Mathematics for Business and Personal Finance

Unit 1: Basic Math Skills: Workshops

BusinessWeek Online

Read this article. Write a paragraph explaining why professional athletes diversify their business opportunities off the playing field.

How Tony Hawk Stays Aloft

It's no mean trick to be a youth icon at 38. Can the skateboarder keep his franchise booming?

By Mark Hyman

At 38, Tony Hawk might seem a bit long in the tooth for a skateboard icon. But don't think that has slowed the extreme sports hero down even one RPM in the product endorsement arena.

On Nov. 7, Hawk's fans can point their boards to the video-game store and pick up the latest in his hot-selling series, Tony Hawk's Project 8. Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam shipped in October. Hawk also has a new direct-to-DVD movie in stores (Boom Boom Sabotage), a clothing brand for boys (at Kohl's Corp. (KSS)), a weekly satellite radio show (4 p.m. Pacific on Sirius (SIRI))—and even a deal that supplies cell-phone users with Hawk-inspired ringtones.

Wait, there's more. Ready for the Tony Hawk thrill ride? Six Flags Inc. (SIX) tells BusinessWeek it will launch the attractions, billed as a "total Tony Hawk experience," at two parks next summer.

Hawk's deals, which earn him from $5 million to $7 million a year, according to marketing insiders, rank him among the richest pitchmen in any sport. What sets him apart even from that elite company, though, is his pipeline to young consumers. Strangely, for a father of three closing in on 40, Hawk hasn't lost his juice with kids, a trick few aging sports celebs have mastered. But hero worshippers are notoriously fickle, and Hawk faces challenges as he works to hold on to his cultish following. The most daunting: how to build his brand and cash in big while avoiding deals that cast doubt on his iconoclast image.

For that reason, Hawk has steered clear of some megadeals. He isn't pining to join the Nike (NKE) team, says Pat Hawk, the skater's sister, who is COO of Tony Hawk Inc. in Vista, Calif. "Tony Hawk wouldn't be Tony Hawk if he had a swoosh on head to toe," she points out. But skeptics are talking about Hawk's recent deal with midmarket clothing retailer Kohl's, questioning whether it may cost him precious skate cred.

Still, Hawk is flying high for now. "Anyone who doesn't know Tony Hawk lives in a cave!" says Cole Sprouse, 14, the TV actor who with his twin brother, Dylan, last summer launched Code, a general-interest magazine for the young. Dylan adds that Code's debut issue included an interview with Hawk because "in all truth, when you put Tony Hawk in a magazine, kids are so likely to grab it."

So what's the source of Hawk's lasting appeal? Start with his pioneer status. Hawk was hardly the first kid on a skateboard. But when he started in 1975, public awareness of the sport was almost nil. At the time, there were fewer than 40 professional skaters, and the media showcases that have given extreme sports national exposure, ESPN's (DIS) X Games and the Dew Action Sports Tour, were decades away.

Then there's the fact that Hawk is still frequently found performing a death-defying Frontside Ollie Nose Blunt. "Tony Hawk is a legendary name, yet he's still alive and on the scene. People pay homage to that," says Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at NPD Group Inc., a market research company in New York.

Pleasing Parents
Hawk was the heavyweight champ of his sport through the 1980s and ‘90s, rolling to the No. 1 ranking in vert skating (on a steep sloped track) 12 straight years through 1999. He hasn't skated competitively since 2003, though he performs often at exhibitions and on videos put out by his production company. "He lives and breathes the lifestyle that these kids are either doing or want to do," says Jeff Bliss, president of Javelin Group, an Alexandria (Va.) sports marketing company.

Hawk has also pulled off the near-miraculous feat of being as popular with parents as he is with their offspring. In a sport with an ethos of rebellion against school and adult authority, Hawk's clean-cut style stands out. "Parents are thrilled to look at this guy not tattooed up head to toe, a guy who wears a helmet when he skates. That's the one they want their kid to think is cool," says Pat Hawk.

Hawk started skateboarding at 9, entered his first competition at 11, turned pro at 14, and won the world championship a year later. But it was a video game that turned him into a pop culture giant. In 1999, Santa Barbara (Calif.) publisher Activision Inc. (ATVI) put out Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. By 2000 it was a best-seller, outstripping such franchises as Madden and Mario. Hawk's game has rung up sales of $1.1 billion, and Activision's agreement with him has been extended to 2015.

The Activision games also stretch the Hawk brand far beyond kids with crash helmets in their closet. About 75% of the game's players don't even own a skateboard, says Will Kassoy, vice-president for global brand management at Activision.

Hawk's contribution to the video games, beyond his name, has been to insist on realism. Everything must mirror real skating, down to the paint jobs on the decks. "I'd played video games since Missile Command in the local arcade. When I got a chance to work on a game, I wanted it right," he says.

Likewise, he labors over Boom Boom HuckJam, an extreme-sports megashow on wheels that Hawk launched in 2002. A showcase for himself and other skaters and bikers, the show toured eight Six Flags parks last summer and is scheduled to return in 2007.

Some of Hawk's deals appear to be less about skateboarding than cashing in, though, and they can make diehards wince. There's the Tony Hawk birthday party collection--paper cups and plates. (Eight 9-inch plates go for $3.10.)

The recent clothing deal with Kohl's also smells like a sellout to some. The skater's line of shirts, pants, and hoodies hit the shelves at the mass retailer in March. Before that, Hawk was handled by Quiksilver Inc. (ZQK), a maker of trendy action sports apparel. "His biggest risk is losing control of his brand image," says Javelin's Bliss. "If I were him, I'd never have allowed Quiksilver to hand off [the clothing] to Kohl's."

Hawk, of course, defends the decision: "We wanted to be less expensive, less exclusive." Still, he admits there have been issues. After some early photo shoots, Hawk says, "we had to explain to them: ‘If you do it your way, the core kids into Hawk clothing will be wondering: ‘What's wrong with those guys?'" When you're a late-30s star building a brand aimed at teens, you can't have fans asking that question.