Adidas and Nike have got involved in an off-the-pitch row about which is the biggest global brand in football. It would all be a bit reminscent of ‘my dad is bigger than your dad’ if there weren’t large sums of money and brand reputations at stake. Nike has identified further expansion of its football business as a key part of a broader objective of increasing its total sales by 40 per cent from $19bn to $27bn.
Adidas and Nike have got involved in an off-the-pitch row about which is the biggest global brand in football. It would all be a bit reminscent of ‘my dad is bigger than your dad’ if there weren’t large sums of money and brand reputations at stake. Nike has identified further expansion of its football business as a key part of a broader objective of increasing its total sales by 40 per cent from $19bn to $27bn.
Adidas will have more shirts in play in the tournament, 12 as against 10 for Nike (a figure that includes Umbro kit). Adidas is also producing the tournament ball. However, many believe that the real battle is over the profitable boots business which matches Adidas’ F50 against Nike’s new premium Mercurial Superfly II [where do they get these names from? Perhaps I understand now why some players are inconsistent]. The head of the Nike brand, Charles Denson, claims that ‘we’ll have more boots on the pitch than any other brand.’
Nike reported $1.7bn in sales of its core brand football boots, shirts and other equipment in 2008 (2009 figures will be out in three weeks time). Adidas reported football merchandising sales of €1.3bn which would have been ahead of Nike at the then prevailing euro-dollar exchange rate, but puts them behind at the prevailing rate. A further complication is that Nike added on $276m of sales in 2008 when it acquired the Umbro brand. In short, Nike is out in front.
Nike’s pre-World Cup marketing is focused on a three-minute video ‘Write the Future’ which features Wayne Rooney and Portugal’s Ronaldo. I have seen it and it is impressive. It has already been viewed more than 14m times on YouTube and more than 29m times on all other web platfforms. It is backed up by a global banner advertising blitz on Facebook and YouTube.
Nike is also encouraging viewers to insert their own football video moments into its ‘Write the Future’ slot. The mind boggles: fat, balding bloke scores own goal in pub team. Nevertheless, one can see the point: it will promote the video even more. Umbro has a separate campaign featuring WAGs from World Cup winning countries.
Adidas is fighting back with a World Cup Star Wars pardoy video which features David Beckham, Snoop Dogg and Noel Gallagher. Since it was unveiled last week it has been viewed 2.6m times.
Clearly the World Cup will not be fought just on the pitch.