In 2024, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (SGA), the two-time NBA MVP and star of the Oklahoma City Thunder, was announced as creative director of Converse’s basketball division, in a deal that elevated him as the cornerstone signature athlete at the Nike-owned brand. Elevating SGA, who had been affiliated with the brand since 2020, was part of Converse’s strategy to revive interest and excitement in its brand by leveraging the power of athlete endorsements, attempting to attract fresh eyes on its products by reentering the signature basketball footwear market.

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On paper, it made a lot of sense. After all, Converse’s reputation as a manufacturer of cutting edge basketball footwear saw it dominate the professional game for much of the 20th century, thanks in part to the work of basketball player-turned-ambassador and salesman Chuck Taylor, whose name is still linked to the iconic canvas basketball silhouette that was once ubiquitous on the hardwood. Converse’s reputation was further bolstered by its relationship to the elite echelons of the sport, such as its role as the first ever footwear partner of the US Olympic basketball team in the 1930s. As Converse’s basketball sneakers were usurped in the latter 1900s by Adidas and then Nike (which would later acquire Converse in 2003, two years after it filed for bankruptcy), it transitioned into the retro lifestyle sneaker business we know it as today.

The bet that Converse made on SGA was its bid to benefit from the star power of the most spoken about and marketable man in the NBA (until Jalen Brunson’s heroics of the past month). Late Tuesday night, it emerged that the experiment had come to an end far sooner than anyone expected. Nike announced that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was joining Nike’s roster of signature basketball athletes, ending his association with its subsidiary, Converse.

It was a shock move, given how recently SGA was elevated to his role as the face of Converse basketball, and given how the brand has no other genuine breakout stars to carry the torch in his absence. It was also surprising because Converse had been signing new athletes up to its basketball roster as recently as the end of last year, namely SGA’s cousin, Nickeil Alexander-Walker. But considering the wider context and the health of both Nike's and Converse’s respective businesses, there are various explanations for the unconventional reshuffle.

Everyone who reads SportsVerse will need no introduction to the challenges that Nike is grappling with as it waits for its turnaround strategy under CEO Elliott Hill to take hold. Converse, meanwhile, has been experiencing plummeting sales for some time now, reporting double-digit revenue declines quarter after quarter after quarter, putting further unwanted pressure on Nike’s bottom line. In the most recent reported quarter Converse generated sales of $264 million, down 35 percent on a reported basis from $405 million at the same time last year. It constituted the brand’s worst quarter in 15 years. Nike reports full-year earnings next week (within which it will also report earnings for the Converse business) — it’s not expected to look pretty for either brand. Converse generated revenue of $1.7 billion in its last full financial year, a tiny but not insignificant portion of Nike’s total $46.3 billion from the same period.

Against this backdrop, there are three possible explanations for Nike’s decision to end the SGA project at Converse.

Protecting the Core of the Converse Brand

Converse needs life support. Flashy athlete endorsements like the erstwhile SGA partnership are all well and good when a brand can afford them, because more often than not these lines prove to be loss-making yet valuable marketing tools. This is a luxury that Nike couldn’t really justify right now for Converse.

We see this cycle repeat itself time and time again in the sportswear market: when a company is in trouble, the first things to go are all the nice-to-haves that the brand invested in building during more optimistic days gone by. The perfect examples are Under Armour’s shock divestment of Stephen Curry’s Curry Brand at the end of last year, and of course Nike’s removal of SGA from Converse.

Bringing an end to his signature line at Converse — which yielded the Shai 001 silhouette — could suggest that Nike no longer believes that investing so heavily in the signature sneaker market is a critical aspect of Converse’s turnaround plan. The performance basketball element always felt a little incongruous, given how minimal an impact Converse had on the overall market. Removing this significant commitment frees up both time and resources for the Converse team to focus its efforts on reviving brand heat and interest in its lifestyle footwear assortment (which has been out of favour in the mainstream for several years) and the iconic Chuck Taylor canvas silhouette.

