Adidas is sponsoring more teams than any other brand at the World Cup but Nike dominates when it comes to the boots the players will wear

Adidas and Nike go head to head at the World Cup. Who will win?

Adidas will celebrate 20 years as an official partner of Fifa on Thursday when the 2018 World Cup begins in Russia. The German outfitter has spent hundreds of millions of pounds — including between $96 million (£71.9m) and $176 million for this year’s tournament — for exclusive rights that include having its logo on match balls and referees’ uniforms.



Spain, Argentina and the defending champions Germany are among the 12-team contingent that will wear the three stripes over the next month, the largest representation of any brand. But it is Adidas’s old foe Nike that could end up winning this year’s battle of the brands.

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Nike controls basketball and American football on its home soil and has chipped away at Adidas’s dominance in “soccer” for decades. Football has grown exponentially in the United States, and the Oregon-based group has adjusted its strategy to focus on a larger piece of the multibillion-pound global market.

At recent World Cups, Adidas teams have dominated: in 2014 the company boasted both teams in the final when Germany beat Argentina, and over the past five tournaments three winners have lifted the trophy donning the Adidas logo.

Adidas was founded almost 70 years ago by one of two brothers in the small German town of Herzogenaurach — the result of a bitter fallout that led the other brother to start the rival brand Puma. But Adidas’s success cannot be bought with history alone.

Despite Adidas becoming an official Fifa partner in 1998, investors have regularly preferred Nike over Adidas. Even after one billion people watched the all-Adidas final in Brazil four years ago, Nike’s share price ballooned and beat Adidas’s by more than 30% in the three months after the tournament.

Success from the World Cup comes at different times, according to Andreas Inderst, senior equity research analyst at Macquarie Group. Because Adidas is an official sponsor, its shirts are a main seller.

“At the time of the World Cup it’s certainly the jersey business, because many supporters buy the jersey,” Inderst says. “If you go to Germany and watch, let’s say in Berlin with up to one million other people on giant screens, there will be lots of German national jerseys but also from the opponent. Of course you don’t go there with your football boots.”

After the tournament ends and the new football season and school year start, Nike’s high volume of top athletes resonates with children and young adults looking to buy boots and other sport-inspired streetwear.

Sports streetwear is nothing new but remains very strong and Inderst estimates that it makes up around 70% of the global athletic footwear market. Look around the workplace and you’ll likely see more and more trainers worn at the expense of traditional alternatives.

Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar are the faces of Nike’s football brand but the company has also stockpiled some of the game’s up-and-coming stars, notably Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling. In fact, 132 of the 200 most expensive players at the World Cup, as ranked by CIES Football Observatory, will wear Nike boots. Adidas will have 59.

The groundwork Nike has done over the past decade has been smart, yet simple. While Adidas has given hundreds of millions to Fifa, Nike has ploughed its massive resources into growing the marketability of its athletes, primarily via social media, according to Mark Thompson, managing director of the sponsorship management software SponServe.

Nielsen Sports’ 2018 World Football Report estimates that Ronaldo amassed more than half a billion engagements across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram between January and May. That’s more than 350 million more than Lionel Messi, Adidas’s top online influencer, who does not have a Twitter account. In terms of followers, Ronaldo has more than Beyoncé and LeBron James combined.

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Declaring a winner of the World Cup is difficult, even more so before a ball has been kicked. What we do know, though, is that Nike is serious about football and is a major threat to Adidas’s market lead.

“Picking a winner or loser is almost impossible,” Thompson said. “That will be down to how well each brand’s marketing teams have planned and can maximise the value of their activations around this incredible event.”