The Inevitable 2023 Pros Switching Sponsors Thread

[oddjob]

actually, I believe one of the issues specifically is that he is not being paid much at all. Prodigy did not invest millions (literally or figuratively) into Gannon. they signed him to a long-term contract when he was young that does not pay very much. you can say they had the foresight to do so, but as far as I know your analogy vastly overstates the amount of material effort expended by Prodigy to improve Gannon

How much does he get paid since you seem to know?

It was at least enough for him to extend it 2 years last year

And they offered to quadruple it during this spat.

All the more reason pros need actual agents to negotiate this.

 

[dehaas]

We all understand the upside of a long term deal for the manufacturer. They lock in a price now and hope they save money down the road as the player's value increases. Pretty simple.

Long term deals benefit players towards the end of their careers, when there's a chance their performance will decline. They're locking in guaranteed money.

Long term deals make no sense for up and coming players. It's coming across that Gannon tried strong arming his way out of his Prodigy contract to go chase that covid boom money and it's backfiring.

 

[dmoore1998]

If Gannon loses the lawsuit, does he feign injury for an entire season? Play all unsanctioneds? Tour with Nikko? Join a film team to do color commentary?

Pure speculation here...but given how little seems to be written into most disc golf contracts...I wonder if he couldn't just keep throwing Prodigy discs with wiped stamps, wear his own shirts with his logo, and basically do nothing to help Prodigy promote their products that aren't specifically called out in his contract.

Then every time he wins and gets an interview casually mention how proud he is of himself for not giving up and fighting through when his hands kept getting roughed up by the flashing on his discs.

Prodigy might be ASKING in the lawsuit for him to be forced to honor the contract. But there's NO WAY anyone thinking rationally at Prodigy wants that to happen. They want monetary damages. Nobody wants a hostage as a spokesperson...particularly when it's not like he is just doing 3 commercial spots to run for a year. He is in the media constantly for a primary activity involving their product.

 

[Pethor]

Gannon tried to do what seemingly every other tour pro has done and got his hand caught in the cookie jar. Must be frustrating for him and his family, but someone was gonna be caught out in all this, and yeah Buhr family - you had a contract.

The real bungle here by Prodigy (more than the lawsuit) is not keeping him happy in the first place - like why not produce a TON of Gannon discs? Why not flood the market with them? Look at what MVP did for James! Look at what Discraft does with their pros! Does Discmania make any discs that aren't signature discs?

The point of signing young guns to a long term contract is to benefit/cash in from it when they "hit" and Prodigy just... didn't. Not only did they cost Gannon royalties, they cost themselves!

 

[dmoore1998]

How much does he get paid since you seem to know?

It was at least enough for him to extend it 2 years last year

And they offered to quadruple it during this spat.

All the more reason pros need actual agents to negotiate this.

The problem with "quadrupling" what they pay him is that we all know a huge chunk of player revenue is based on disc sales with their name attached to it.

What jumped out to me as a primary issue in the lawsuit (if you can get past the memes and $500 bonuses) is the idea of "here's your disc sale money", and then when asked to see records that this is the correct amount, you get nothing.

This isn't a direct sales job like cars where you get commission but you know "this month I sold 7 cars". The only records of what you sold are with the company, and if they aren't providing you regular reports, you have no way of knowing what they actually owe you. Quadrupling your base pay when you think/suspect/wonder if they're cheating you out of exponentially more on commission isn't likely to move anyone's needle.

 

[ru4por]

If they can't oblige what the agreements are. The player has every right to find the better sponsor. Same as any sport. Not a lot to say about knowing what you are worth, and wanting better for yourself, and knowing someone is willing to pony up.
Prodigy is spilling all of their beans in their responses for why they should be letting Gannon out of his contract. They simply don't have their s**t together, and this kid is a moneymaker they are scared of losing.
Retailers who have chimed in with their perspective sort of amplifies the point of. They simply don't have their *hi* together.
So. It's a bad look for the company with ashy discs that don't sell. It's also kind of a notice on their doorstep.
Get your ***t together.

