Nike’s former global editor-in-chief, Dan Rookwood, argues that brands routinely squander their most valuable asset: time with extraordinary athletic talent.
Rookwood spent years interviewing athletes after landing his first role on The Guardian’s sports desk in 2000, accumulating experiences ranging from playing tabletop cricket with Freddie Flintoff to driving a vintage Porsche alongside Xabi Alonso.
He also suffered memorable disasters, including losing an exclusive interview with Paula Radcliffe after the recording deleted itself from a MiniDisc on the train back to the office.
The medium has shifted dramatically over 26 years, moving from newspapers and magazines through to branded content, podcasts, YouTube and social media platforms.
What has also changed fundamentally is who controls access, with athletes and their representatives now firmly in charge rather than clubs and communications directors.
LeBron James rewrote the rules of engagement entirely by establishing his Uninterrupted platform, built around its “more than an athlete” mantra, helping trigger a broader movement.
Leading athletes like Erling Haaland and Bryson DeChambeau now run their own YouTube channels, while former players like Gary Lineker and Gary Neville have built entire media companies.
Rookwood says he witnessed persistent missed opportunities during his four years as global editor-in-chief at Nike (NKE), watching valuable athlete time disappear into meet-and-greets and internal obligations.
He recalls a particularly striking moment when Nike Golf approached him with unused time allocated with Tiger Woods, describing it as extraordinary given the access they held to one of sport’s most compelling figures.
“Access isn’t the valuable bit; it’s what you do with the access that counts,” Rookwood writes, criticising brands that spend significant sums simply filming athletes holding products for the camera.
Too many brand partnerships treat contracted athlete time as an obligation to fulfil, reducing world-class talent to answering pre-approved questions and holding up logos on cue.
Rookwood points to Red Bull as a standout example of a brand doing athlete marketing brilliantly, using formats that allow genuine personality to emerge rather than scripted promotional appearances.
Successful branded content, he argues, leans into what makes athletes compelling in the first place, including their competitiveness, their humour, and their authentic behind-the-scenes lives.
He highlights approaches such as EA Sports filming athletes battling each other on video games, Paddy Power writing skits that let players send themselves up, and Red Bull deploying drones to capture awe-inspiring athletic feats.
Rookwood draws on traditional journalistic craft to guide this work, emphasising preparation, curiosity, trust, and the ability to ask questions athletes have not answered a hundred times before.
“More attitude, less platitude” is his guiding principle, pushing for formats that allow athletes to relax and reveal genuine personality rather than recite rehearsed media training.
He argues that the real shift comes when brands stop treating athletes as media inventory and start treating them as genuine content creators in their own right.
Rookwood now works directly with brands and talent management to develop scalable content formats that athletes actively want to participate in, turning contractual appearances into content audiences seek out and share.
His central message is straightforward: if a brand is spending a significant portion of its marketing budget buying access to extraordinary people, it has a clear obligation not to make ordinary content.