American ATP Pros Unveil Insane Story of How Novak Djokovic’s Sheer Talent Nearly Forced Luxury Brand Into ‘Bankruptcy’

When sponsors line up players with massive deals, they expect them to win every match they play. The player’s success is directly tied to the amount of traction that they can get for their brand. While almost every case would hold true in this regard, the scenario of Novak Djokovic wasn’t exactly the same for one of his sponsors. Earlier this week, the likes of Sam Querrey and Jack Sock unearthed an interesting story of how a brand parted ways with Djokovic due to his immense success.

Back in 2009, Djokovic signed a 10-year partnership with Sergio Tacchini as his apparel partner. This came after Djokovic ended his association with Adidas. During that time, the Serb was in his prime and it was a major signing for the brand. However, every coin has two sides and Sergio Tacchini had to shell out bonuses for Djokovic as he dug deep in almost every tournament he played.

Narrating this tale on the Nothing Major podcast, Sam Querrey said, “Remember hearing that back in the day when Novak was with Sergio Tacchini for 4-5 years and the rumor was that he was essentially putting them out of business because he kept winning every major.” Further, recollecting that incident, Jack Sock added, “He made them bankrupt, didn’t he?

Djokovic enjoyed some of the best days of his career in Sergio Tacchini’s clothes. He won a staggering 84.7% of his matches during that tenure and also achieved the World Number 1 rank. When the deal between them was signed, the brand promised Djokovic bonuses for his wins but th
Did Djokovic’s success ironically lead to Sergio Tacchini’s downfall? Hoitially, Sergio Tacchini onboarded Djokovic with a relatively small fee which would add on if Djokovic kept winning trophies. However, while the latter was true, the brand couldn’t make the payouts to Djokovic as promised which led the two to separation. Additionally, a journalist, Darren Rovell, also pointed out other problems with

Vatsal Shah, a Tennis Writer at EssentiallySports, combines sports management insight with two years of rich content creation experience. His journey at ES involves delving into the core of tennis, covering ATP/WTA tours, and contributing 2000+ articles. Notably, one of his pieces on Venus Williams garnered over 400k views.