Bye Bye Converse?

One source I spoke to said this could be Nike getting its ducks in a row while prepping to offload the Converse business (i.e. shifting its most valuable asset — Shai and his product line — over to Nike before listening to offers for the Converse business). There have been persistent rumours in recent months that Nike is weighing up options to spin off its struggling subsidiary, allowing Nike itself to focus on its own core business. Buyer-of-dying-companies Authentic Brands Group was reportedly sniffing around Converse back in March. Given the increasingly acquisitive inclinations of Chinese sportswear giants Anta and Li-Ning, and their attraction to historic sportswear brands with rich IP, I wouldn’t be surprised if one or both were weighing up bids, too.

But an insider I spoke to said there was little credibility to the persistent rumours of a Converse sale, with Nike leadership aligned on turning around the brand.

“Converse will remain an important part of the Nike, Inc. family, and we are excited about its long-term prospects,” CEO Hill said to investors during Nike’s third quarter earnings call. “Overall, the work is not finished, but the direction is clear. Our teams are moving with focus and urgency, and our foundation is getting even stronger.”

Nike is Boss

As discussed at length in previous SportsVerse newsletters, Nike is going all in on its strategy to centre its athletes at the core of its business and brand appeal. While it has an incredibly deep roster of signature basketball talent on the men’s side, many of the biggest names in that cohort — like LeBron or Kevin Durant — are reaching the ends of their careers. Whether people like it or not, SGA is undoubtedly the answer to the “next face of the NBA” debate, with an incredibly marketable and fashion-adjacent persona, and a very likeable signature sneaker line already developed within the Nike ecosystem, albeit under the Converse banner. There’s a very plausible argument to be made that SGA was simply too good a prospect for Nike to pass up on to the benefit of another brand, even one in its direct control.

Nike leadership will be in the hot seat this time next week, under fire from increasingly impatient investors, when the company reports full-year earnings. One major topic of discussion will no doubt be the fate of Converse. Stay tuned.

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That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM

It’s no exaggeration to suggest that when Nike released its first pair of pink football boots — or cleats, as they’re known over here — it was a huge cultural moment.

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The 'Rosa' colourway of the Mercurial Vapor IV boots, first worn by then-Arsenal striker and general bad boy Nicklas Bendtner in November 2008, caused a full-on stir in the world of football, which even as recently as that, was far more conservative when it came to daring colours or the influence of fashion of any kind on the field of play. The pink boots were considered a “stunt” and generated headlines in tabloid media from The Sun to the Daily Mail to The Mirror.

Back then, pink boots were considered so daring and controversial that brands would almost intentionally reserve them for their most reckless, daredevil players, like Bendtner or Mario Balotelli, who caused a stir when he wore one pink boot and one blue boot at the 2014 World Cup from the “Puma Tricks” collection.

Fast forward 18 years from Nike’s pink debut, and things look drastically different. Just about every single player you will see on your screen at this summer’s World Cup is wearing pink footwear.

What’s Causing all this Pink?

Naturally, the World Cup is the single best opportunity for sportswear brands to boost sales of football footwear and apparel. When it comes to performance products like specialist footwear, each brand creates bespoke collections which it designates as the key silhouettes it wants to push commercially during the tournament. For fans to want to buy them, though, they need to see their heroes performing in them on the greatest stage in world football. As a result, brands encourage (contractually oblige) the players that they sponsor to wear the new footwear they want to promote.

The intention is for a brand to stand out with one distinctive and compelling style that clearly differentiates from its competitors in the eyes of the consumer watching on TV or in the stands. It’s a smart play, on paper… only it hasn’t quite worked out that way at this World Cup, because each of the four major sportswear brands that sponsor the majority of the players at the tournament has chosen the colour pink for each of the boots in their collections.

