A spokeswoman for Neymar, 29, denied that he assaulted the woman, and said his contract with Nike ended because of commercial reasons.
Nike first signed Neymar to a sponsorship agreement in 2005, when he was just 13 years old and playing for the youth team of Santos F.C., one of the biggest clubs in Brazil. The company continued sponsoring Neymar after he moved to F.C. Barcelona and then to Paris St.-Germain, establishing himself as one of the world’s best and most popular players. But he switched allegiances to Puma in 2020, without an explanation for leaving Nike before his contract had expired.
In 2018, a longtime employee filed a complaint to Nike, according to The Journal, which cited documents it reviewed and unnamed people familiar with the investigation. According to The Journal, the complaint said that during a marketing tour in the United States in June 2016, the woman helped Neymar, who appeared to be drunk, into his hotel room after midnight. While there, Neymar tried to force the woman to perform oral sex and blocked her from leaving the room, the complaint said, according to The Journal.
The woman asked Nike about the status of her complaint in 2019, The Journal reported. The company, which believed the woman had not wanted it to take any action on it, according to Nike’s statement, hired an outside law firm to perform an investigation. While representatives for Neymar denied the accusation to the law firm, according to the Journal, he refused to personally be interviewed, prompting the termination of his sponsorship agreement.
The investigation of Neymar played out at a time when Nike was confronting a groundswell of complaints from women, both employees and sponsored athletes, about the company’s culture. The employees described a culture of sexual harassment and denied career opportunities, which led to the departures of numerous executives. Sponsored athletes told of having their contracts reduced for becoming pregnant and bullying by Nike’s top running coach, leading to policy changes and an employee protest at the company’s headquarters.

Source: New York Times

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