Who Owns Nike?

By Jeremy Bowman – Updated Jun 9, 2025 at 12:44 PM

Key Points

Nike has been publicly traded for over 40 years, enabling wide shareholder participation.
Phil Knight is Nike's largest individual shareholder, owning about 3.3% of its shares.
Vanguard Group and BlackRock are major institutional investors, holding 7.2% and 5.7% of shares, respectively.

Nike (NKE +1.66%) is the world's foremost sports brand, and, like most large companies, who owns Nike is not such an easy question to answer.

The company has millions of investors and has gained a massive following among both investors and consumers. The Swoosh, Nike's curved logo, is synonymous with athletic footwear and apparel around the world. Over the years, Nike has sponsored such world-famous athletes as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Lebron James, and Cristiano Ronaldo.

As a business, Nike has also been incredibly successful, dominating sports like basketball and running, and it's long been a mainstay in streetwear with staying power that would make almost any other sneaker brand envious.

Nike started in 1964 as "Blue Ribbon Sports," a scrappy running shoe company founded by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman, renaming itself as Nike in 1971 after the Greek goddess of victory.

The company grew rapidly through the 1970s, went public in 1980, and continued to grow from there.

NYSE: NKE

Nike

Today's Change

(1.66%) $1.05

Current Price

$64.20

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$95B

Day's Range

$63.74 - $65.19

52wk Range

$52.28 - $82.44

Volume

15M

Avg Vol

14M

Gross Margin

41.45%

Dividend Yield

0.02%

Who is the owner of Nike?

Nike (NKE +1.66%) has been publicly traded for over 40 years. It's a component of the S&P 500 index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, meaning it has millions of shareholders, directly and indirectly.

However, there are a few significant shareholders of the company, including founders and institutional investors.

The foremost among them is Phil Knight, who co-founded Nike along with Bill Bowerman. The two met on the University of Oregon track team. Knight was a runner, and Bowerman was the coach. Bowerman was the designer in the company's early days, while the much younger Knight ran the operations. Bowerman passed on much of his stake to employees before the 1980 initial public offering (IPO), while Knight's stake grew tremendously. Keep reading to learn more about Nike's top shareholders.

Largest Nike Shareholders

Let's take a look at NIke's largest shareholders. The figures below are from Nike's July 2023 annual proxy report.

Individuals

Phil Knight: 51,144,661 shares, or 3.3% of shares outstanding. Knight is the co-founder of Nike and served as its longtime CEO, running the company from 1964 to 2004. He is Nike's largest individual shareholder and holds more of the stock through his Swoosh, LLC holding company.
Mark Parker: 3,212,383 shares, 0.3% of shares outstanding. Parker is the current executive chairman and former CEO of Nike. Parker served as the CEO from 2006 to 2020.
John Donahoe II: 1,435.975 shares, 0.1% of shares outstanding. Donahoe is the current CEO, having taken over from Parker in 2020.
Andrew Campion: 433,658 shares, less than 0.1% of shares outstanding. Campion is the former chief operating officer (COO) and chief financial officer (CFO) of Nike and left the company in January 2024 after 17 years.
Heidi O'Neill: 246,456 shares, less than 0.1% of shares outstanding. O'Neill is the president of Nike's consumer, product, and brand division. She joined Nike in 1998 and has held various executive roles since then, including leading Nike Direct, Nike's marketplace, and its four geographic operating regions.

Institutional investors

Swoosh, LLC: 437 million, 29% of shares outstanding. Swoosh is the largest single shareholder of Nike stock, and it was formed to hold the majority of Phil Knight's Nike stock. It was created in 2015 when Knight announced his retirement from Nike's board.
Vanguard Group: 109.7 million, 7.2% of shares outstanding. Vanguard is one of the world's largest investment managers, and the asset manager has steadily accumulated a stake in Nike, though some of those holdings are associated with exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other indirect holdings on behalf of clients.
BlackRock (BLK +0.66%): 85.5 million shares, 5.7% of shares outstanding. Like Vanguard, BlackRock is another one of the largest investment managers in the world, and it owns shares of Nike associated with investments like ETFs on behalf of its clients. BlackRock's stake in Nike doubled to almost 80 million in 2016 and since then has been relatively steady.
Travis Knight 2009 Irrevocable Trust II: 82 million, 5.4% of shares outstanding. Travis Knight is Phil Knight's son and a member of the board of directors. Some have accused the Knights of using the trust to dodge taxes, given that the trust currently holds about $1 billion in Nike stock.

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How to invest in Nike

Nike has been publicly traded for more than 40 years. Anyone can invest in the stock if they want to. All you need is a brokerage account. If you don't have one, you can open one up with a brokerage like Charles Schwab (SCHW +1.65%), Fidelity, Robinhood (HOOD +0.80%), or E-Trade.

At the time of writing, a share of Nike costs less than $100 a share, so it's relatively affordable. However, if you'd like to buy less than that, you can buy fractional shares through most brokerages.

Once you've made the decision to buy the stock, all you need to do is decide how much you want to invest and hit the buy button. Typically, it's a good idea to limit new investments to 10% or less of your portfolio value in order to be adequately diversified, even for a blue chip stock like Nike.

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About the Author

Jeremy Bowman has been a contributing Motley Fool stock market analyst, covering technology, consumer goods, and macroeconomic trends since 2011. Before The Motley Fool, Jeremy was a newspaper reporter, restaurant manager, and English teacher abroad. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Colorado College and a master’s degree in business administration from American University. One of his Motley Fool headlines was briefly featured on Late Night with Stephen Colbert.

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Charles Schwab is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Jeremy Bowman has positions in Nike. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple, FedEx, Intel, Nike, ServiceNow, and eBay. The Motley Fool recommends Charles Schwab and recommends the following options: short August 2025 $24 calls on Intel and short June 2025 $85 calls on Charles Schwab. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.