The various assortment of boot silhouettes in Nike’s Breakout World Cup Pack, Adidas’ Road to Glory Pack, Puma’s Showtime collection and New Balance’s Pure Ambition Pack all come in a near-identical shade of hot pink.

The result is, of course, that when watching World Cup games in stadiums or on TV, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish one brand’s products from the other, without zooming in close to examine the logos. The ubiquity of the colour pink at this World Cup has been stretched even further, with referees wearing Adidas-produced pink jerseys during certain games too. I’d be curious to get Madé’s (’s) thoughts on what the proliferation of hot pink in football means from a trends perspective.

So how is it possible that all four of these major sportswear powerhouses, whose primary intention would surely have been to avoid creating similar-looking products to their competitors, spent the last two to three years developing identical collections? There are several reasons:

1. Demand for vibrant colourways. Since the first pink boots began hitting the market around 2008, the football boot market has steadily trended in favour of more fluorescent styles, as attitudes towards flashy footwear in the game have softened. Previously, such footwear was reserved for standout players with “flair” or speedy wingers at the very least. Now, it’s common to see defenders or even goalkeepers rocking bright-coloured boots. It’s possible that it was a major coincidence, and that each brand, in pursuing the most vibrant colour to make a splash at such a crucial World Cup, ended up settling on hot pink.

2. Following the trend cycle. The sportswear market is no different to the fashion industry at large. In the second half of the 2010s through to the pandemic, each and every luxury brand was churning out the same chunky sneaker silhouette because that was what the trend cycle dictated, and what consumers were perceived to be looking for. Fast forward to today, and you’d be hard-pressed to find chunky or high-top sneakers available for purchase at any of the brands (like Gucci or Balenciaga) that just a few years ago were producing them in the hundreds of thousands. It’s the same as for sportswear brands, who churned out thick soled sneakers until all of a sudden the Samba came back and flipped the market on its head, with every brand rushing to create low-rise flat soled shoes. The lesson here is: though brands claim to want differentiation from their competitors, they often spend most of their time creating products that look or feel uncannily similar, with the hope of attracting enough consumers allured by the style alone. This is exactly what is happening with the pink boot craze at the World Cup.

3. Rival sportswear brands are closer than you think. The entire process for bringing collections like these to market can take anywhere from two to three years. In that time, there is so much scope for information leaks between brands, which often trade employees and executives, draw insights from the same experts, agencies and focus groups, and use the same factories in countries like Vietnam to produce their products. All of the above provide ample scope for sample leaks and other means of information transfer to occur. It stands to reason that a product team could hear of a rival brand honing in on the colour pink and not wanting them to get away with having the limelight at a tournament as significant as the World Cup. And if you can’t beat ’em, you should probably join ’em.

Men’s football, a game that was once repulsed by the idea of its athletes prancing about the pitch in bright coloured footwear, is now all of a sudden awash with hot pink.

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That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM

Read More World Cup Analysis From SportsVerse

A cluster of Nike’s most senior leaders gathered for lunch in a grand private backroom at a restaurant in Budapest, Hungary, hours before the Champions League final, at the end of May. Among them were CEO Elliott Hill, brand president Amy Montagne, Phil McCartney, chief innovation, design and product officer, chief communications officer Michael Gonda, and Ann Miller, EVP of global sports marketing (to name just a few). The meeting served as a chance for Nike leadership to come together and reflect, at the outset of what will be a critical summer of sports that could make or break the beleaguered brand’s turnaround strategy.

For reasons still unbeknownst to me, I had a seat at that table, where (in between mouthfuls of Hungarian delicacies), Nike leadership and I spoke candidly about their all-out attack on an era-defining World Cup, the brand’s progress on its turnaround strategy at large, and what the future of Nike will look like should the fruits of their labour come to fruition.

