🦿The (Hidden) Problem With Nike’s New Robotic Shoes

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I have a gripe with Pittsburgh. After spending a weekend there for Packers-Steelers, I came away with a new appreciation for the city, especially its natural beauty. But the thing I still can’t wrap my head around are the “three” rivers.

For those unfamiliar with Pittsburgh’s geography, the city is situated at the confluence of two major rivers: the Monongahela and the Allegheny. However, instead of one river simply flowing into the other and continuing on with the same name, these two rivers actually form a third river (the Ohio River).

Now, I’m not sure why this bothered me so much. Maybe it’s because of my Midwest bias, but in my opinion, creating a new, third river when two rivers meet is just stat padding. I mean, it’s not like a new river is formed every time one meets up with the Mississippi.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: The (Hidden) Problem With Nike’s New Robotic Shoes

📉 Biggest Loser: What Happened to Gatorade Fast Twitch?

🏆 Winner’s Circle: SoFi Stadium is in the Middle of the Biggest Scandal in Sports

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🗞 The Big Story

Nike just revealed the most high-tech pair of shoes ever created, but they still have one major problem that no one seems to be talking about.

Project Amplify: Last week, Nike revealed a top-secret shoe they’ve been working on for years called “Project Amplify.” The company claims that this is the “world’s first powered footwear system,” which can reportedly help people move 20% faster for up to 6 miles, meaning if you’d normally run a 10-minute mile, then by wearing these shoes, you’d be able to run an 8-minute mile without any extra effort.

You can think about these things like an e-bike for your feet, where batteries strapped to your calves power a motor that helps lift your heel as you walk, more easily propelling you forward.

According to several journalists who have already tested the product, each motor automatically adapts to your pace, apparently making you forget you’re even wearing them until you take them off and realize just how slowly you move without them.

Now, it’s important to note that the fancy product images you’ve been seeing are just for show; the model that people have actually been testing is just a loud, bulky prototype that Nike says likely won’t be ready for retail until at least 2028.

Still, it’s not the product timeline (or even its potential price) that I think is Nike’s biggest issue here. Instead, it’s what Project Amplify’s team lead, Michael Donohue, described as the “Segway” problem.

The Segway Problem: When the original Segway was unveiled in 2001, it was hailed by visionaries like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos as the future of personal transportation. Jobs even called its invention “as big a deal as the PC” and said that “future cities would be designed around it.” However, thanks in large part to how dorky people look when riding these things, they never caught on — which, in my opinion, is the same problem Nike is facing right now.

Don’t get me wrong, plenty of initially “dorky” things have become popular over the years, but they’ve all come from brands people respect and aspire to, and given Nike’s track record over the past couple of years $NKE ( ▼ 0.69% ) , I just don’t know if they have the cultural power to convince people that these things are suddenly “cool.”

📉 Biggest Loser

What the hell happened to Gatorade Fast Twitch?

When it launched less than three years ago, it was being called the new “go-to energy drink” for athletes, but now it’s nowhere to be found. However, the reason for its downfall isn’t as simple as you might think.

NFL & Gatorade: In September 2022, Gatorade made headlines when it announced that it would be “entering the energy drink category” in collaboration with the NFL by launching “a caffeinated spin-off called Fast Twitch.”

At the time, industry experts expected this deal to be an instant success, saying that it had “everything going for it,” including an exclusive presence around NFL players, and “unmatched retail distribution.”

Many of these same experts even predicted that this deal between Gatorade and the NFL could set a new precedent for how brands and leagues work together, since it was revealed that the NFL would receive a cut of all product sales going forward.

So if Fast Twitch had the backing of two of the biggest companies in the world, what happened?

Well, after a full season of product placement on NFL sidelines and in team locker rooms, Gatorade poured millions into a retail launch in 2023, and this is when things started to come crashing down.

Consumer Demand Decrease: Almost immediately after hitting shelves nationwide, reports from energy drink giants, including Monster and Celsius, began to surface about the “relatively unprecedented” slowdown in the US energy drink market.

As you read about the causes for this decrease in demand, you’ll hear the same buzzwords you hear across any industry these days, ranging from “interest rates” to “inflation.” However, the more I dug into the data, the more I realized that Fast Twitch was likely doomed from the start.

Positioning: According to Monster’s co-CEO, consumers view energy drinks as an “affordable luxury,” so it makes sense that as the economy gets worse, so do energy drink sales.

Then, when you consider that a single energy drink already targeted towards athletes (like Celsius) only costs around $2.00, while Fast Twitch was selling for up to 80 cents more per bottle, it’s no secret why the product flopped immediately.

And with these same energy drink giants still posting “surprise” decreases in sales in 2025, it’s no wonder that the people who had direct experience working with Fast Twitch say it’s basically a “defunct” brand less than three years after launching.

I guess not everything the NFL touches turns to gold.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

The Chargers and the Rams are currently in the middle of one of the biggest sports scandals of the year, but for some reason, nobody seems to know about it.

Let’s break it down.

SoFi Stadium’s Design: SoFi Stadium is one of the most unique venues in sports, billed as the first indoor-outdoor stadium in the country. However, this open-air design isn’t without its drawbacks, the most annoying of which involve birds.

Being located so close to the ocean, SoFi Stadium immediately recognized that it was going to have a problem with seagulls flying into the stadium to scavenge for food. This is obviously annoying on its own, but pair that with the risk of a fan getting pooped on, and suddenly the indoor-outdoor design becomes a PR disaster waiting to happen.

That’s why, when the stadium opened, they enlisted the help of a Falconer named Charles Cogger, who brings three large hawks to every home game that fly around outside of the stadium to deter any birds from entering it.

However, even though this strategy has helped SoFi avoid a potential poop incident, what happened to two hawks at a recent Rams game has become a much bigger scandal.

Hawk Thief: During the team’s September 28th win over the Colts, Falconer Charles Cogger drove his UTV out to the front of SoFi Stadium like always to begin releasing his hawks to patrol the sky. However, after stepping away from his two-seater for a brief moment, Cogger returned to find that his vehicle had been stolen, along with two of his hawks, Bubba and Alice, that were still caged in the back.

Cogger immediately alerted nearby vendors and the local police, who eventually released a photo of the suspect. However, the Falconer began to worry that if even a couple of days passed before the birds were found, it would be too late.

Status Update: By Tuesday, September 30th, the police had found the stolen UTV five miles from the stadium, but the hawks were nowhere to be found. That was until over a week later, on October 6th, when Bubba was located 25 miles from where the stolen vehicle was found in someone’s backyard.

However, even though Bubba has been returned to Cogger, after a month of searching, Alice still hasn’t turned up. Luckily, if you live in LA, there is a $1,000 reward for finding her, but this saga won’t be over until that happens.

⏱️ In Other News

• The Dallas Mavericks are suing the Dallas Stars

• What the hell is going on with the WNBA?

• The amount of money NFL teams are spending on injured players

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

The Action Network published an interesting study a few years ago ranking the best cities for an NFL game day, and some of the ratings genuinely shocked me.

Here’s where Pittsburgh landed for me.