Visit Rwanda. This isn’t the first time Premier League fans have seen this logo. And champions Arsenal will be all too familiar with it. It was their sleeve sponsor from the 2018/19 season onwards, the deal having been signed in May 2018, running eight seasons until the end of 2025/26. It was reportedly worth £10 million a year. Although last season marked the end of Arsenal and Visit Rwanda, Aston Villa has become their latest Premier League club to showcase their logo.

Visit Rwanda

Visit Rwanda is, in essence, a tourism brand that is owned and operated by the state of Rwanda.

It has a diversified portfolio with deals across other football clubs including Paris Saint-Germain and Atlético Madrid and dabbles in NBA and NFL teams; LA Clippers and LA Rams respectively.

Jean-Guy Afrika, CEO of the Rwanda Development Board, speaking the day the Arsenal deal was concluded, stated that “it is driving awareness and visitation for Rwandan tourism”. The partnership, in essence, raises the overall profile of Rwanda and brands it as a popular destination open for visitation and economic partnership with the world.

The man with the plan behind this is Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda since 2000.

Sportswashing

Let’s set the playing field. What does it mean to sportswash?

Sportswashing describes the practice of governments, individuals or groups using sport to improve their reputation by diverting attention from activities others consider controversial or unethical through hosting events, buying or sponsoring teams.

It was true of Vladimir Putin’s Gazprom when they sponsored Schalke 04.

It was true of Qatar hosting the World Cup in 202.

And it has been the case for the government of Rwanda.

Hotel Rwanda

In 2004, the critically acclaimed film called Hotel Rwanda hit Hollywood. Based on the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines in central Kigali during the 1994 genocide, credited with sheltering more than 1,200 people. Don Cheadle played his character, and the film made him a well-known figure.

Image of Don Cheadle (left) and the real character (right) he portrayed in the film, Paul Rusesabagina.

In the post-film years, Rusesabagina eventually left for Belgium and became an outspoken activist against the state of Rwanda. In August 2020, Rusesabagina boarded a private jet in Dubai that he believed was set to take him to Burundi. The jet, hours later, was re-routed to land in Kigali, where Rusesabagina was arrested on account of terrorism and crimes against the state. He was ultimately released in 2023 after years of alleged torture and psychological torment.

The Hotel Rwanda case is one specific case, and a particularly prominent one, as it involves the character of a Hollywood movie. However, Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, has been linked with rebel militias in East Africa and the arrest of other political opponents who have been outspoken against him.

The Bridge Between the Two Nations

As is normally the case, football can be a ledger that records the power dynamics of our political world. Paul Kagame and his relationship with the Premier League is one of those cases. It symbolises a broader link between the UK and Rwanda at a state level.

In 2022, Boris Johnson attempted to set up a “corridor” whereby asylum seekers arriving in the UK would be sent to Rwanda, deemed a safe country that could take on the influx of people the UK was experiencing. After protest from other parties, the plan was ruled unlawful because it would send asylum seekers to a country accused of human rights violations. Ultimately, it was scrapped.

Murky Waters

Football clubs are always on the lookout for sponsorships, and they need capital to compete with the top leagues. A deep pocket can take any club far, ask Manchester City fans.

However, when a club wants to support a cause in a developing country and cash in at the same time, they begin to step into a grey zone of ethics and the type of governments willing to get involved.

So for Aston Villa’s next fixture, take a second look at their jersey and what that logo means in football.

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Transfer season is still open, and football fans are glued to their phones, triggered by every notification that might signal the move of their favourite player, or a player to their favourite club. Amid all this, another interesting transfer might be unfolding at Liverpool FC. Not on the pitch, but at the ownership level.

The deal involves a cast of billionaires that is quite unconventional: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, and former Morgan Stanley banker Amit Bhatia. Technically, the trio form what is called a consortium. Three parties pooling money to acquire a stake together, each staying independent. Bhatia leads it. But the head-turning name is Bezos.

Important caveats:

• Fenway Sports Group remain the majority shareholder and keep full control. This is a minority investment, not a takeover.

• The deal is reportedly worth around $2bn for roughly one-third of the club, valuing Liverpool at $6bn. FSG paid an estimated $480m in 2010.

Shady Motives

Billionaires buying into football clubs is hardly a new trend. The road is littered with men who arrived promising a new horizon and left as hated figures.

Jim Ratcliffe learnt that the hard way. A billionaire from Manchester, who came in under the slogan of a man swooping in to save his boyhood club. The structure of his deal was not so different from this one, with a minority stake bought into an American-owned Premier League giant, Manchester United.

In this case, neither an American e-commerce founder nor a Brazilian tech investor is arriving out of love for the game or any fiery passion for Liverpool. Moreover, they are not facing the pressure of having to pull Liverpool out of some dark era like Manchester United. This should be a reassuring part of the narrative for Liverpool supporters.

What Liverpool offers Bezos is an asset. Premier League champions a year ago, consistently in the Champions League, and with a new ownership deal would place them among the top 5 most valuable clubs in the world. A stake in Anfield adds prestige and a “sexy” sporting brand to his investment portfolio.

The Deep Waters

Even though a troop of some of the most successful entrepreneurs is a force to be reckoned with, football-owner wealth is its own league.

Football clubs can quickly become cash burners. A spending war against certain ownership models bleeds like an open hydrant. Take the Gulf states: Abu Dhabi at Manchester City, Saudi Arabia at Newcastle, Qatar at Paris Saint-Germain. These pockets are bottomless, and the trap is going move for move against them.

The Billionaire Race No One Asked For

A few years ago it was rockets. Bezos against Musk. Two billionaires competing to see who could “race into space” quicker.

Not too long ago, we were in an absurd alternate reality where a cage match was close to fruition between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Thankfully, that never occurred.

There are these seemingly bizarre billionaire arm wrestles that the media eats up with cheap clicks. It’s sad to imagine whether or not football ownership could become the new space race among this elite group of billionaires.

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We’ve explored a few pieces in this newsletter that examined the growth of soccer in the US, or generally in North America. Now the biggest World Cup ever has come and gone on American soil, and the marriage of the biggest sport in the world with the biggest commercial market has finally occurred. An extended format with 48 teams across 3 countries. Messi and Ronaldo both grazed the World Cup pitch for what was, in all likelihood, the last time. And the world tuned in. More than 60 million viewers in the US alone for the final, and globally, the engagement figures are in the billions.

A market that has been brewing for the last few decades has finally boiled over and peaked. But the very nature of peaks is that they have a succeeding decline.

Which begs the question: what are the sustainable pillars that will allow the continuation of the sport’s growth in the long term? Upon investigating this, more cogs are turning behind the scenes that are preparing to drive this sport forward in the US. This is not based on short-term bursts of interest from hosting tournaments or a dependency on player popularity. What are the seeds that have been embedded into this market that allow for growth beyond Messi and the World Cup event?

“Thanks World, We’ll Take It From Here”

At the front lines for US soccer growth currently is Major League Soccer (MLS).

The MLS was quick to move. Six days before the final, with the tournament still running, the league launched a coordinated marketing campaign under a tagline: Thanks World, We’ll Take It From Here.

The campaign puts Messi front and centre, flanked by Son Heung-Min, Tim Ream and a roster of other popular MLS players. It aired during both semi-finals and again during the final itself.