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Things got off to a great start for Nike that night, with Nike-sponsored PSG winning its second Champions League final in successive years, which saw the brand benefit from its close association with the team (CEO Hill attended the match alongside PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, while Nike collaborator Travis Scott and athlete AJ Dybantsa were also VIP guests at the game), and also some viral reactive marketing that was so good that it took people hours and in some cases days to work out that the brand had played no part in it at all. In the week that followed, Nike also basked in the sports world’s attention, honing in on two things and two things only: 1) Knicks-mania, with the hair-raising NBA Finals defined so far by standout Nike athlete talent on both sides, from Jalen Brunson to Karl Anthony Towns to Victor Wembanyama; and 2) the build-up World Cup, of course.

Late last week, Nike finally went public with the bulk of its pre-World Cup marketing drive, leading with the release of its long awaited campaign, titled “Rip the Script”, an electrifying, high-budget short film starring just about every star Nike football athlete past and present, with celebrity cameos from the likes of LeBron James, Kim K, Travis Scott, Central Cee, Young Miko and many more.

The timing was nearly as interesting as the commercial itself. While Adidas had spent the best part of the last year drip-feeding product reveals, major in-person activations, special collabs and marketing teasers culminating in the blockbuster “Backyard Legend” film at the beginning of May, Nike opted to sit on the vast majority of its major product and marketing moments before opening the floodgates in the two weeks before the World Cup kicked off.

Produced by Wieden+Kennedy — the go-to creative agency for many of Nike’s best commercials over the years — Rip the Script had an instant impact on the debate as to which sportswear brand was in control of the marketing battle at play in the lead up to a crucial World Cup. If you consider the reach of both campaigns alone, Nike leapfrogged Adidas after its rivals enjoyed weeks of praise for its Backyard Legends film. Rip the Script, still less than four days old, has already racked up 65 million views on YouTube, compared to 6.7 million YouTube views for Adidas’ Backyard Legends spot, which aired one month ago.

But counting up the views doesn’t come close to telling the full story. I’m not here to add my voice to the chatter around which brand’s campaign was better (though I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter; let me know in the comments and poll above).

I think both served the exact purposes that Nike and Adidas intended. For Nike, it was casting as wide a net as possible, using the full extent of its athlete talent roster and its collaborator network to send out a message: that its Nike Football division is once again a core part of the business, and it does not intend to play second fiddle to Adidas or any brand during this World Cup on home soil. Under CEO Hill’s sport offence strategy, football was one of five key pillars of the business around which Nike is building its turnaround efforts.

“We’ve definitely had challenging journeys as a brand, but over the last year or year and a half, we’ve been getting back to what we have called the sport offence,” said Nike President, Amy Montagne. “That means being a sports company leading with the athlete at the centre.”

In recent years, one of the most consistent criticisms levelled at Nike has been that there has been a lack of fresh product and innovation to get consumers excited and spending again. Especially in football, this is one area where Adidas has excelled over Nike, blending the brand’s fashion appeal, sub-labels like Y-3 and collaborators like Wales Bonner with its connection to the heart of football culture through ambassadors like Jude Bellingham and Zinedine Zidane and partners like Real Madrid.

“We’ve been able to align our internal teams across product innovation and design, and support their creations with best storytelling to make sure those stories all come to life — that’s really our formula”, said Ann Miller, who leads the company’s athlete, league, and federation portfolio. “And in the case of the World Cup, we have an additional ingredient in that it’s being played on our home soil, and I think our ability to really bring the beautiful game to the people in the US in a way that they maybe haven’t seen before.”

Nike’s product innovation pipeline was very much stifled under the previous CEO, John Donahoe, meaning there was little for its consumers to turn to in this regard. Flashy marketing moments are all well and good, but ultimately ineffective if there are no products for people to buy.

This time around, things were very different. Rip the Script was released in the same week that all the various national teams were arriving at their camps across North America and playing in their final warm-up games. It was then that Nike chose to reveal a series of interesting fashion-forward collaborations between its key national team federations and various Nike collaborators or sub-brands from the same country. It’s the result of Nike’s renewed focus on localisation, another element the brand shifted away from under the previous regime.

