ABSTRACT
Despite growing interest from fans and the increased commercialism and professionalism of women's sports, the quality and quantity of sponsorships in women's sports still lag behind those in men's sports. In particular, there is a history of precarious relationships between sponsors, athletes, and motherhood. Thus, in this chapter, we examine Nike's sponsorship of women athletes and the public response to the company's recent efforts to embrace motherhood. We begin by reviewing sponsorship and women athletes before focusing on American track and field stars Allyson Felix's and Alysia Montaño's stories of their experiences with motherhood during Nike sponsorship agreements. Next, using computational textual analysis methods on Big Data samples drawn from social media, we explore the public response to a recent Nike marketing video about athletes and motherhood. We then discuss results from our thematic analysis of the public response on Instagram to Nike's Toughest Athletes advertising campaign. We outline how such an analysis provides insight into public responses to elite athlete mothers and to the company's treatment of the women athletes they sponsor.