Perhaps you have some insider knowledge. If so, I wish you would stop speaking in platitudes.

If you have no insider knowledge, the speculation here is rampant. Thinking you are worth more than a contract you signed previously, has nothing to do with this discussion.

 

[TheOtherBill]

We wondered what the 'new normal' was going to be after the DG Covid boom and here it is - the courses are still more crowded, discs are about $5-10 more, million-dollar deals are still a thing, and players are realizing their power within the sport to shape it how it suits them best. No one has to take Innova's base deal anymore and hope a world championship gets them a disc deal.

IMO things change for pros after Val. She didn't get what she deserved after 5 worlds so she walked away. DD and Prodigy contracts started to look like modern sports contracts, and the players started doing what pros in modern sports do - to look out for #1.

 

[dmoore1998]

Gannon tried to do what seemingly every other tour pro has done and got his hand caught in the cookie jar. Must be frustrating for him and his family, but someone was gonna be caught out in all this, and yeah Buhr family - you had a contract.

The real bungle here by Prodigy (more than the lawsuit) is not keeping him happy in the first place - like why not produce a TON of Gannon discs? Why not flood the market with them? Look at what MVP did for James! Look at what Discraft does with their pros! Does Discmania make any discs that aren't signature discs?

The point of signing young guns to a long term contract is to benefit/cash in from it when they "hit" and Prodigy just... didn't. Not only did they cost Gannon royalties, they cost themselves!

1. I'm not privvy to a ton of insider information from other players...but anecdotally I would doubt that every other tour pro who has left a company sent 30-day cure letters to their sponsor essentially accusing them of breaching their contract.

2. When you get that letter, you realize it's a big deal. This isn't "hey I never got that sales report I was supposed to get Monday" and then forgetting about it again for another week and annoying someone. This is the first step to either being sued or leaving the company. You get them the sales reports for the entire history of your company by the end of the day. You apologize about whatever discs you were supposed to put out and invent some excuse like "we've really been struggling internally to figure out the best mold to do that with, this disc is associated with you, but we already sell a lot of them because of your name, we were thinking something less popular that we know you throw a lot of, do you have a suggestion for what mold it should be?".

3. What you can't do when your "young gun" contract hits is treat them like you treat the "nobodies" who don't care about your overall disc sales and get so little money that they're just happy to get SOMETHING.

4. Gannon doesn't really seem to do a lot of promotion of Prodigy discs via his social media. The biggest asset Prodigy has is his NAME. It blew my mind that he wanted MORE discs with his name on it and they weren't doing it. Like it blows my mind that you can't go to the Prodigy page and look at the team and have a list of exactly what's in their bag with a link to the buy the discs. Their team page is literally just the player's name, PDGA #, and city they live in, with a link to that player's personal instagram.

This story sent me to Prodigy's website where I was absolutely blown away. Their "New Releases" section has the 2 most recent being March of 2022 and September of 2020. "News" section most recent is January 2021. "Promotions" from November 2020. Tournament Results most recent is April 2021. It also makes me wonder if Gannon didn't just think "I can leave whenever I want to, these guys can't tie their own shoes without help, what are they gonna do if I just say that I'm out".

 

[flatflip]

Disc sponsors will drop a player like a hot potato whenever it is convenient (see Locastro). It's a two way street. Prodigy did not invest millions on R&D. They paid a kid pennies on the dollar to move their plastic. He put in the work to develop into one of the best players in the world. He won the tournaments. Prodigy has zero claim on his name or his talent unless he wants to continue to represent their brand. He obviously does not.

 

[Flick Maniac]

Did they ever to a USDGC disc for him? Seems like a no brainer. Even just bottom stamp the heck out of whatever semipopular disc you have piles of.

 

[mostlynorwegian]

Perhaps you have some insider knowledge. If so, I wish you would stop speaking in platitudes.

If you have no insider knowledge, the speculation here is rampant. Thinking you are worth more than a contract you signed previously, has nothing to do with this discussion.

