Hi, I'm Dan Pramak, and welcome to Axios Recap, presented by Facebook.

Today's Wednesday, August 26th.

Hurricane Laura has been upgraded, Marco has been downgraded, and we're focused on a sneaker

scandal.

For most Americans, Monday was just the start of another week.

But for fans of the Los Angeles Lakers and their late superstar Kobe Bryant, it was Mamba Day,

because he wore the jersey numbers 8 and 24.

824.

Get it?

Anyway, Nike had been getting ready for Mamba Day for quite some time, planning to extend

it into an entire Mamba week by rolling out five new additions of Kobe Bryant sneakers,

one per day.

But most people, most fans who wanted these shoes, haven't been able to get them for the

$180 retail price.

Because these were limited editions, and Nike's sneaker app, which it used to sell

direct consumers, was sold out in a matter of seconds each day. That left fans to scour

the so-called reseller markets, sites like Goat and Stockex, where the shoes were going for

hundreds of dollars more, often because the resellers had gotten them by using bots. It's basically

tech-enabled price gouging, the sort of thing that a ticket scalper can't do on the street, but could

do behind a desk or behind an app. Sneaker reselling has become very big business, and not just

when it comes to Kobe Gear. StockX is valued at around $1.3 billion, and Cowan

and company analysts say there could be $6 billion worth of sneaker resales by 2025.

...