Nike will back the construction of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago

In addition to focusing on the expansion of the Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, after inaugurating the new playground in Mexico City and waiting for the new Houston sports center planned in collaboration with Travis Scott, Nike decided to support the construction of the new Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago with a $ 5 million donation. Funding is for a maxi facility that will occupy nearly 20 acres in Jackson Park (south side of Chicago) and which will have a library, museum, square, winter  run and sports center accessible to all, "a place to inspire, a place to learn and a place to reflect, but also - as befits a president who brought his love of circles from the South Side of Chicago to the South Lawn of the White House - a place to make friends and become active." The Barack Obama Presidential Center project, carried out by the Obama Foundation, started in 2014 and could be inaugurated as early as 2020.

Barack Obama is an athlete and a basketball addicted. Everyone knows his love of the Chicago Bulls and that during his presidential term he even turned the White House tennis courts into a basketball court. Images of him standing next to NBA commissioner Adam Silver during last year's NBA finals went viral, and the images of him wearing tees and sweatpants while playing basketball made him the coolest president the States has ever had. So it' s quite obvious that the presidential center he is building in Chicago will include not only a library and a museum, as has been common since Roosevelt, but will also have a sports facility.

In 2010, explaining how basketball and sports are an essential tool to help society, Obama told former NBA player Clark Kellogg:

“It’s the quintessential team game… it teaches you how to, at a certain point, get outside of yourself and be part of something”. 

Jorge Casimiro, Nike's social and community impact manager and president of the Nike Foundation said:

“Our belief in the power of sport to transform lives is why we work with organizations like the Obama Foundation — because whether it’s on a global scale or at the grassroots level, we’ve seen what’s possible when sport brings us together.”