A clever campaign that had high relevance in timing, and turned a few heads. However, the biggest move by the MLS happened months before, which was a calendar change to a July-to-May calendar, aligning itself with Europe’s major leagues and the FIFA calendar. The transition runs through a shortened 14-game mini-season from February to May 2027, with the new-look campaign proper kicking off in the 2027–28 season.

The significance is that alignment with the European football calendar allows for more harmony in player transfers and fewer clashes with international breaks.

The US soccer market can more conveniently be seen as a talent pool rather than a final career step for twilight players. Don Garber, Commissioner of the MLS, stated that aligning with the world’s top leagues strengthens the clubs’ global competitiveness, improves transfer market opportunities, and lets the MLS Cup Playoffs run without interruption.

United Soccer League Promotion and Relegation

The MLS, while the biggest in marketing power, isn’t the only soccer institution that will be pivotal in growing the sport. I touched upon this subject about a year ago, marking how significant this could be for American soccer. It remains the strongest indicator of what will pull new fans and regions of the US into the sport. This is the USL’s (United Soccer League) introduction of promotion and relegation into its three-tier system.

The USL represents professional league football below the MLS. Its decision to embrace promotion and relegation is a bold, fan-first move. Any European football fan will know what the pressure of relegation and the glory of promotion can do for a team. It injects drama, passion, and possibility into US soccer. Each club would have a chance and a purpose to play. A shot at rising through the ranks, which fans can get behind. The kind of underdog stories that great sports are built on.

The move has been supplemented by the creation of an entirely new top tier. In January, the USL confirmed the name: USL Premier, a Division One league that will sit above the USL Championship and USL League One. And most importantly, it will sit level with MLS in the American professional pyramid.

Think of the stories of Wrexham FC, Leicester City in 2016, or Tottenham’s close relegation call. Injecting this kind of buzz into the game will be a needle mover for the sport.

Tony Scholes

USL will structurally set itself up to carry the sport forward, but it has the right people spearheading its initiatives.

The man hired to build it is Tony Scholes. The former Chief Football Officer of the English Premier League and former Chief Executive of Stoke City. He was named President of USL Premier in November 2025 and, having concluded his Premier League duties, has now made the jump across the pond this summer.

The USL’s own framing is that Scholes will run the league’s operations and shape its structure, standards, and long-term development as it prepares to bring promotion and relegation to US professional soccer.

Prising a top executive out of the biggest soccer league in the world is a serious chess move. It indicates that the USL is serious about its progress in the US soccer space and willing to make a splash to bring in new fans. Scholes brings the network and the institutional experience to implement a system that could rival the MLS.

Global Integration

The question is whether the sport is finally building institutions that survive beyond the moments of a big World Cup or big waves in interest from player popularity (such as Messi or Beckham). These moves are designed to inject ingredients from the European elite football leagues into the US and ultimately shape it to be less isolated and incompatible with the rest of football culture.

The World Cup was an explosive jolt of euphoria. These are the foundations being built for a market to thrive beyond one tournament.

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Quick shout-out: this article was recent in collaboration with Maxwell Kablan, who’s the author of A Score To Settle. Some great bits around the beautiful game that are worth a read.

In March 2024, a 72-year-long partnership was announced to be officially ending. The DFB (Deutsche Fußball Bund) announced that its relationship with Adidas was terminated and that, as of January 2027, it would introduce Nike as its official kit supplier.

This is a pivotal moment in the DFB’s kit history and evolution. The DFB and Adidas are historically deeply rooted. Adi Dassler, the founder of Adidas, personally worked with Germany’s head coach Sepp Herberger in developing the shoes the team would wear in the tournament. In their collaboration, Adi Dassler provided a revolutionary stud feature for football cleats the team would wear in the final in Bern, knocking out football titans Hungary. The result was a nation winning its first World Cup on the world stage, injecting a deeply needed euphoria into a post-war-torn nation. The relationship is thus not only a long one, but also one with strong emotional strings that have been cut.

Reasons behind the change in suppliers can be open to interpretation. Our research seems to suggest it was a pure commercial decision, with an attractive compensation offer made by the rival sportswear brand that was simply too juicy to pass up. In the end, it’s only a shirt, right?

Germany has had its sporting challenges in the past decade, and unfortunately this 2026 World Cup edition hasn’t given us a lot of time to enjoy what is potentially the last Adidas Germany World Cup jersey. However, while Adidas is going down swinging in its last dance with the DFB, Nike hasn’t been quiet. Days before Germany’s group stage match, Nike floated a billboard barge up the Hudson River past the Statue of Liberty, showing star midfielder Jamal Musiala in a pixelated preview of the 2027 kit under the tagline “Hallo New Jersey.” Contractually barred from revealing the real design before its deal begins, Nike still found a way to remind everyone it’s already circling.

The pixelated preview has left German fans and jersey enthusiasts gossiping about what the new jersey could look like, and for now we’ll have to remain patient until January 2027. However, we can look to the past at moments when Nike has faced similar challenges taking on a heritage brand like Adidas and offer an early preview of what we can expect from Nike x DFB in the near future.

Nike’s Modern Kit Strategy

Nike’s kit strategy is one of balancing heritage and tradition with modern innovation.

Senior director of Nike Stu MacArthur expressed this while being questioned at Nike’s headquarters. He said that he wants their home kits to express their team’s traditions while their away kits reflect the youth and their modern athletes.

It’s this focus on tapping into the unique culture of each country and storytelling through the current generation that Nike embodies. Here are a few examples of what that looks like.

Brazil’s Blend of Heritage and Modernisation

In order to look at what a successful Nike partnership with Germany could look like, Nike can be inspired by the ones before that have been successful.

One of the key examples of this is Nike’s now-infamous partnership with Brazil that has gone beyond the usual brand shirt partnership. Established off the back of Brazil’s 1994 World Cup success, when Umbro was a sponsor prior to it, Nike has since become an unmistakable icon of the Seleção.

Nike’s CEO at the time wanted to make the company the ‘new heritage of sport,’ and it’s safe to say their partnership with Brazil went a long way in achieving this.

Their model also shows the importance of continued innovation. Ahead of the 2026 World Cup, Nike kept Brazil’s tradition alive with the iconic gold and green kit, but they went beyond anything done before by debuting a blue Jordan kit for the Seleção, which has reportedly broken records. This also included a range of training and lifestyle gear, such as Air Jordan Brazil trainers, t-shirts, jackets, and shorts.

The Brazil Air Jordan partnership reflects a clever example of the potential for brands to merge football and basketball cultures together.

The partnership has also evolved to make a community impact. For instance, Nike has set up a lot of initiatives to champion women’s football at the grassroots level in Brazil and around Latin America.

England’s Retro-Inspired Designs

Germany’s situation of leaving a home brand for Nike is not a unique one. In fact, the very same thing happened with England in 2013, where they swapped English-based Umbro for Nike.

Umbro’s roots go back to 1924, founded by the Humphrey brothers in Cheshire. 30 years later, they started a partnership with the Three Lions that would last for 59 years. Its double diamond logo had been a cornerstone of the national team and was the sponsor for England’s iconic 1966 triumph, as well as their runs to the semi-finals in the 1990 World Cup and Euro 1996.

Since sponsoring the England team, Nike has arguably respected the traditions that Umbro had spent years building rather than ripping up the script, as they have so often done. Ahead of the 2026 World Cup, they released a home kit that had England’s iconic flags, lions, and stars embedded into the fabric design.

Their red away kit may be slightly retro-inspired, resembling the 1998 Umbro World Cup kit, but it has shades of a new, bold generation of England football, allowing players to express their personalities.

