介绍:
K: Now that Sharapova faces a ban of up to four years, considering that she’s already 28, is it likely that this might be her career ending, now?
HW: I think that’s up to her. I mean, if you look at the peak performance range of elite tennis players, very rarely do tennis players peak beyond thirty. Only those who keep themselves in extremely good shape, like Serena Williams and Roger Federer, for example, can extend their careers beyond the young up-and-comers. So purely based on a factual assessment, yeah, I think, how can you keep up four years of not playing, knowing that your best years are already behind you? For what reason would you continue to work for four years without being on court, not knowing if you’d ever be a top ten player again? Having said that, she may decide that her best years are still ahead, and that she is going to go for four years of non-competition.
BK: Well then, do you think her business career, or the possibility of coming back during the future, is that over now, as well? Or do you think she still has a chance, maybe after this has passed, to regain some of the sponsorship or business ventures?
HW: In particular with those players whose image and profile, in Maria’s case, has been built on a combination of extremely skilled athletic performance, extremely popular global sport, extremely attractive physical appearance, an incredible marketability in terms of ability to communicate across a range of target sectors but with a very strong focus on the adolescent or young adult market, and on the female market as a further specific focus, the brand damage and the reputation damage that is done by basically putting a question mark over two of those incredibly marketable characteristics and the credibility and integrity that that person has to achieve that, it’s going to damage their brand significantly. If you’re talking numbers, if her marketability at the moment is thirty million a year, she might return to a marketability of three million a year, for argument’s sake, because she still has a number of those features available to sponsors to associate with, and people in years to come will be forgiving and forget about this. But the one thing that she will miss is her principal platform, which is tennis at the highest level. If you cannot associate your commercial sponsorship to that elite performance at a global level, then the value of your investment in such matters will be greatly diminished. She will never, ever reach the heights that she’s just fallen from again.
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