity turned a little yellow wristband into a global symbol for cancer survivors.
Celebrities and rock stars sported them on stage. Politicians wore them on the campaign trail and in the White House. And with Armstrong dominating the Tour de France, the trendy little pieces of plastic helped Livestrong pump millions of dollars in cancer survivor programs and spawned countless imitations.
But that partnership, which started in 2004, will soon end. Livestrong announced Tuesday the shoe and apparel company is cutting ties with the charity in the latest fallout from the former cyclist’s doping scandal.
Nike said it will stop making its Livestrong line of apparel after the 2013 holiday season. Foundation and company officials said Nike will honor the financial terms of its contract until the deal expires in 2014.
Those terms were not disclosed, but the loss of revenue could have a huge financial impact on the charity. The partnership with Nike generated more than $100 million of the roughly $500 million raised by Livestrong since it was founded in 1997.
“While 2013 will be tougher than past years, the Livestrong Foundation views it as a rebuilding year in which it charts a strong, independent course,” the charity said in a statement.
Experts were divided whether Nike’s withdrawal would cripple the charity.
“It’s very damaging. It’s a significant signal to the market place that if your largest supporter says ‘I’m going to check out,’ it’s something that is likely to continue to spiral,” said Kelly O’Keefe, professor of brand strategy at the Virginia Commonwealth University Brandcenter.
Leslie Lenkowsky of Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs, said Livestrong can survive because it has a solid organization that established a distinct identity among cancer-fighting groups.
“Losing Nike’s sponsorship by no means signals the end of Livestrong,” Lenkowsky said.
The charity insisted it remains on solid financial ground.
“This news will prompt some to jump to negative conclusions about the foundation’s future. We see things quite differently. We expected and planned for changes like this and are therefore in a good position to adjust swiftly and move forward with our patient-focused work,” the foundation said.
The organization reduced its budget nearly 11 percent in 2013 to $38.4 million, but said Tuesday that revenue is already 2.5 percent ahead of projections.
The foundation also noted that last month, it received a four-star rating from Charity Navigator, which evaluates charities based on financial health, accountability and transparency.
Less than a year ago, the Nike-Livestrong-Armstrong connection was arguably one of the strongest in the field of sports marketing.
Armstrong was the feel-good story of the cancer survivor who returned to dominate a grueling sport. His success in the Tour de France — winning the race every year from 1999 to 2005 — helped turn the small charity he started in a house in Austin into a growing force, and it moved to a new level when Nike started churning out the wristbands in 2004.
Nike stood by Armstrong and Livestrong for years as the cyclist denied accusations of drug use. But the relationship soured last year when the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency released a massive report accusing Armstrong of leading a complex doping program on his U.S. Postal Service teams.
Nike dropped its personal sponsorship of Armstrong last October. The company said it had been duped for more than a decade about his doping, but stuck with the foundation.
Nike co-founder and chairman Phil Knight attended a Livestrong cancer-awareness event in Austin just a few days after ending Armstrong’s personal sponsorship deal.
Livestrong did what it could to separate itself from its founder’s problems. Armstrong was pushed off the board of directors in October and the organization later changed its formal from the original Lance Armstrong Foundation.
Armstrong declined comment Tuesday, noting he no longer has a relationship with Livestrong or Nike.
Although it moved slowly in cutting ties with Livestrong, Nike “likely had no alternative” after the revelations of Armstrong’s doping, O’Keefe said. The Livestrong brand was too synonymous with Armstrong and consequently his cheating. The cyclist admitted to doping to win the Tour earlier this year, though he disputed portions of USADA’s account.
Livestrong “should have made a clearner, stronger break from Armstrong,” such as recruiting other top athletes to lead the brand if it hoped to keep Nike, O’Keefe said.
“They haven’t created a new framework for this brand to live,” O’Keefe said.
AI-Assisted Works Can Get Copyright With Enough Human Creativity, According To U.S. Copyright Office
Artists can copyright works they made with the help of artificial intelligence, according to a new report by the U.S. Copyright Office that could further clear the way for the use of AI tools in Hollywood, the music industry and other creative fields.
The nation's copyright office, which sits in the Library of Congress and is not part of the executive branch, receives about half a million copyright applications per year covering millions of individual works. It has increasingly been asked to register works that are AI-generated.
And while many of those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, the report issued Wednesday clarifies the office's approach as one based on what the top U.S. copyright official describes as the "centrality of human creativity" in authoring a work that warrants copyright protections.
"Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection," said a statement from Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, who directs the office.
An AI-assisted work could be copyrightable if an artist's handiwork is perceptible. A human adapting an AI-generated output with "creative arrangements or modifications" could also make it fall under copyright protections.
The report follows a review that began in 2023 and fielded opinions from thousands of people that ranged from AI developers, to actors and country singers.
It shows the copyright office will continue to reject copyright claims for fully machine-generated content. A person simply prompting a chatbot or AI image generator to produce a work doesn't give that person the ability to copyright that work, according to the report. "Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine ...... Read More