McIlroy & Brailsford - a tale of two sports deals

Later today Rory McIlroy will step out at Abu Dhabi’s Fairmont Hotel as the new face of Nike and as a result will take home a rather tasty £156m (ish) over the next 10 years.

Given Nike's track record, it's widely expected that he will have severed ties with his other sponsors including Jumeirah, Oakley and Titleist. That last one's interesting - Titleist, widely regarded by amateur golfers around the world as the leading innovator and manufacturer of golf balls. They are also a heavy weight player when it comes to the design and production of golf clubs themselves, in fact McIlroy has used them for his entire professional golfing life. Their wedges, irons and drivers are considered some of the best quality products on the market along with the likes of Callaway, Ping, Mizuno and TaylorMade. One name you won't see on that list is Nike. Because despite their future £156m investment (and even bigger past investments in Tiger), Nike equipment is still seen by many amateurs as an inferior product to that of its rivals, a large multinational that was late to the game and lacks the focus of other golf 'specialists'.

Rory's new clubs snapped yesterday by golfdaily.com

For Rory, a young sportsman with a finite number of years to earn his crust as a top sportsman, you simply can't turn down 156million quid - even if it might impact on your performance for the first year. I could't turn it down.... but you know what? I think (Sir) Dave Brailsford probably would.

Last week, the biggest (and currently the most successful) cycling team in the world launched their new ultra modern, innovative kit for the 2013 season. But Team Sky's clothing is no longer made by adidas. In a year when the team will recieve more exposure in Europe and particularly the UK than ever before, Sky have opted to move suppliers to Rapha, a tiny british manufacturer based in Kentish Town. Rapha has just 65 staff and sales in 2011 of £13m. To put that in perspective, Adidas has 47,000 employees and sales of around £10.8bn, so it seems fair to assume financial motivations didn't top the list of priorities for the team principle at Sky.

Rapha has been around for just 8 years, they design and manufacture beautiful (and rather expensive) cycling gear for the well heeled enthusiast. It is a great coup for Rapha and you can read more about their ethos and how the business has grown in this recent FT interview with the founder Simon Mottram (the fact that this article is even appearing in the FT says a lot about the transformation of cycling in this country over the last 10 years).

Imagine seeing a decision like this made by Manchester United - you won't - because it simply wouldn't happen anywhere else. But Dave Brailsford does things differently.

“Team Sky has achieved this year’s level of success because of a strong and steady vision to find improvement at every level to help our riders win. I see Rapha joining us next year as another step in that direction. They share our ambition and vision for cycling," said Sky team principal Dave Brailsford.

Famed for this attention to detail and desire to find small incremental improvements across every aspect of the sport, the only public inkling of what may have brought this decision about came last summer from a SportsPro interview with Sky Pro Cycling's head of operations Carsten Jeppesen, he alluded to the point that adidas often outsourced its cycling manufacturing to specialist 'white-labelling' outlets in Italy that produce equipment for all of the teams.

"Some of it is made in Italy through Moa," Jeppesen said. "They make a lot of bike kit for different brands. So you do get a set of gloves that are made somewhere, and maybe they have another factory that is Adidas-approved that makes something else. The expertise comes from Adidas, but they get it manufactured wherever there is manufacturing expertise. They outsource it"

For Sky to gain that micro advatage in their clothing, they need something no one else has got, and if that means dropping one of the biggest sports brands in the world for a home grown local shop, then so be it.

I'm not used to seeing that - a decision in sport, based on what's good for the sport. I look forward to appreciating the difference it makes to the team on the French roads this summer, now let's just hope Rapha can get some more server space and keep their online shop functioning for more than 5 minutes.