“I think there’s so much more untapped potential in being local, being of the community, and really authentically resonating with these very intentional partnerships,” Miller said.

Localised, High-Heat Collaborations

Nike released a universe of collaborations — comprising sportswear and lifestyle apparel and footwear — with:

• the French national team and popular luxury designer Jacquemus;

• Nike and Canadian rapper Drake’s sub-label, Nocta and the Canadian national team;

• the England national team and British streetwear label Palace Skateboards;

• the US national team and the Virgil Abloh Archives;

• the Netherlands team and legendary Dutch streetwear label, and OG Nike collaborator, Patta; and

• South Korean rapper G-Dragon’s PEACEMINUSONE label and the Korean football federation.

Given that team arrival moments are suddenly getting NBA tunnel walk-like treatment in football, the timing of the release and first public sightings of these collaborations couldn’t have been smarter for visibility.

These releases came in addition to the earlier release of the Brazil x Air Jordan partnership, the release of a popular collaboration between British-Nigerian artist Slawn and the Nigerian national team (which sadly didn’t qualify for the tournament), as well as the revival of historic Nike football franchises over the past 12 months, such as T90 (which I wrote about last year), which have served to add yet more layers of product to Nike’s footballing revival efforts.

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These releases, geared more toward the fashion and lifestyle crowd, were accompanied by the launch of the brand’s latest instalment of its Mercurial football boot line (a pure performance product), which will be highly visible across World Cup games on the feet of Nike athletes thanks to its bright pink colourway.

Giving each of these federations its own bespoke collaborations was a monumental task, and a strategic play to serve as many consumers across as wide a demographic range as possible, catering to die-hard lovers of the sport but also to more casual fans attracted by the fashion element of football.

“These collaborations are deeply rooted and connected to culture,” said Montagne. “Sport offence means taking [Nike], breaking it into authentic pieces, and understanding which of those pieces help us maximise how we show up for and with our partners in a sport.”

This is a blueprint for how Nike will look to attack the next several years in football — and sports in general, Montagne added. Attention internally has already turned to making the most of the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil, with the Olympics in LA the summer after that already looming large on the horizon from a product development and marketing perspective.

All of this is happening against the wider backdrop of uncertainty and turmoil that has surrounded Nike in recent years. Insiders are painfully aware that the company will be reporting earnings for its full fiscal year 2026 on June 30 — a moment that has the potential to wrestle the narrative back onto discussions about the company’s lack of sales growth right in the middle of the World Cup. Nike stock is still down 30 percent since the beginning of the year, though it has trended more positively in the past month, up 5 percent at the time of writing.

Hill and his executive team are set on returning the company to its sporting roots. The World Cup is the first major tournament where we will see this strategy roll out in real time. The question is whether the market and investors will grant them enough time to see their vision through.

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That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM

Six months on from Stephen Curry’s shock exit from his lifetime Under Armour deal, we finally have an answer as to the future of his eponymous Curry Brand, the basketball-focused sub-label that the brand once co-owned but cut loose.

When the break-up happened — and Curry Brand was told it was free to pursue a deal with a new retail partner — it was the most unexpected and definitely the most seismic piece of news in the otherwise relatively stale performance basketball sneaker market. All of a sudden, the greatest shooter in NBA history was a sneaker free agent, in the twilight of his playing career.

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There was instant speculation as to what would become of Curry Brand. People speculated that: (1) Curry could go it alone and raise capital to build it out as an independent sportswear business (never going to happen); (2) Nike, Adidas or Puma would swoop for Curry Brand to bolster their basketball and lifestyle divisions (unlikely, given how expensive the investment would have been); or (3) as suggested at the time on SportsVerse, the most likely option was that Curry would look to the China market and seek to partner with one of the country’s two major brands enjoying increasing influence over the global sportswear market (and specifically in basketball footwear), Li-Ning or Anta.