Both kits also include ‘Happy and glorious’ on the collar, a famous lyric of the iconic English national anthem.

England kits show that you don’t have to entirely step away from what has worked in the past when designing nation-inspired kits.

Norway’s Bold Approach

One of the most recent examples of a successful Nike national team partnership is with Norway, and their approach has definitely been on the bold side. Nike has sponsored the side since 2015, taking over from Umbro, and the partnership has so far been a major success.

Their home kit, inspired by the infamous Nordic flag, is bold and pays homage to the country’s Christian heritage and traditions. It sold out across official retailers in Europe and has seen 250,000 jersey orders this year alone as Norway went on a historic run to the World Cup quarterfinals.

They also released a fearless all-black away kit, where the logo, badge, and collar are all blended into pure darkness. This undoubtedly was to strike intimidation into their opponents. Their all-white third kit, which effectively serves as the direct inverse of the away kit and is said to be influenced by the Northern Lights.

These three examples all reflect different approaches, which blend heritage and innovation at different weights. Rather than a one-size-fits-all solution, it’s about each national team choosing a balance that best reflects the narrative it wants to create around it.

Nike’s Heritage Play

For anyone who’s kept an eye on the jersey design space in the last 2 years, vintage and retro designs are back. Adidas’s relaunch of the old-school trefoil logo revamps designs from the past with a modern edge. Nike has a challenge here. It has no German football archive of its own. Adidas can dip into seventy years of gold and reissue anything from 1954 to 2014 and call it heritage.

Nike will have to overcome this and exploit Germany’s history, not adidas’s.

If Nike wants heritage cues, it has to go back into that footage, that history, those specific moments, and pull threads out without pulling the three stripes out with them. The white base from Bern. The looser, boxier cut from Rome. The billboard already gave this away. The pixelated Musiala kit carried a thick black collar, a potential nod to the 1974 shirt worn by Beckenbauer’s team in Munich.

It’s a harder trick than anything Nike pulled off in London or Rio. Whether the finished 2027 kit actually threads that needle will be revealed.

Conclusion

The Germany national team is going through a time of change. With Jürgen Klopp set to be appointed as the new head coach, the new partnership with Nike represents a new era both on the pitch and also commercially. It’s a chance for them to mark a new chapter in the country’s history.

And that’s where the opportunity is for Nike. Off the back of a disappointing World Cup campaign, there’s a chance to rewrite the narrative for this group of German players. It’s about finding a balance of designing kits that feel embedded into German culture but also allow the players to write their own new history. And it’s that very balance that Nike needs to get right.

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With the final week of the World Cup upon us, a heartbroken England is heading into their final game for third place. While it won’t be coming home this summer, there have been plenty of eyeballs on the talent of England’s squad, in particular Harry Kane. His skill as a striker hardly needs any introduction. The man seems able to score from anywhere within the penalty box with barely an inch of space. Yet, even more remarkable is that he isn’t doing it in the newest Predator from Adidas or Nike’s classic Mercurial collection. He’s popping in goals left and right in a streetwear brand that’s only recently ventured into football, Skechers.

This partnership is quite young, still unfolding in its first era. Harry Kane was once among Nike’s elite roster alongside Mbappé and Erling Haaland, players who fed into Nike’s reputation as having a grip on the sport’s top strikers. However, some footballers are unsatisfied being swallowed into a sea of mainstream stars, reduced to a chess piece for pushing the latest line of Nike boots. Other brands, or challenger brands as we like to call them, are battling their way into the football athlete space by being more tailored and deliberate with the partnerships they choose, much like Bukayo Saka and New Balance.

Origins

Skechers comes from a different world entirely. A comfort and streetwear brand born in 1992, it spent three decades building its name on memory foam soles and mall-friendly walking shoes, not competitive sport. The shift began in 2011, when Skechers launched a performance division to be taken seriously as an athletic brand. Then in 2023, Kane was signed, and the launch of the SKX_01 marked Skechers’ first-ever step into football. With a product and a face to push it, Skechers have been in full throttle in the last 3 years and has made remarkable progress in penetrating the football space.

Success Up To Now

Skechers is now one of just seven brands supplying boots at this World Cup. It’s a small group of only Adidas, Nike, Puma, Mizuno, Under Armour, New Balance, AND now, Skechers. It’s included in the strange pink shoe trend for this World Cup.

Adidas, Nike, Puma, and Under Armour are the football gear mainstream. Mizuno has been supplying football boots for decades. New Balance re-entered the football boot market back in 2014, nearly a decade ahead of Skechers, after having produced boots as far back as the 1980s. But the newest player on the block, by a mile, is Skechers.

In volume terms, it isn’t close to Nike or Adidas. But it doesn’t need to be. Kane alone has put the brand in headlines and in the Golden Boot conversation. Skechers didn’t try to outspend the giants. It picked one player, built the product around him, and let everything else unfold. Three years ago, Skechers had never made a football boot. Now it’s sitting at the top table of the sport’s biggest tournament, off the back of one signing. That’s how far the right partnership can take a brand.

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In brief: Balogun made a challenge in the round of 32 match against Bosnia and Herzegovina that drew a red card from the referee, triggering an automatic one-match ban that would have ruled him out of the USA’s round of 16 clash. In response, Trump called FIFA President Gianni Infantino the following Wednesday to ask him to review the decision. FIFA proceeded to overturn it. The call was later confirmed by the President himself, though FIFA insisted the reversal came independently from its own review of the incident.

Past incidents

Shades of this had already surfaced earlier in the tournament build-up, when Ronaldo was shown a direct red card in Portugal’s final World Cup qualifier for elbowing Irish defender Dara O’Shea in the back. FIFA’s Disciplinary Code mandates a strict three-match ban for violent conduct, which would have kept him out of Portugal’s opening World Cup matches. FIFA suspended the remainder of that ban, and Ronaldo served just one match in a meaningless pre-tournament friendly against Armenia before returning in full form for the start of the World Cup.

Going back further, Garrincha was sent off in Brazil’s 4-2 semifinal win over hosts Chile in 1962 for retaliating against a defender who had fouled him repeatedly, putting his place in the final at risk. Chile’s president Jorge Alessandri backed a petition to let him play, and Peru’s president reportedly called the referee to soften his testimony. FIFA’s disciplinary committee let Garrincha off with a warning, and he went on to play in the final.

Accusing FIFA of corruption and favouritism is, unfortunately, nothing new. These incidents are similar in nature and past examples of FIFA meddling in sporting affairs, yet the Balogun reversal cuts deeper. In 1962, official match bans for red cards didn’t exist yet, so there was no established process to override in the first place. Even Ronaldo’s ban, meanwhile, was lifted before the World Cup even began, with no game inside the tournament itself directly affected. Neither of those facts excuses what happened, but they illustrate how uniquely damaging Infantino’s response to Trump’s phone call has been: it directly impacted a knockout match deep into the World Cup itself.

Sport is a showcase of athletic endeavour, and it only works within a confined set of rules that everyone must follow. The moment those rules can be bent to hand out advantages, the purity of the sport is compromised.

Where does it end?

Thomas Tuchel put it best in a press conference after the England vs Mexico game, when he summed up the consequences of Infantino’s decision with a simple question: “Where does it end now?”

