Nike burned its relationship with half of America the day it handed Colin Kaepernick a multimillion-dollar contract to kneel on their brand.
Eight years later, the S&P 100 just showed them the door.
And Nike just got kicked out of America’s 100 biggest companies after betting everything on Colin Kaepernick.
$200 Billion Gone and the Clock Is Still Running
On September 4, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced Nike will be removed from the S&P 100 effective September 21 – ending an 18-year run in the index that tracks America's 100 most valuable companies.
The seats Nike is vacating go to Dell Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, Arista Networks, and SanDisk.
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2096970501017010461?s=20
All four are tech companies.
Nike's stock closed at $38.40 on September 4 – a price investors hadn't seen since 2014.
From its November 2021 peak of $177.51, that's a 78 percent collapse – and more than $200 billion in shareholder value incinerated.
That's a decade-long bonfire of a once-dominant American brand.
When Nike made Kaepernick the face of its 30th anniversary campaign in 2018, Trump called it immediately: "Just like the NFL, whose ratings have gone WAY DOWN, Nike is getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts."
The experts laughed at him.
NPD Group analyst Matt Powell dismissed the backlash with one of the most spectacularly wrong predictions in sports marketing history: "Old angry white guys are not a core demographic for Nike."
Turns out, Nike's core demographic was the American consumer.
And tens of millions of American consumers don't like watching their national anthem get used as a political prop.
Hoka Now Owns the Shelf Space Nike Abandoned
Walk into any sporting goods store today and look at the running shoe wall.
Hoka is everywhere Nike used to be.
On Running – the Swiss brand backed by Roger Federer – has taken the premium running lane Nike vacated.
Adidas brought back the Samba and Gazelle and reclaimed the lifestyle market Nike forgot to defend.
Hoka and On have both posted sales growth above 30 percent in recent quarters while Nike's revenue fell in every region and came in below what the company reported two years ago.
Nike couldn't even make two cents of profit on every dollar of sales – its margin shrank to 2.9 percent.
This is what happens when a company gets so wrapped up in being politically cool that it forgets to make products people actually want to buy.
Nike's favorability ratings took a 15-point hit after the Kaepernick campaign and never recovered with the audience that fills Walmart parking lots, watches college football on Saturdays, and buys running shoes instead of talking about them.
Consumers didn't burn their shoes and forget about it.
They walked into a sporting goods store, saw the Swoosh, and kept walking.
Every single quarter for eight years.
Here's what the S&P 100 removal means in plain English: pension funds, ETFs, and index funds that track the S&P 100 now have to sell their Nike shares automatically – because Nike's stock is worth so little it no longer qualifies for the club.
That forced selling will push the stock lower still.
The hole gets deeper on September 21.
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/2096595735672135775?s=20
Nike will stay in the broader S&P 500, so it's not disappearing from the market entirely.
But it has been formally demoted from the table where America's most powerful companies sit – replaced by tech companies building the future while Nike is still trying to figure out why middle America stopped buying their shoes.
They handed Colin Kaepernick a marketing campaign to tell Americans to sacrifice everything for what they believe in.
Millions of Americans believed in the flag.
They took Nike's advice.
Sources:
- S&P Dow Jones Indices, "S&P 500, S&P 100, S&P MidCap 400, and S&P SmallCap 600 Quarterly Rebalance," S&P Global, September 4, 2026.
- Simon Kent, "Woke Nike Booted from S&P 100 as Stock Crashes on Dismal Sales," Breitbart News, September 7, 2026.
- "Nike removed from S&P 100 after 75% stock drop wipes $230 billion in market value," Crypto Briefing, September 2026.
- "Nike Exits S&P 100: The Story Behind the Sportswear Giant's $220B Fall," International Business Times UK, September 2026.
- "Nike Faces Challenges Amidst Leadership Changes," GoTranscript / CNBC, January 2025.
- Matt Powell, quoted in "Nike shares hit as Kaepernick ad spurs boycott," Morung Express, September 2018.
- Donald Trump, Twitter, September 2018.
