Nike Say Bots Can Make Up to 50% Of Sneaker Entries

Sneaker resellers and the use of bots has certainly been a hot topic in 2022. Recently announcing updates to their Terms of Sale in November, Nike stipulated that orders placed through software or bots could be cancelled. Furthermore, the Beaverton brand outlined plans to charge restocking fees, refuse refunds, and suspend accounts of users suspected of being resellers or exceeding the spending limits set by the brand.

This left many sneakerheads reassured, albeit a little confused – would these changes actually ​ make a difference? ​​​

Today, Nike finally laid out their plans for combating bots more clearly, with their official website breaking down the approach to ensure more democratic sneaker releases.

‘Nike uses a variety of tools to identify and remove bots from the SNKRS platform, including advanced analytics and machine learning to verify that users and entries are authentic’, the company said in their statement. ‘There is a team of Nike engineers dedicated to dismantling bots designed to game launches. We take bot protection extremely seriously and critically evaluate launches both in real-time and retroactively to evolve our defenses and remain a step ahead of bot developers’.

Nike go on to explain that bot attacks can make up about 10–50% of all entries and that every month, the brand stops as many as 12 million bot calls attempting to game SNKRS launches globally.

To read the full statement, head over to Nike.