The floodgates have been opened to overturning contested decisions, provided the right country applies the right lobbying effort. Was the red card against Balogun harsh? Maybe. Maybe not. This is actually besides the point. Subjective interpretation from outsiders should not be a factor in how the rules are implemented. The reversal now comes on the back of Donald Trump’s intervention, whose agenda is to get the US as far into this tournament as possible.

So what else could, in theory, now be overturned?

Germany was eliminated by Paraguay after a goal was controversially ruled out following a VAR review. Could Chancellor Friedrich Merz pick up the phone to Infantino and demand the goal be reinstated?

England also suffered a red card in their match against Mexico. Could King Charles lobby FIFA to let the suspended English player be placed in the semi-finals?

Egypt had a goal disallowed in what should have been a 3-0 lead against Argentina. Could President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi request a review of his own?

Of course, none of this is likely to happen, and most results will stand as played. But, what’s the expression?

“Give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile”

The integrity of the sport can only hold if it is absolute. The dangerous precedent Infantino has set is that it isn’t. Results can be bent, with the right phone call, from the right person.

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Watching Iran play a few weeks back, a friend leaned over and asked me what logo that was on the shirt. Neither of us knew. A quick search on his phone gave us the answer: Majid. A brand neither of us had heard of, kitting out a World Cup national team.

Jerseys are always a talking point once the tournament gets going. Fresh designs that try to capture a country’s history, its culture, and DNA. So this sparked an interest to dig into what brands are kitting out which teams, and what the evolution of this dynamic looks like.

Here is what the distribution looks like for this World Cup (via footballarchive.com)

No surprise here. Puma, Nike and Adidas are still the names you see the most, tournament after tournament, team after team. They dominate the shirt count. But look past the podium, and there’s real movement at the edges. A handful of brands have fought their way onto the biggest stage in football with just a single team to their name. And one has done more than that: Kelme, with two teams under its belt, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Jordan. This World Cup has more non-3 Big Three (Nike, Puma or Adidas) kit suppliers than any other World Cup since 2002.

That got me digging. Because the assumption is that this has always been the setup. Three giants, everyone else fighting for scraps. It hasn’t. The Big Three’s grip on the World Cup is younger than you’d think, and the data suggests it might already be loosening.

France '98 was close to a level playing field. Twelve different manufacturers supplied the 32 teams that year, and Adidas and Nike, Nike playing its first-ever World Cup as a brand, were tied at the top with just six teams apiece. Puma had three. Umbro had three. Nobody had a “real” stranglehold.

That changed fast. By 2010, Adidas, Nike and Puma between them supplied 88% of the field. Three brands, virtually the whole tournament. The consolidation happened in barely a decade.

From there the story gets more interesting, and less linear than the “steady fade” most would assume. The Big Three’s combined share didn’t keep climbing after 2010. It came down to 84% in 2014, then settled at 81% for two tournaments running, 2018 and 2022 both. Flat. Not growing. Then in 2026, the Big Three's noose loosens significantly.

So who’s taking the space at the edges, and why has it taken until now for that to actually move the topline number? Consistency is hard to track here. A World Cup only comes around every four years, which means we’re working with a small number of data points, and every tournament brings a different set of underdogs who’ve qualified on the pitch and a different set of small brands that have battled their way in.

What looks from a distance like the Big Three slowly losing ground between 2014 and 2022 is really two separate narratives unfolding.

The first is Puma. Puma had 12 teams at the 2006 World Cup, its peak watermark era, more than Adidas and Nike combined that year. Then it fell off a cliff. Financial trouble through the early 2010s under its old ownership structure forced years of cost-cutting, and Puma’s national team count kept shrinking, down to 4 teams by 2018. By 2022 the brand was running an openly named “fewer, bigger, better” strategy, publicly cutting national federations to protect its budget for the ones that mattered.

The second is Adidas. In 2015, well before any of this plateau shows up in the data, Adidas made its own deliberate choice to pull back from smaller federations and concentrate spend on elite, globally visible teams and clubs. A strategic pivot in the types of federations it wanted to be associated with.

Put those two together, and you get the flat 81% we see across 2014 through 2022. Puma shedding teams. Adidas deliberately not chasing the gaps Puma left behind. The smaller federations that got dropped landed with brands outside of the big 3 without ever really scaling past one-team deals. Brands like New Balance, Hummel, Erreà, or Uhlsport.

In 2026, the real shift shows up. This is largely down to the tournament itself. Forty-eight teams instead of thirty-two means sixteen new slots, most of them filled by federations from smaller confederations who were never going to be on Nike or Adidas’s radar in the first place. This accounts for a good chunk of the new names on the list.

So the Big Three’s grip has loosened, slightly, at this World Cup. Ultimately that means more visibility, more screen time, for the brands that never had either. That’s a win for the underdogs, Kelme and Majid among them, the same names that kicked off this post.

And then some brands were never trying to play the Big Three’s game to begin with. For a name like Jako, being a challenger with a small, selective roster isn’t a limitation. It’s the point. Amateur roots, authenticity, a federation with a strong sense of its own identity. That matters more to these brands than scale ever will.

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The World Cup is well underway, heading deeper into the group stages, and Messi is showing us all that age really is just a number. Outside the pitch, marketing campaigns have exploded, leveraging the hype and excitement of the biggest tournament ever created.

While media content is abundant, two films stand above the rest. From the two titans of the sportswear world, Nike’s Rip the Script and Adidas’s Backyard Legends. If there were ever two films that achieved the same purpose from opposite sides of the field, they would be these.

Same, same but different. In its finest form.

Adidas’s location was eastside New York, Nike’s was westside in Hollywood. Both a tribute to the tournament taking place in the US.

Adidas leaned on Messi, Nike on Ronaldo. Both are hitting the most culturally relevant athletes of this generation.

Adidas’s legends came in with Zidane, Beckham and Del Piero. Nike used Didier Drogba, Zlatan, and Ronaldinho. Both leveraged their old school players to hit the nostalgic feels.

This list goes on. In summary, two brands assembled their Avengers to claim a piece of football culture. While they mirrored each other in many forms, the two films also reflect two distinct brand strategies.

Backyard Legends

Adidas blinked first, dropping Backyard Legends a full month before the first official match.

Timothée Chalamet plays an overly excited football recruiter, assembling a dream team of Jude Bellingham, Lamine Yamal and Trinity Rodman in a fictional backyard where an unbeaten street crew are waiting to be played. Waiting at the yard, watching it all unfold, are Lionel Messi, Bad Bunny and the legends of Zidane, Beckham and Del Piero. With more cameos and icons visible in between these frames, that is the essential plot of Backyard Legends.

There’s much to unpack in the videos in terms of meaning and symbolism, but there are two main, distinct notes that adidas is trying to drive home. One is streetwear, and the other is nostalgia.

Backyard Legends does not take place in a stadium or under floodlights. It lives in the streets of the concrete jungle. The focus is less on the act of football itself and more on personality and the people around it. The Sambas and Gazelles are among the most commonly worn streetwear items on the planet, an illustration of how profoundly football has bled into everyday fashion.

The legends of Zidane, Beckham and Del Piero are 90s legends that reflect a significant amount of the current jersey designs. They are purposeful and nostalgic. Core to what Adidas is as a brand right now. Nike has elements of this as well, but not even close to the same depth. Every new Adidas jersey is a throwback, a tribute to a previous decade and the players who defined it. The return of the old school logo and the revival of classic kit designs worn by icons all pull us in the same direction: the past.

