By Danielle Kaye
NEW YORK, – As the World Cup kicks off, Nike and Adidas are competing on and off the field.
Nike needs a win. The soccer tournament, this year held partly on the U.S. company’s home turf, comes two years into CEO Elliott Hill’s turnaround push. Market share has eroded, the company expects sales to drop 2% to 4% in the current quarter, and shares have fallen more than 30% this year as investors grow impatient with Hill’s progress.
There are hopeful signs on the retail pitch. Shoppers entering the Pele Soccer store in Times Square this week were greeted by a row of mannequins decked out in Nike’s U.S., Brazil and France kits.
And Nike’s “Rip the Script” World Cup campaign, built around a film featuring soccer icons and celebrities from Kylian Mbappe to Kim Kardashian, was plastered on the window display at Champs Sports in midtown Manhattan. The Foot Locker subsidiary’s prominent placement of Nike jerseys signals the company’s progress in rebuilding relationships with retailers, many of which had been severed as part of former CEO John Donahoe’s pivot to a direct-to-consumer model.
“Football allows us to reach so many different people,” Camilo Andrade, said Nike’s vice president of global football. When it comes to working with wholesale retailers, the strategy “has been first and foremost to make sure that we restore those relationships,” Andrade added.
On top of two new Mercurial soccer cleats launched this month, the sportswear giant is outfitting 12 national teams, partnering with local street-wear designers and refreshing soccer merchandise at more than 5,000 Nike and wholesale stores globally.
But competition is fierce. Adidas, an official World Cup sponsor and a brand long associated with soccer, is sponsoring 14 teams and supplying the coveted match ball, which serves as a visual anchor at the heart of retail stores.
British retailer JD Sports has seen that Mexico and Argentina jerseys – both backed by Adidas – have so far been the best-selling team kits, a spokesperson said. Brand victory will depend in part on which teams win in the real tournament, analysts said.
Louis Carrillo, 30, was drawn to a rack of Mexico jerseys at Pele Soccer – not only to support his native country’s team as they face off against South Africa on Thursday, he said, but also because of the signature Adidas three stripes on the shoulders of the shirt.
He used to buy Nike’s Mercurial soccer boots when he was younger, “but I feel that it’s not the same anymore,” Carrillo added, as his excitement about the design has waned.
MOVE THE NEEDLE?
Analysts also caution that even a World Cup lift might not be enough to shift Nike’s trajectory. The sportswear giant still needs to release more fresh products that cut through.
RBC Capital Markets downgraded its Nike stock rating just one day before the first World Cup match. Analyst Piral Dadhania cited a slower-than-expected turnaround, and said the World Cup catalyst and new products are “not sufficient to offset clean-up actions elsewhere in the business.”
“The problems that Nike has are not going to just go away because of the World Cup,” said Morningstar analyst David Swartz. “But it’s certainly an opportunity to get the brand back in front of people.”
Nike’s merchandise assortment will help boost brand momentum as the tournament gets under way, but so far, Adidas products appear to be more visible at stores like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Foot Locker, analysts at Telsey Advisory Group wrote this week.
(Reporting by Danielle Kaye; editing by Peter Henderson and Nick Zieminski)