Of course the speculation is rampant. What else do you have when you are relying on gut instinct, and surmising the landscape as it is being surveyed from a multitude of sources. Whether they be insider (dg), retail where there are several responses by retailers indicating they are a PITA to deal with, or as a consumer who sees ashy discs.
They all kind of end up at the same conclusion. A company suing a 17 year kid is looking like it is having a problem running in the tall grass with the other big dogs.

 

[ChrisWoj]

IMO things change for pros after Val. She didn't get what she deserved after 5 worlds so she walked away. DD and Prodigy contracts started to look like modern sports contracts, and the players started doing what pros in modern sports do - to look out for #1.

I'd say the Paige situation with DD was also a huge wakeup call. Paige and DD had a verbal agreement to extend her contract for three years, but didn't actually sign any paperwork to that extent (despite DD having announcements on their blog saying stuff like "Pierce signs..."). So at the end of the next year (and I'm assuming the end of the boiler-plate one-year deal everybody on the team was getting back then every year) with one year being the longest a verbal agreement can be held in Kansas, Pierce headed for Discraft. In light of that I think every company has been a bit more thorough with their contracts (some more so than others).

 

[robdeforge]

How much does he get paid since you seem to know?

It was at least enough for him to extend it 2 years last year

And they offered to quadruple it during this spat.

I totally missed/forgot that he had renegotiated for 2 years, I thought he was still on his original "rookie deal" so to speak. my bad

All the more reason pros need actual agents to negotiate this.

100% agreed

 

[nothinbuttree]

actually, I believe one of the issues specifically is that he is not being paid much at all. Prodigy did not invest millions (literally or figuratively) into Gannon. they signed him to a long-term contract when he was young that does not pay very much. you can say they had the foresight to do so, but as far as I know your analogy vastly overstates the amount of material effort expended by Prodigy to improve Gannon

I am not saying they invested millions in him, but they literally sponsor dozens of players. I am sure many of those are nominal investments, but its not a stretch to suggest they have invested 7 figures total in their players in the last few years.

The point is that for every 'win' they have probably 20-30 'losses', where they don't even recoup their nominal investment. A drug company might research 20 different drugs, and only ever have one make it to market.

Not defending Prodigy in any way, I think their actions are frankly very childish and will cost them greatly in an economic sense, if not ruin them. Not sure who they think they are that they can get away with this. But I do think contracts should be adhered to...by both sides. Looks like Prodigy may have breached first, but that is just based on the ultiworld article.

 

[dmoore1998]

I am not saying they invested millions in him, but they literally sponsor dozens of players. I am sure many of those are nominal investments, but its not a stretch to suggest they have invested 7 figures total in their players in the last few years.

The point is that for every 'win' they have probably 20-30 'losses', where they don't even recoup their nominal investment. A drug company might research 20 different drugs, and only ever have one make it to market.

Not defending Prodigy in any way, I think their actions are frankly very childish and will cost them greatly in an economic sense, if not ruin them. Not sure who they think they are that they can get away with this. But I do think contracts should be adhered to...by both sides. Looks like Prodigy may have breached first, but that is just based on the ultiworld article.

I don't have their figures...but I would bet that very few, if any, players are "losses" for their sponsors. So many contracts are based on disc sales being the primary source of sponsor payment that it makes it nearly impossible for the company to actually take a loss.

The most likely way they could wouldn't seem to be the "we sponsor a lot of players who aren't great" argument. It would almost have to be "we gave 1 person a massive contract and they disappeared completely due to injury" while refusing to post on social media or anything else.

 

[nothinbuttree]

I don't have their figures...but I would bet that very few, if any, players are "losses" for their sponsors. So many contracts are based on disc sales being the primary source of sponsor payment that it makes it nearly impossible for the company to actually take a loss.

The most likely way they could wouldn't seem to be the "we sponsor a lot of players who aren't great" argument. It would almost have to be "we gave 1 person a massive contract and they disappeared completely due to injury" while refusing to post on social media or anything else.

