Nike ended its eight-year Pacquiao deal in a day; sponsors for his April fight backed out

Manny Pacquiao had endorsed Nike for a little more than eight years — ring shorts with the swoosh, one of the biggest commercial faces in boxing. The deal was an image bet: Pacquiao was a Philippine national icon, a congressman since May 2010 and a strong contender for a Senate seat, and Nike was paying to be associated with that image.

Asked about same-sex marriage in an interview with a Filipino television station, Pacquiao said: 'Have you seen any animal having male-to-male or female-to-female relations? If you have male-to-male or female-to-female [relationships], then people are worse than animals.' On 17 February 2016 Nike terminated the contract. Its statement read: 'We find Manny Pacquiao's comments abhorrent. Nike strongly opposes discrimination of any kind and has a long history of supporting and standing up for the rights of the LGBT community.'

Pacquiao apologised on Twitter within hours — 'I'm sorry for hurting people by comparing homosexuals to animals' — but the apology did not close the story. The next day he stood by his opposition to same-sex marriage and said he was happy that 'a lot of people were alarmed by the truth'; in an Instagram video he repeated his stand 'because of what the Bible says'. His promoter Bob Arum said that if he had been running Nike he would have made the same decision, and that several sponsors who had been ready to finalise deals for Pacquiao's 9 April fight against Timothy Bradley had pulled out.

The cut had precedent: Nike had already severed ties with Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, Oscar Pistorius and Lance Armstrong. What the company lost was an eight-year association that collapsed overnight, and what the boxer lost was the endorsement market — the sponsor pipeline for his next fight dried up in the same week. Pacquiao went on to win a Philippine Senate seat in May 2016; the career outlived the deal.