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The World Cup is in the United States this year for the first time since the 1990s, which creates massive opportunities for many sportswear and apparel brands.
Perhaps no brands are as heavily invested in the World Cup as Nike and Adidas. Together, they sponsor many of the teams and have rolled out several large-scale campaigns tied to the tournament. On the Glossy Podcast, international reporter Zofia Zwieglinska spoke with Daniel-Yaw Miller, award-winning writer and creator of the bi-weekly SportsVerse newsletter, about these two sportswear giants and their strategies for the World Cup.
Miller said the fact that the World Cup is in North America this year has given many brands the license to step up their games.
“We haven’t seen a World Cup of this scale in many years,” Miller said. “It’s well-positioned for the biggest companies and brands in the world to make the most of it and justify the case for investing in it. Previous World Cups in Qatar and Russia had their own complications. It’s been a while since it was in a location that was home to many huge companies.”
Already, Nike has rolled out collaborations with many celebrities and brands tied to the World Cup, including with Jacquemus, Palace and Drake. Miller said Nike, under the leadership of CEO Elliot Hill, has been working to regain ground in its soccer division.
“In 2024, [Nike] came out with a strategy called Sports Offense, which was based around these five pillars, and one of them is football,” Miller said. “We’ve seen that bear out with how the brand has invested marketing dollars in the lead-up to the World Cup.”
But Adidas has nostalgia on its side, Miller said, as it’s the brand most heavily associated with soccer and dominated the sport for a long time before Nike got involved. The Adidas Samba has been around for decades and recently went through a resurgence just in time for the World Cup.
“Adidas has so many legends like David Beckham, various Brazilian superstars from the ‘90s, Italian legends like Alessandro del Piero,” Miller said. “And Adidas has done a good job of keeping them all in their universe and under endorsement contracts usually reserved for active athletes. But the people with the most spending power are people who grew up watching these players.”