The past, turns out, is a valuable piece of real estate in modern branding

Rip the Script

Nike went later and louder. One week before the tournament started, during peak football fever.

Set inside a Hollywood film studio, a director tries to run a tightly controlled shoot with the biggest names in world football (Mbappé, Haaland, Ronaldo, Vini Jr.), only for the whole thing to descend into chaos as the players ditch the script and just play the beautiful game.

What makes Rip the Script work is the chaos. The heart of what makes great sport is that there is no script. It is passion, emotion, disorder, and singular moments that create shock. The upsets, the last-minute goals, the moments nobody saw coming cannot be written in advance. They unfold as they unfold. That is what Nike is hitting home: the beautiful unpredictability of football itself.

The purity of sports placed at the centre of this game is in line with Nike’s direction. Under CEO Elliott Hill, the message has been that the athlete is back at the centre of everything. A narrative they may have lost in the last decade. Rip the Script is a smack in the face, screaming at how relevant Nike still is.

Success. Where Does It Lie?

It is subjective when determining which campaign is better. Engagement metrics tell different stories depending on which channel you pick. Nike has racked up nearly 78 million on YouTube alone, almost 10 times that of Adidas. But Adidas pulled 56 million Instagram views in four days, 2.2 million likes, and a TikTok presence that reflects where the film was always meant to live. Adidas built a cinematic piece for social media. Nike built a rewatch video begging to be re-watched to snag up all the easter eggs. Different tools for different platforms.

In terms of who stands to gain more, the structural advantage sits with Adidas. They hold the official match ball, more federation kits, and the official FIFA partnership. But who did it better? That is a harder question. Both films hit entirely different emotional notes that will resonate with different consumers. It will have been almost impossible to miss either film, which makes it genuinely difficult to say who each one speaks to. The honest answer might be everyone, for different reasons.

So, Team Adidas or Team Nike?

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The commercial numbers behind the 2026 FIFA World Cup have been record-breaking. New numbers and zeros have been added to sponsorship deals, ticket prices, and attendance projections. FIFA has reported $9 billion in expected revenue from the tournament alone, an extraordinary figure by itself. But with an expanded format and more teams than ever before, FIFA’s expenses have grown just as significantly.

One of FIFA’s biggest spending commitments is the Club Benefits Programme (CBP). With this being the largest tournament in the competition’s history, the programme has also received its largest budget ever.

Source: fortune.com

What Is It?

The programme was first established in 2010 as part of an agreement between FIFA and European clubs. It formalised what had always been a one-sided arrangement: clubs must release players to FIFA and allow them to participate in the tournament. It addresses a straightforward tension that clubs own and develop the players, yet FIFA runs the tournament that profits most from them, while the clubs bear the risk of injury and continue paying wages throughout.

Without getting into too much detail, payments are calculated on a per-player, per-day basis, with the amount dependent on how far a nation progresses through the tournament.

A Look Over The Years

Here are the total CBP pools over the year, distributed by FIFA:

2010 South Africa World Cup - $40M

2014 Brazil World Cup - $70M

2018 Russia World Cup - $209M

2022 Qatar World Cup - $209M

2026 North America World Cup - $355M

Source: efc football

The table gives a quick look at the growth of the Club Benefits Programme since its inception in 2010. One of the most striking jumps is the near 200% increase from 2014 to 2018. That significant increase came as part of a package deal covering both the 2018 and 2022 editions, negotiated at the time the 2022 World Cup was awarded to Qatar. The 2022 edition was a winter tournament that created enormous disruption to club competition schedules, as well as affecting matchday and broadcasting revenues significantly. In essence, it served as an extra compensation and was a financial acknowledgement of the changes FIFA was introducing to the football calendar.

Moving closer to the present, the CBP has grown by a further 70% for 2026, making it the largest the programme has ever been. The key addition for this cycle is that clubs whose players featured only in qualifying, even if their nation never made it to the 48-team final tournament, receive compensation too.

So Who Stands to Benefit?

The Club Benefits Programme is straightforward in its setup and purpose: the clubs with the most players participating in the tournament stand to gain the most. The top recipients are the usual suspects:

• Manchester City — 19 players

• Bayern Munich — 18 players

• Arsenal — 16 players

• Paris Saint-Germain — 16 players

• FC Barcelona — 15 players

The pot has grown, and its criteria have been loosened, meaning more clubs get a share and a revenue spurt when their players play internationally. In that sense, it represents a positive evolution in FIFA’s relationship with club football. It is particularly meaningful for clubs outside the top tier of European football, where the need for capital is more pressing.

At the end of the day, however, the majority of the programme’s funds still flow to clubs in the top five European leagues and even then, to a handful of elite clubs within those leagues. It ultimately continues to function as a tool that strengthens the already strong, feeding directly into transfer windows and the seasons ahead.

Thoughts to the CBP? Should it be decreased?

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The biggest tournament in the world is at our doorstep. And while the battles that matter will be fought on the pitch, there are plenty of others already underway. The World Cup brings cultural relevance like nothing else, and every brand with an eye on visibility is fighting for a piece of real estate.

In the last week, national teams have been touching down across North America, and these moments, with the media attention that is glued to them, have become mini catwalks. Official collaborations, tailored outfits, coordinated looks built for one iconic walk, where the pre-tournament hype is still alive, all possibilities remain open, confidence is sky high, and the tournament lies ahead. The calm before the storm. A vibe that a clothing piece, if it gets it right, can latch onto.

We’ve categorised some of the observations we’ve made at SportCult, and also highlighted the absolute “scroll-stopper” that rose above the noise.

The Safe Play

Spain arrived wrapped in Loewe. The LVMH-owned Madrid house signed a four-year partnership with the Spanish Football Federation covering its official squads. Navy jacket, blue polo, wide-cut trousers, patent leather shoes. The Loewe terracotta logo sits discreetly on the cuff.

Marc O’Polo and the DFB hit a similar note, or one degree lower perhaps. A smart casual tone rather than a full-tailored outfit. The Swedish-German label, which previously built its profile through a long-running association with Toni Kroos, is now dressing the full German squad.

Loewe and Marc O’Polo know exactly what they have. Two luxury brands from the same origin as their partner and executed with visible logos, campaign shoots, editorial coverage, and social media. Both partnerships are safe. Both are well-matched to their national teams.

The 007s

These said almost nothing, and they nailed it.

Japan arrived in Dunhill. The British luxury house has been the official suit supplier to the Japan Football Association across multiple cycles, and the Samurai Blue Collection 2026 is their statement piece for this tournament. A three-piece suit in a single-breasted jacket, double-breasted vest, matching trousers, and pocket chiefs. The Dunhill branding? Inside the sleeve.

Morocco came through in Carlo Pignatelli. The Italian tailoring house is built on precision craftsmanship and elegance. Like the Samurai Blues, three-piece tailoring with subtle branding.

Both partnerships share the same philosophy of quiet discipline. The marketing behind these outfits is almost the polar opposite of the partnerships with Spain and Germany. Limited social media presence announcing any official partnership, just showing up in style. These teams didn’t need to market it loudly because the visuals spoke for themselves.

The Head Turner - The Elephants

But the scroll stopper belonged to Côte d’Ivoire.

Les Éléphants touched down in Philadelphia dressed in custom-tailored orange blazers paired with crisp, wide-legged white trousers. Bold. Coordinated. Immediately viral.

