The FIFA World Cup is a one-month soccer tournament that occurs every 4 years. Across the world, people watch 64 games with 32 different national teams qualifying for this tournament. Only one nation will become the champion of the world.
Many businesses all over the world have benefited from this year’s World Cup. This year Adidas reached record-breaking sales for World Cup jerseys. Adidas outperformed rival, Nike, this year. According to independent i.e. Adidas sponsored more teams than Nike in this year’s World Cup “sponsoring 12 of the 32 participating teams, including strong contenders like Germany and Spain, along with hosts Russia.”
Adidas represented over 25% of the nations in the world cup and being the creators of the official match ball helped the brand exposure. “The World Cup has impacted our business a lot", said Sarah, General Manager of Adidas in Chicago. She went on further to say, “I still get amazed by the things the brand does with their innovations such as Kanye West’s Yeezys. It makes my heart warm that the brand is getting more involved with the environment.” When asked about competitors she responded, “We don’t really focus on our competition with other brands. We honestly just do our job and that is just serving our customers to the fullest. We try to make every moment possible matter to our customers. We feel that inspiring our customers to come back helps a lot. We feel that inspiring our customers to come back helps a lot.”
Various Adidas jerseys, such as Mexico’s illustrious away jersey, Egypt's away, Sweden's away, Korea's away, along with Japan’s home jersey, are all sold out from Adidas. Cesar Villegas, a sales associate at the Adidas Store at the Water Tower Place, expressed how crazy jerseys flew off the shelves. “Mexico’s away shirt sold out so fast and I was excited to see everyone hyped up about the World Cup especially my country since everyone wanted the jersey.”
Rival company Nike also thrived with jersey sales this year. Nigeria’s home and away jerseys sold out within 15 minutes of the release. In addition, both home and away jerseys are sold out for Croatia and France who played in the World Cup final. However, according to Independent.ie, Nike saw soccer sales fall a currency-adjusted 4 percent to $2 billion for its fiscal year ended May 31, 2017, accounting for less than 6 percent of gross revenue.
Overall, Adidas has bounced back from losing money in 2014’s World Cup in Brazil and has made record-breaking sales for this year’s 2018 Russia World Cup. Adidas stock market value rose +0.50 while Nike went down -0.74. The two corporations will continue to battle it out in the growing soccer industry which is reaching more American fans year by year.