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...second big piece of MLS's strategy has been to become the North American leader in promoting and managing the sport. "We want to be the portal for soccer in the U.S.," says Ivan Gazidis, deputy commissioner of MLS. An MLS division called Soccer United Marketing (SUM) won the rights to promote Mexico's team as well as the U.S. national team. So MLS brings Los Tri to Los Angeles, Miami and other Hispanic hot spots, while the U.S. team works the entire country. Both teams conduct doubleheaders with MLS squads. "We're doing a great job for them," says...
Think the World Cup is contested just on the pitch? With the finals less than a month away--on Adidas' German front lawn no less--Nike and Adidas have launched their broadest, most expensive marketing campaigns in the history of sport, all tied to a single event. (Nike is spending more than $100 million, Adidas closer to $200 million.) Some 32 billion cumulative viewers are expected to tune in to the World Cup, and an additional 3 million people will be taking in the tournament in 12 German cities. For both companies, it is the setting for another epic chapter...
Nike leads Adidas in every major sport, except the one that matters the most to the planet. So the Oregonians are obsessed with claiming one last victory, in the beautiful game. For Adidas, a company started nearly 60 years ago by fussball fanatic Adi Dassler, a Nike victory on its home turf would be like the Swoosh-clad U.S. team knocking off Adidas-draped Germany in the finals. "Soccer is the lifeblood and the backbone of our brand," says Adidas brand president Erich Stamminger. "It's very, very emotional...
Nike's soccer standing is impressive because, for the company's first 27 years, it basically ignored the sport. Nike built itself into the world's top sports brand by capitalizing on the 1970s jogging boom and the growing global infatuation with basketball in the 1980s and 1990s, headlined by the most valuable endorser in corporate history, Michael Jordan. Adidas seemed invincible in soccer because the sport put the company on the map. For the 1954 World Cup in Bern, Switzerland, Dassler had designed the first soccer shoe with replaceable cleats, or screw-in studs, at the bottom. An hour...
...time the World Cup rolled into the U.S. in 1994, however, Nike sensed a chance to expand its global profile. "Phil [Knight] realized that to be relevant and leading in the world of sport, not just in the United States, you have to be a leading brand in the world's most popular game," says Remlinger. And of course, the company wanted to crush a stumbling Adidas--which had lost $100 million in 1992--for good. By 1997, in true Nike fashion, the company signed an iconic endorser--the Brazilian national team, fresh off its '94 World Cup victory...