The 2026 World Cup pits Adidas and Nike against each other in the battle to conquer football fashion

Adidas relaunched in March the vintage t-shirt to capitalize on demand and steal the limelight from Nike. He even summoned former player Alexi Lalas, now a Fox Sports analyst, to present it.

The ambush marketing strategy shows how Adidas – the historic soccer brand after almost six decades as a World Cup sponsor – is exploiting the appeal of the sport off the court to gain ground in its ongoing battle with Nike.

Although benefited from Lionel Messi and the Argentine team winning the last World Cup, Adidas is trying more and more boost sales through retro products football and collaborations with celebrities and fashion designers. The soccer shoe Bad Bunny F50 Ghost Sprintwhich the musician used in the Adidas World Cup ad, will go on sale for US$160 before the 2026 final.

“We began to bet much more strongly on the idea that “Football is, let’s say, a cultural sport”said Sam Handy, Adidas’ global head of soccer, in a recent interview at the company’s headquarters in Bavaria.

It is not clear how much collaborations with fashion figures contribute to the results of big sports brands, not even how much they earn selling millions of Messi shirts.

Companies like Adidas and Nike rarely disclose how much they spend on sports, making it difficult for investors to evaluate their strategies. Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that Adidas could bill €1.2 billion—US$1.4 billion—in sales during the tournament. The company recorded €250 million in sales linked to the World Cup in the first quarter, with demand for apparel jumping 31% year-on-year.

However, the trend of fusing football and fashion became a central marketing strategy around the World Cup, in an attempt to diversify the product line beyond the sale of jerseys and balls.

Companies need that boost. Shares in Adidas, Nike and Puma have fallen since the beginning of last year. Big brands face tough competition from running-focused rivals like Hoka, New Balance y On Holdingthat now he plans his own landing in football.

Despite the reach of the World Cup, whose 2022 final was seen by almost 1.5 billion people, brands do not always manage to capitalize on it. That year, Adidas had difficulty supplying demand for Messi’s Argentine shirt after winning the World Cup..

One year later, Nike faced criticism for not selling a replica of English goalkeeper Mary Earps’ jersey at the Women’s World Cup. Meanwhile, Nike player Cole Palmer, who appeared in their World Cup advertising, was not even called up by England this summer.

About a decade ago, Adidas paid US$800 million to soccer’s governing body, FIFA, to sponsor tournaments until 2030, according to GlobalData, and this World Cup represents about US$120 million of that agreement. Adidas declined to comment on those figures. Such high costs run the risk of subtracting investment from other areas, such as running. And poor performances on the field make it difficult to convince consumers that lifestyle products linked to football are attractive.

“If you allocate so many resources to the World Cup, that cannibalizes your efforts in other areas,” said Ingo Speich, head of sustainability and corporate governance at Deka Investment, an investor in Adidas and Puma.

Nike stock plunged more than 70% from its 2021 peak, while lost participation market versus On and New Balance and it depended too much on basketball shoes converted into lifestyle products. Its CEO, Elliott Hill, attempted to re-embrace what he called a “sports obsession” by relaunching its core running business, and said soccer will be the next focus.

Of not having any team in the 1994 World Cupdisputed in his own country, In 1998, Nike began dressing several national teams, including Brazil.the current champion. His blue and yellow Mercurial boot, with a wavy design that evoked Copacabana beach, and a television advertisement with Ronaldo kicking a ball inside an airport marked the beginning of his soccer rivalry with Adidas. This time, Nike’s strategy includes the “Rip the Script” campaign, with appearances by figures such as LeBron James, Travis Scott and Kim Kardashian.

As a sign of the rivalry with Adidas, Nike will start dressing the German national team from 2027with a contract reported in €100 million annually. Nike declined to comment on the value of the deal.

Nike supplies uniforms to a dozen teams in the World Cup, including candidates such as France, Brazil and England. The company hopes that stars like Kylian Mbappéfrom France, and Erling Haalandfrom Norway—who also qualified for the knockout phase—continue scoring goals.

Products associated with football have the potential to become massive hits. The Samba sneaker, created by Adi Dassler for winter conditions the same year he founded Adidas, in 1949, helped revive the company’s fortunes after the 2022 collapse of its Yeezy sneaker franchise.

Sales at its footwear division reached €14.2 billion last year, up 15% from 2022. Adidas shares have soared in the first two years since its CEO Bjorn Gulden, a former professional soccer player, joined from Puma in early 2023 and Samba production increased.

According to Arthur Hoeld, who went from being commercial director of Adidas to becoming last year CEO of Pumathe company seeks to go beyond the success of its teams, such as Morocco and Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal. It also points to capture the interest of people who are not football fans through a strategy focused on fashion.

Puma’s line includes a $250 Ultra boot, in red, white and blue, designed with Brooklyn-based artist KidSuper for American player Christian Pulisic. It also has a goalkeeper t-shirt and a collection of travel clothing with the designer of streetwear New Yorker Salehe Bembury.

“A football team has many moments: when it travels, when it trains, when it warms up,” said Dominique Gathier, head of team sports at Puma. “We create custom products for all of that.” All items are for sale.

Adidas also recently placed its shamrock logo—for years reserved for its lifestyle products—on the alternative t-shirts of the World Cup of teams like Argentina, Germany and Spain. The reissue of the 1994 American jersey, red, white and with a “denim” effect, is part of that broader move.

“I have three,” said Donald Wine II, a member of the American Outlaws fan club who runs a blog and podcast about the U.S. team. “Adidas wants to recover that nostalgia to capitalize not only on the financial part, but also on the hearts and minds of those of us who watched those games in 1994 and can carry that memory to the next generation.”

While Adidas put its retro shamrock on t-shirts, Nike responded by adding Michael Jordan’s Jumpman logo in the blue alternative jersey that Brazil used against Haiti.

“We don’t do that often,” Camilo Andrade, Nike’s head of soccer, said in an interview last month. “They inspired us to see the game in a different way, with that creative instinct and that offensive football.”

So far, Nike’s presence at the tournament “gives us more confidence that there is light at the end of the tunnel,” Williams Trading analyst Sam Poser wrote in a note Tuesday.

For Adidas, the promise of football goes even further. An Adidas event during Paris Fashion Week last summer featured the football as “the definitive muse of fashion” and included new designs by Grace Wales Bonner, who is often credited with initial impulse of the Samba boom and who is now a featured designer for Hermès. He recently released a $350 version of the Predator boot in snakeskin, which Handy grabbed off his office wall. They look nothing like the classic black and white ankle boots of the past.

“We want to be the brand that is exactly in that intersection between sport and culture within the largest sport in the world,” he said.