Nike has seen better days.
Not long ago, the company sat atop the global sportswear industry, backed by elite training programs for international athletes, soaring stock valuations, and award-winning marketing campaigns, some of which entered into the pop culture fray.
Now the company, established in January 1964, is fighting battles on two very different fronts: one involving the safety of the athletes in its own programs, the other its bottom line.
The lawsuit
A lawsuit filed by the parents of a 16-year-old minor who attended the Nike Elite Program at Nike’s headquarters on July 4th and 5th alleges that a Nike-affiliated participant sexually assaulted a visiting student at a hotel in Beaverton, Oregon. The suit was filed on Friday, September 18, 2026. The student has not been identified in court records.
The Nike Elite Program hosts 40 of the nation’s top high school track and field athletes; 20 are male and 20 female. The program is operated in partnership with the National Scholastic Athletics Foundation (NSAF), according to the lawsuit. The alleged assault was reported to the Beaverton Police Department, and court documents indicate an investigation is underway.
According to the complaint, the plaintiff, the accused participant, and several other athletes gathered in a Beaverton hotel room provided through the program at approximately 10 p.m. on July 5. After the other athletes left, the lawsuit alleges, the accused assaulted the victim and choked her when she tried to call for help. The complaint describes evidence of physical violence left behind in the room.
The lawsuit also alleges that staff members associated with Nike and the NSAF found the victim crying in a hotel hallway afterward and encouraged her to characterize the encounter as consensual, allegations that have not been proven in court. The complaint states the victim was taken to a local hospital following the incident.
According to the lawsuit, the accused participant was expelled from the program and sent home, which further alleges he had prior disciplinary issues and was already being removed from the program when the assault is said to have occurred.
If substantiated, that detail raises questions about why he remained active in the program at all. “Nike and NSAF did not warn any of the other athletes nor their parents of the issues with the assailant,” the lawsuit alleges.
Nike did not respond by publication time.
A pattern of scrutiny
The allegations land against a backdrop of prior controversy in Nike’s elite athletics programs. The Nike Oregon Project shut down in October 2019 after coach Alberto Salazar and an endocrinologist affiliated with the team received four-year bans from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency for doping-related violations.
Around the same time, former Oregon Project athlete Mary Cain, Kara Goucher, and others described a toxic team culture marked by body-shaming and emotional abuse.
Business pressures
The company’s business has also struggled. Nike’s market cap peaked near $264–277 billion in November 2021, when shares traded around $179; it sits well below that today at about under $60. Analysts point to a shift toward direct-to-consumer sales at the expense of wholesale partners like Foot Locker, a broader move into lifestyle fashion that ceded ground in performance running to rivals like On (Switzerland), Adidas (Germany), and mounting competition from international brands such as Asics (Japan), Lululemon (Canada), and Craft (Sweden).
The US’s second-largest trading partner is Canada. Due to the current political tension between the two countries, Canadians have chosen to buy Canadian or international products instead of buying from the US.
What’s next
Individually, a lawsuit, past scandals, and a stock slide are each survivable. Together, they raise a harder question: whether Nike’s institutional problems, on the business side and in how it protects the young athletes in its own programs, are related.
As the Beaverton case proceeds, that’s the question the company will have to answer.
