A 2 a.m. crash emptied Tiger Woods' sponsor list in three weeks

In late 2009 Tiger Woods was the most lucrative endorser in sport, earning an estimated $100 million a year from sponsorship. The income rested on a marketed image of perfection, and parts of it on products built around him: Gatorade's Tiger Woods Focus drink, the AT&T logo on his golf bag. On 27 November 2009, days after a tabloid reported extramarital affairs, he crashed his car outside his Florida home in the early hours. On 2 December he admitted his 'transgressions', and on 11 December he announced an indefinite break from golf.

The exits began on 13 December. Accenture ended its six-year relationship with one sentence: 'After careful consideration and analysis the company has determined that he is no longer the right representative for its advertising.' PepsiCo discontinued the Tiger Focus drink. Gillette stopped running his ads and cancelled his appearances. Tag Heuer, which had first said his personal life was 'not our business', pulled his image from its advertising. AT&T ended its sponsorship on 31 December: 'We are ending our sponsorship agreement with Tiger Woods and wish him well in the future.'

Nike did the opposite. The sponsor of thirteen years stood by him — chairman Phil Knight called the episode 'a minor blip' — and EA Sports kept him in its golf games. The divergence showed in the money: by July 2010 Woods' estimated endorsement income was $22 million a year lower than the year before, with total earnings down about 30% from two years earlier. The brands that had built campaigns around one face paid in abandoned advertising; the one that could afford to wait still had him.