That's a fair enough view and I would have to agree a company can lose far more on one player that is getting well into the 6 figures than 10 players get 4-5 figures each. Most of the players Prodigy supports though I have never heard of, and I cannot imagine them moving one single piece of plastic or encouraging someone to try out a Prodigy disc, because they are never seen on coverage.

 

[dmoore1998]

That's a fair enough view and I would have to agree a company can lose far more on one player that is getting well into the 6 figures than 10 players get 4-5 figures each. Most of the players Prodigy supports though I have never heard of, and I cannot imagine them moving one single piece of plastic or encouraging someone to try out a Prodigy disc, because they are never seen on coverage.

A lot of those lower teams get paid simply by having affiliate links. They advertise on Prodigy Facebook pages and say "click this link to buy this disc I'm promoting". When people do, they make a little money. They aren't on coverage, they're getting discs from Prodigy at wholesale, having their stamp put on it, and selling them locally. A lot of those "sponsorships" are essentially "we'll sell you our discs at a discount, and we'll allocate you X number of discs per year you can stamp and sell".

 

[ChrisWoj]

I don't have their figures...but I would bet that very few, if any, players are "losses" for their sponsors. So many contracts are based on disc sales being the primary source of sponsor payment that it makes it nearly impossible for the company to actually take a loss.

The most likely way they could wouldn't seem to be the "we sponsor a lot of players who aren't great" argument. It would almost have to be "we gave 1 person a massive contract and they disappeared completely due to injury" while refusing to post on social media or anything else.

Its a good question.... early on when I was a low-level member of team Dynamic Discs I think I was probably overall a gain for the company. I pushed a LOT of discs into peoples' hands, and made the Trilogy companies regular parts of the bags for players who had spent years (in some cases decades) unwilling to move off of Discraft and Innova stuff.

Conversely.... I was probably a loss for the last two or so years of my time with them, because my career basically had me playing disc about once a month and I wasn't active in the community, more focused on enjoying the sport by trying to introduce it to students in the district I taught at. At that time they were giving me $300 of merch per year and I wasn't really giving anything back at all.

(interestingly I was pretty sure I was gonna get dropped at the end of 2018 for that reason, and was actually surprised that when it happened they told me the reason was entirely because I was promoting legalization of recreational marijuana on my social media [they also made it clear to me that they did not perceive any times where I promoted imbibing illegally], it had nothing to do with the fact that I hadn't done anything for DD in two years)

Some sponsored players are a gain. Some are a loss.

 

[The Shide]

AND… I seriously doubt Gannon was getting money in his early years with Prodigy because, as I understand it, younger "sponsored" players don't get actual cash, they get discs & mech as part of any annual allotment. Pennies on the dollar. Or maybe not. Maybe Prodigy does things differently with junior players. Doubt it, though.
When ****erson & Cat left last year, didn't you just have to think, WTF? (So the 1st four letters of Chris' name is not allowed on this site?!)
As has been already stated, this is not looking good for Prodigy.
If they want to go after Gannon to prove a point, maybe they are in collusion with the other manufacturers, like baseball did a while back to try to rein in the escalating contracts of free agents. Maybe?
With all the walking away from contracts going on lately, and the continued growth of DG, it was only a matter of time that one of the companies put up the stop sign. Maybe the reason Innova never went after Ricky was that it would have just been too expensive to litigate and just not worth the time, money & effort. Maybe DD gave Innova some hush money. Who knows?
So if both parties want to be able to walk away reasonably unscathed, they may need to work it out outside the courtroom. I don't know. I don't have any skin in this match, but I love my DG & this is the latest hot topic. Curious to see what Gannon will be throwing this weekend.

 

[DanJon]

I'm not picking a side, but Prodigy isn't just suing a "17 year old kid" as I've seen a million times now.

They are suing Gannon Buhr, the contracted Professional Athlete and his Mom, as she is the parent/guardian/legally binding co-signer.