The standout detail, to me, is the elephant motif emblazoned across the back of each blazer, a direct tribute to the team’s identity as Les Éléphants. The look was designed by Ibrahim Fernandez, a renowned Ivorian fashion designer whose work blends contemporary tailoring with cultural symbolism. He has now dressed his national team for the world’s biggest stage.

The bright orange colour, with the forward-charging elephant on the back, is, unapologetically, itself.

There’s a connection worth making here. The AFCON has been marketed in recent cycles as a return to the old-school feeling of the beautiful game, the kind of love for football that has been lost in Europe’s over-commercialised mindset. The chaos and passion for the game thrive in Africa, where the message is clear: “We do things differently around here.” Whether or not you buy that framing doesn’t really matter. It’s what you feel. Côte d’Ivoire’s arrival outfit carried that energy.

What’s your favourite fashion piece worn by the players so far? Drop it in the comments.

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Brand campaigns are in full throttle ahead of the World Cup. We are less than 10 days out from the competition, and marketing buzz around one of the most-watched events in the world is all around us.

The end product of a lot of this marketing takes many forms, and one of the most common is merchandise. Most attention is immediately directed towards the jerseys worn by the competing teams. No doubt, they are at the centre of what people will be taking a close look at. Yet there are some creative brands that have jumped on the World Cup merchandise train as well.

So, rather than focusing on what the teams are wearing, which seems to be the focal point of most sports business newsletters, these are some of my favourite brands doing World Cup merchandise outside of the typical jerseys.

Gap

Not a brand I would generally associate with football. But GAP’s FIFA Classics collection is banging.

Retro and vintage collections are completely in at the moment, and they’ve managed to nail the trend while keeping it relevant to the World Cup. The fashion edge is what works for them. Rather than trying to compete with official jerseys, they’ve leaned into lifestyle apparel that feels wearable beyond the tournament itself.

Comma Football

These are cool, simply put. Comma Football has engraved storytelling and cultural moments into its World Cup pieces.

Take the German team shirt as an example. The old-school German eagle sits on the front, while the sides feature engravings of every year Germany has played in the World Cup, with particular highlights on the tournaments they won.

It’s the type of detail that rewards fans who know the history and creates a deeper connection than simply placing a crest on a T-shirt.

adidas

Even though a big chunk of the official match jerseys are produced by adidas, this is more of a focus on their archival collection.

Germany’s 2014 Away Jersey.

The one they smoked Brazil in.

Or Argentina’s 2006 Home Jersey.

Available with Messi personalisation on the back from the first World Cup he ever played in.

These are cultural moments that no other brand can authentically reinvigorate through a piece of clothing. The archives are a competitive advantage. When adidas brings these shirts back, they’re not selling merchandise; they’re selling football memories.

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European leagues, outside of their domestic monopolies, are battling for international visibility. Across global markets, interest in European football is high, both at league and club level, and the top five leagues are constantly looking to bring new users into their ecosystems.

This piece focuses on the league level, where the largest revenue streams come from broadcasting deals. These rights are generally controlled centrally by the league and ultimately determine how consumers engage with live matches. Traditionally, the model for European leagues entering new markets was straightforward: enter a market and sign a major broadcasting deal. Done.

While effective and simple, this approach depends heavily on there already being a strong fan base and demand for that specific league. In some cases, leagues may first need to build awareness and interest around their clubs, players, and identity before entering into multi-million euro rights agreements. Another challenge is that consumer behaviour differs significantly across markets. Subscription television may not be widely adopted, and football may be consumed through entirely different habits.

The top five leagues have increasingly woken up to this reality, particularly the leagues trailing behind the Premier League, which holds its international dominance through language affinity and a deep competitive club pool.

As a result, challenger leagues have begun experimenting with alternative international growth strategies. While these methods form part of a wider industry trend, the Bundesliga has emerged as the clearest spearhead of this approach.

Over the last few years, the Bundesliga has partnered with influencers, enabled free streaming through YouTube, and experimented with direct-to-consumer Bundesliga passes. The best example of this strategy has been Brazil. This market has become an increasingly important target market for European football over the last three to four years. The country boasts an enormous football fever, making it fertile ground for any European league looking to establish a foothold.

Many of the challenges associated with traditional broadcasting models apply directly to Brazil. Paid television penetration is relatively low, while football consumption is heavily driven through free digital platforms, particularly YouTube.

In response, the Bundesliga partnered with creator-led channels and streaming platforms that broadcast Bundesliga matches directly to audiences for free. The results have been significant. The Bundesliga reportedly became one of the most-watched European leagues on Brazilian digital platforms. For example, the Bundesliga has roughly 24 million fans in Brazil, with live viewing climbing over 800% in the last decade.

There has been a growing call over the last decade for the Bundesliga to invest more in internationalisation. Capital injection into German football remains complex due to ownership restrictions. At the same time, football continues to become more expensive through rising transfer fees, player salaries, and broadcasting deals.

As a result, the Bundesliga must strengthen itself commercially in order to remain competitive against rival leagues that do not operate under the same structural limitations.

German football itself possesses many internationally attractive qualities. The football is explosive in style, the domestic fan culture is contagious to those exposed to it, and it has the club brands to back it. The potential for the Bundesliga to catch fire internationally is there.

The moves made by the Bundesliga over the last five years suggest that the league understands this. More importantly, they suggest the Bundesliga may be further ahead in making itself internationally relevant than most realise. The Bundesliga is playing a different game entirely. As the challenger brand in the global media ecosystem, it has focused on long-term and sustainable audience acquisition. Rather than viewing international rights purely as short-term revenue assets.

The strategy has brought rewards and positions the Bundesliga as a blueprint for what effective go-to-market strategies could look like for other leagues.

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The majority of football players’ merchandise visibility comes from the jersey they run onto the pitch in, yet players are monetised far beyond this. This is generally in the form of endorsements from other brands that they wear outside of the pitch.

The most mainstream stars are snapped up quickly by the likes of Nike, Adidas or PUMA, who have dominated the endorsement game for the last few decades. Undoubtedly, their success in establishing big rosters is linked to being able to offer attractive compensation packages to their athletes.

However, there are other brands trying to battle their way into this space, with success, like New Balance. Their approach is methodical selection and depth, rather than spread. A much leaner roster where each athlete is brought in with purpose and not lost in an ocean of stars wearing the same logo.

At the forefront of New Balance’s endorsement strategy is Bukayo Saka, the young English talent at Arsenal who has quickly become one of the best wingers in the world. Saka, a footballer brewed in the streets of London and absorbed into the culture of Arsenal, a club he’s been loyal to since his youth career began. It’s the type of authenticity and cultural affinity every sportswear brand wants to latch onto.

“It was really important for us that fewer is better, less is more”, said Andrew McGarty, Director of Sports Marketing at New Balance.

The Signature Furon v8 — The ‘7egacy’ Boot is the latest venture in this relationship, and it is novel in its approach as well. A design that blends colours and symbols of his upbringing in London, and his boyhood club, Arsenal.

Saka was fully integrated into the design process and brought in as the creative lead for the boot. Very different from classic design processes, where the athlete is used to endorsing an already established product.

Saka is, of course, not the only player on their roster. Endrick, the young talent from Real Madrid, hits a similar wavelength. The lean roster suggests an approach tailored toward a younger football demographic, perhaps even geared more toward the grassroots and amateur segment. A segment other brands in this conversation have lost touch with.

