To sponsor pretty much every track athlete in the olympics?!

Can barely see anything other than fluoro yellow and pink shoes!

A LOT, Nike is one of those companies that does marketing first and makes product second (Red Bull being another example). They spent $2.4BN on marketing in 2015 and almost none of that goes on traditional advertising like print and TV anymore.

There are a range of deals. A mate of mine was “sponsored” by them years ago. He just used to get boxes of kit through the door, 6xshoes, 3xshorts etc. Probably a few hundred quids worth to them and there were a number of runners I was aware of who got a similar deal.
He ran 46:25 for 10 miles BTW. I think they would offer him a lot more now given how standards have slipped!

Red Bull really look after their sponsored riders at every level almost obsessively

Yes but they want their lb of flesh and expect the results…

I bet the shoes the athletes wear aren’t the same as the crap they sell in the shops that falls apart after a few months.

I bet the shoes the athletes wear aren’t the same as the crap they sell in the shops that falls apart after a few months.

Why woudn’t they be? If you get all the free shoes you need why would you care if you need to use a new pair every few weeks?

In any case are all decent running shoes not made in the far east from similar materials and with similar technologies.

Hard to compete on product performance, competing on price is undeseirable, so marketing is where it’s at.