Endorsements and Piracy

          Athletes do not just get paid for playing their sports. Companies will endorse athletes, especially the better ones so their product is seen by more people. Athletes make a lot of money from endorsements. Here are just a few athletes and the number of endorsements they have/had:

Michael Jordan

• Nike
• Gatorade
• Bijan cologne
• MCI WorldCom
• Rayovac batteries
• Hanes underwear
• Ball Park Franks
• Wheaties cereal (General Mills)
• Wilson Sporting Equipment
• Oakley Sunglasses
• AMF Bowling
• CBS Sportsline
• Chevrolet (Chicago area)
• McDonalds
• Bigsby & Kruthers (men's clothing store)
• NBA Entertainment/CBS-Fox home videos
• Michael Jordan's Restaurant, Chicago
•  Upper Deck
• Coach Leather products 
• Warner Brothers (Space Jam film)

David Ortiz

• Dunkin' Donuts
• Fanatics
• New Balance
• Reebok
• Samsung

Alex Rodriguez

• Pepsi
• Mercedes-Benz
• Guitar Hero

Peyton Manning

• Nation Wide
• Master Card
• Papa Johns
• Direct TV
• Krafts

Mike Trout

• Subway
• Nike
• Old Hickory Bat Co.
• Phiten
• BodyArmor Super Drink

Miguel Cabrera

• Chrysler
• Maltin Polar
• Franklin Batting Gloves
• Wilson Fielding Gloves
• New Balance
• Working Publishing
• Bozeman Watch Co.
• Oakely
• Sony
• T-Petroleum Co.

Jonathan Toews

• Bauur
• LemonHead
• Chevrolet
• Canadian Tires Co.

Andrew Luck

• Klipsch
• Body Armor Sports Drink 
• Nike
• Quaker Oats 
• Gatorade
• EA Sports

          Piracy is the reproduction of someone's work without their consent. This happens in sports and entertainment all the time. People will illegally record movies or sporting events and sell the copies. This is very illegal and the consequences if caught can be very large. There are examples of piracy everywhere. We will just look at some. 

Sony-          Recently Sony has been hit hard by piracy. Five movies were stolen by hackers and four of those movies had not even come out yet at that time. One of the movies was "Annie", and that still is not in theaters. Another movie was Fury. Annie has already been downloaded at least 200,000 times already. Fury is the second most pirated movie only behind "Guardians of the Galaxy" by Marvel. The Hack group calls themselves the Guardians of peace. The other movies that have not been released yet but were pirated were "Still Alice", "Mr. Turner", and "To Write Love on Her Arms".

MGM-          A court ruling was made recently over whether or not streaming websites could share movies and music from person to person without the products being paid by each person. The ruling went in favor of MGM nine votes to none and the acts by these websites were seen as acts of piracy and the company was able to protect their products.