Overall, this is a different approach and a challenge to the conventional model in football endorsements and partnerships. New Balance is “relatively” new to the football space, with major mainstream activity only becoming noticeable over the last decade. Their biggest claim so far was being the official kit partner of Liverpool F.C. until 2020. Thus, they need to break new ground to remain competitive in modern football.

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Last week, a new deal was struck between Adidas and the Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFB) that shuffles a new hand in which sportswear brands hold the best cards in German football.

A few months ago, I drew a different picture suggesting that adidas might be losing its foothold in the German football space. The biggest sign of this was Nike hijacking the German national kits, a historic and cultural tie for adidas.

So what are the details of this new partnership:

• Adidas becomes a strategic partner of the Deutsche Fußball Liga (Bundesliga & 2. Bundesliga)

• Adidas provides a €100M loan to the DFL (up to €20M per year, 1.5% interest)

• Adidas secures rights to be the official match ball supplier until at least 2034

• The money is earmarked for:

  • International expansion (especially media/rights abroad)

  • Digitalisation of the league

There are important implications to this deal as well. No direct cash goes to clubs. This is centralised league investment, which is designed to grow the Bundesliga across the board and earmarked for specific initiatives around international expansion and digitalisation.

It’s a win-win scenario. The Deutsche Fußball Liga receives a major cash injection to strengthen its international position, while Adidas replaces the visibility lost through the end of its Deutscher Fußball-Bund partnership with more consistent exposure across weekly Bundesliga football.

The partnership is profitable as it is creative in navigating the structural challenges of bringing in capital into German football. There is a strong anti-commercial movement among fans that lives in the form of 50+1 and robust boycotts that prevent foreign takeovers of clubs, yet it also creates overall challenges with bringing in fresh capital. This deal effectively works around that issue. It injects capital into the league without introducing ownership implications or outside control.

There is also a wider strategic point for adidas that suggests its prioritizing consistency over temporary, or sporadic, exposure. The World Cup is a massive event, yet it is explosive in its exposure, every four years and littered with corruption and scandals. Club football is forever.

Adidas is embedding itself deeper into the everyday ecosystem of German football. In the long run, that cultural relevance and recurring visibility could become more valuable than the loss of the German national team.

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The main news in the business world last week was Tim Cook’s resignation as CEO of Apple. After a 15-year tenure as the man who took the reins from Steve Jobs, he’s shifting to the role of executive chairman.

This is a sports business newsletter, so this is not about Tim Cook’s leadership legacy at Apple. It’s on the influence he quietly holds in the sports industry. Unbeknownst to some, Tim Cook has deep ties to one of the biggest sportswear brands in the world, Nike. He’s not just someone who wears the brand publicly. Since 2005, he has been a member of Nike’s board, maintains a close personal relationship with founder Phil Knight, and holds a significant equity stake in the company. His equity stake has also recently increased.

Sometimes even referred to as his “other job,” Tim Cook has more influence over the strategic direction of the sportswear titan than most people think.

A Brief Overview of Apple and Nike

Since 2005, two decades have passed, and we have seen the rise and fall of many product cycles.

Nike and Apple have collaborated in different forms throughout the decades, starting with the Nike+iPod in 2006, which pioneered digital fitness tracking, evolving into the Nike+ ecosystem of apps and community in the late 2000s, and later re-emerging with the Apple Watch Nike edition and app integrations like Nike Run Club and Training Club. Despite a long-standing leadership connection through Tim Cook, these collaborations have come in waves, never fully expanding into a deeply integrated, end-to-end fitness ecosystem.

The history suggests that the foundation of the relationship isn’t based on bringing a fusion of the two brands in product form to consumers, but rather is more of a side effect or occasional pursuit when the opportunity calls for it. The relationship is founded on mentorship, guidance, and knowledge sharing, where the output is more intangible.

Nike’s Struggle

One of the first pieces we explored was Nike’s soul search for a comeback to the sportswear and retail giant that it used to be.

The brand is combating declining market share and shelf space to innovative and tech-driven brands like On, ASICS, and New Balance. Newly appointed CEO (relatively), Elliot Hill, is the spearhead of this comeback and is under a great deal of pressure to pull the brand back to its former glory.

With this context, Cook’s role might be on the brink of deepening. The bandwidth the former Apple CEO might be able to give, in light of his step down from the operational burden of being CEO of one of the biggest tech brands in the world, is significant. He also clearly sees potential in the brand to remain competitive, given his recent increased stock investment.

This space might be an interesting one to keep an eye on.

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Although this isn’t the freshest news, about a month ago, Fenway Sports Group (FSG), owner of Liverpool FC, officially shelved its plans for a multi-club ownership model after almost a year of flirting with the idea of acquiring another football club. FSG already has quite a diversified portfolio across football, baseball, racing, and golf, but currently only holds one football club in its arsenal.

What is a Multi-Club Ownership (MCO) Model?

To break it down simply, an MCO model is when a single owner, investor, or investment group has a majority stake in two or more clubs in the same sport simultaneously.

The most common ones referenced across the media are the two biggest in the industry: City Football Group and Red Bull. However, the reality we live in today is that 40% of clubs in the top five leagues belong to an MCO.

The MCO model has actually been around for decades, but has received a lot more media attention in recent years because large-scale investors (particularly from the Middle East) have flexed commercial muscle to signal takeover moves in the industry. Moves that have been met with controversy and have had competitive investment groups nervous.

Why Do It?

The obvious advantage is mainly centred around pooling resources that benefit the sporting and economic goals of an investor. Sporting relevance comes from access to a large network of talent that can be cost-effectively and swiftly shifted between teams. Commercially, owners can achieve economies of scale when the mechanics of a club’s operations are consolidated.

From an investor perspective, another strong incentive for MCO is diversification. Football clubs can be risky ventures, especially when pursued in isolation. Relegation or a run of poor results looms over any club, and diversification can provide some security away from dependence on what happens on the pitch.

What Could be Preventing FSG?

It is difficult to narrow it down to one core reason, but the primary challenge is a lack of suitable options. The most commercially attractive clubs are based in Europe, which brings added complexity with UEFA regulations when two simultaneously owned clubs compete in the same competitions.

Even beyond that, the question remains whether acquiring another club would deliver the same strategic advantages seen in models like City Football Group or Red Bull. CFG holds 12 clubs across four continents, adding just one additional club to complement Liverpool is unlikely to create the same level of network effects or competitive edge.

What does a Pull-Back Mean?

Hesitation from groups like Fenway Sports Group suggests that multi-club ownership may not be as universally attractive as it once appeared. While the model promises efficiency and scale, it also brings complexity. MCOs are difficult to manage from a PR perspective. Fan bases are increasingly resistant to what they perceive as over-commercialisation and globalisation, especially when it comes at the expense of sporting identity and authenticity.

The future of MCO will depend on whether clubs can achieve a balance between commercial ambition and sporting integrity.

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Trailblazing the front was adidas, but the trend was picked up by other retail titans as well. In this respect, Nike made big waves with the re-release of the old-school Total 90 as a streetwear/lifestyle piece.

When I was a little kid kicking the ball in the schoolyard, I remember proudly boasting my orange and black Total 90s. These are the emotions that Nike wants to stir. For the early Gen Zs and the millennials, this is a shoe that can be worn to showcase which era of football you are from. Like the image below:

However, this is not the only audience this re-launch is for. The “younger generation” is also leaning into the style and wants to wear pieces that reflect the 90s. So althought its a reboot that evokes nostalgia, it’s also been accepted by the new kids on the block.

Perhaps this is a stretch, but it could be touching upon something greater that is yearned for in football. Purity and appreciation for the beautiful game that was based on passion and skill. Now, football has been labelled as over-commercialised and over-crowded by too many brands.

What is NIKE’s Angle?

Nike has required a reset where innovation and freshness in product development are at the centre of its culture again. This edge has been felt from newer brands on the block, like ON, that have rapidly captured market share in footwear.

Culturally, times have changed. The Michael Air Jordan days are fading, and Nike needs to pivot. However, in the retro race, Nike can win. The nostalgic segment is an emotional avenue that novelty brands (Like On ) cannot tap into. By defintion to make something feel nostalgic, you need the history to back it.

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The Africa Cup of Nations was a phenomenal tournament to witness over the summer. Passionate teams hit the pitches of Morocco, and the matches delivered the drama and emotion that every football fan dreams about. If you haven’t watched the final yet, do yourself a favour and check out the highlights on YouTube for some pure entertainment.

Yet this tournament wasn’t only a success in terms of entertainment for fans, but also a financial success for CAF, which recorded an unprecedented increase in revenue from this year’s tournament. African football was moved to another league with this edition of the AFCON.

Nike Strikes Again

At the forefront of this moment was Nike, which in December unveiled its “Show Dem” campaign for the tournament. The film featured Jay-Jay Okocha, the legendary Nigerian footballer, delivering the message: “They say the game’s gone — let’s show dem where it went.”

The campaign then unfolds into a celebration of football across the continent, showcasing matches played by people of all ages and backgrounds, as well as the fans that surround the game.

After the tournament ended, a second video was released, again featuring Jay-Jay Okocha. This time, he walks through a checklist of iconic football moments: “screamers, bangers, curlers, and celebrations the size of our continent” before closing with the final stamp: Showed Dem.

The Key Message

Nike’s campaign positions African football as the vehicle and platform to remind us that real football still lives on. In modern football, critics often label the sport as redundant and almost robotic. AFCON stands as the antithesis to that narrative and as the answer to “the game’s gone.”

The scenes are chaotic, raw, and emotional, reflecting that the soul of football, what it once was, still lives on in African football. In other words, on this continent, we still play real football. It’s a brilliant and powerful message.

Total 90

There is also a strong nostalgic element to Nike’s campaign, one that feels like it’s subtly urging European football to return to its former, unapologetic ways. Unsurprisingly, Nike consistently features its retro, reborn Total 90 collection throughout the campaign.

The connection between the two is subtle yet powerful, especially for those who understand the reference.

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Data supports this. In 2024, adidas reported €23,683 million in net sales vs. €21,427 million in 2023. This also translated to €1.337 billion in operating profit in 2024, up from €268 million. Indicating not only top-line growth but profitable scalability. (Official Adidas Revenue Reports)

While adidas is a global brand, of course, its origins and DNA are German. Here it similarly remains the strongest. A recent market survey in Germany found that in spontaneous brand awareness (i.e., asking someone to name a sports brand without prompting), adidas led with 75% of respondents.

So, in the current rat race for Germany, adidas is in front. But strength today doesn’t guarantee strength tomorrow. And this is where the picture becomes less comfortable for adidas. There are hints indicating that, in the long run, their brand power might erode with time, specifically in Germany. Does adidas have the fundamentals in place to carry over its brand power in the decades to come in Germany? What are some of the tells that might indicate this?

Baller League

Let’s start with a recent development, the Baller League.

For the uninformed, the Baller League is a modified football tournament featuring a six-a-side game that takes place indoors. Some might say it’s not real football, while others love it. No matter where you stand on the spectrum, younger fans are tuning in, and it’s growing. Where audiences exist, brands want to latch on, and the brand that snatched up the Baller League is Nike, with an official sponsorship deal.

I wrote a piece recently on how football is a shifting landscape, and how younger fans are consuming the sport is part of that change.

Where Gen Z fans are consuming trends and new ways of engaging with football, the brand at the forefront of this in Germany isn’t adidas.

The German National Team

This is the most significant one from my perspective. The DFB, Germany’s national football association, announced early last year that Nike would become its official kit supplier, ending their historic partnership with adidas.

This isn’t the same as a simple deal switch like with some of the other football clubs. The German national team is adidas’s baby. The founder, Adi Dassler, accompanied the 1954 German national team personally in providing them with a revolutionary set of football boots that they wore in their first victorious World Cup. It was one of adidas’s most foundational moves in bringing it to the world stage. It has since then been on the journey through all three succeeding World Cup victories with Germany.

This partnership is now over… and adidas is no longer front and centre with its most valued team. This will impact emotional connection with the brand by German football fans and reduce overall brand exposure in the market.

What does this mean?

Adidas is not collapsing; this is not a prophecy foreseeing an inevitable downfall. It remains one of Germany’s most culturally embedded brands, and its global football strength is undeniable. The risk for adidas isn’t sudden disruption. The risk is erosion. Slow, subtle, and generational. If adidas wants to remain Germany’s defining football brand, it needs to shore up the fundamentals that created its dominance in the first place.

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The United States remains the most commercially attractive of the host nations. It is a soccer market that’s been bubbling up over the last 20 years. Compared to Canada, Canada is in a different position, as it hasn’t experienced the same rate of increase. However, Canadian soccer lives and is undergoing subtle shifts to position itself correctly to capitalise on the wave of attention it will receive in one year. Some of these moves include a deal with a European sportswear brand and a media rights deal with the Bundesliga that reflect proactiveness by Canada to accelerate its evolution.

Hummels Sportswear Deal

Last week, the Canadian Premier League announced Hummels as its official “Kit and Apparel” partner starting in 2026. This means that Hummels supplies every club kit within the CPL as well as any league-branded merchandise (balls, ref kits, etc.).

The announcement is of significance, replacing their former partnership with the Italian brand Macron. The CPL is bringing in a kit supplier with real “skin in the game” at a European soccer level. This is not only a move by Canada’s soccer to inject a flare of European influence into its branding, but it’s also European stakeholders validating Canada’s growing football market.

The Bundesliga

This occurred just this week: the Canadian Soccer Business (CSB) secured non-exclusive Canadian rights to the German Bundesliga via streaming partner OneSoccer.

Canadian football doesn’t only live within its borders. It is deliberately reaching outward, searching for deals that internationalise its content and user base. The Bundesliga agreement is the clearest expression of that mindset. Canadian soccer is being positioned as a market capable of hosting and distributing premium European football content.

Thomas Müller

A slightly earlier, but still meaningful example is the transfer of former Bayern Munich Player, Thomas Müller, to the Vancouver Whitecaps FC last August. While the move comes through the U.S.-run league system, the MLS, the impact on Canada is still worth mentioning.

A Champions League winner playing on Canadian soil lifts the sport’s visibility, raises media interest, and reinforces the idea that Canada is becoming a serious football market.

Expect More

This is not an attempt to mirror the American soccer landscape; it’s building its own unique identity with strategic moves. In a region where the United States is so media-dominating and flexes a commercial muscle, Canada shouldn’t aim for scale but rather a distinct personality so it can separate itself from the US.

Through this newsletter, we’ll be keeping an eye on what other moves the Canadian soccer space is making. My prediction is that this is only the beginning and that bigger and louder moves will unfold in the coming months. These will accumulate to shape its own soccer identity just in time for the world’s biggest tournament.

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