Earlier this week, we got our answer. Curry’s sneaker free agency came to an abrupt halt after he announced a partnership with Chinese sportswear giant Li-Ning that will pay him $300 million over 10 years, according to local media reports in China (though Front Office Sports suggested the actual amount is much higher than that, citing an unnamed source). ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that the deal was worth closer to $400 million.

Was Partnering With a Chinese Brand Inevitable?

Yes. To the general public, it appeared that Curry had a wealth of choice as to where to take his brand during his sneaker free agency, which saw him wear footwear from just about every sportswear label in the market, old and new, from Nike to Reebok to Adidas to Puma to even On.

But in reality, very few options were actually viable, owing to limiting factors including: 1) the difficult positions of brands like Nike and Puma and their unwillingness to fork out such a large investment given the turnaround phases both companies find themselves in; 2) the fact that Curry is so late in his playing career, making a long term investment in a brand based on his name, image and likeness that much riskier, even if he’s one of the greatest of all time; 3) the fact that Adidas is building its own very specific identity in basketball, and Curry Brand would take valuable capital away from the foundations it’s building with its own product franchises in both men’s and women’s hoops.

Turning to a brand in China, it seemed, was Curry’s only option.

Why Did Curry Choose Li-Ning?

There were bids tabled by other brands, both in America and beyond. But realistically, Li-Ning was always going to be one of two credible options.

While many brands on the market could offer him a lucrative endorsement deal of some kind, what Curry would have prioritised above all else is finding a partnership with a brand that allows him enough independence, investment and dedicated focus to continue building Curry Brand as a business in its own right, rather than it simply being another sneaker line in a large endorsement roster at a company like Nike, Adidas or Puma.

Li-Ning already had a proven track record in this regard, having partnered with NBA legend Dwyane Wade to launch his Way of Wade sneaker line after he left his Jordan Brand endorsement in 2012, before scaling it into a standalone business in the brand’s wider portfolio after signing him to a lifetime deal in 2018.

In his open letter announcing the deal, Curry cited his admiration for the products Li-Ning had created for both Wade and his Golden State Warriors teammate Jimmy Butler, who is also signed to the brand.

While Curry would have been a valued addition to any brand he joined after Under Armour, very few could have given him the platform and autonomy that Li-Ning can offer.

Much like its larger domestic rival, Anta, Li-Ning is a relatively unknown entity to consumers and even industry folk outside of Asia. But the company’s $4.3 billion in annual revenue, coupled with its assortment of high-quality performance footwear and apparel across multiple sports (especially basketball and running), plus its extensive endorsement portfolio of athletes, teams and national federations, tells you all you need to know about how serious a competitor it can be to the rest of the market once it breaks out of Asia. Investing $300 million to $400 million to partner with Steph Curry only underscores just how committed the brand is in this regard.

We’ve said it time and time again on SportsVerse, but it’s worth reiterating here. Sportswear brands rarely see a return on investment for signature sneaker lines, save for rare success stories like Jordans, Kobes or Adidas’ Anthony Edwards line. Signature labels are usually marketing ploys to show off a brand’s connection to the athlete in question, and bring the athlete’s fans closer into the brand’s universe. Li-Ning, which will, of course, do its best to ensure the Curry Brand is profitable, is nevertheless investing predominantly in the association with Curry, rather than the ability to sell and co-create his brand’s products.

Curry also noted another factor in his decision to sign with Li-Ning was the company’s eponymous founder’s background. Mr Li Ning, the billionaire entrepreneur, is a former Chinese Olympic gold medalist and gymnast, and his role and track record as an athlete founder were reportedly enticing additional elements to the company’s bid for Curry’s business.

Finally, Li-Ning represented a logical home for Curry Brand, given how much time Curry himself has spent out in China marketing his brand and organising camps there almost every summer for the past several years. Li-Ning’s home market is already primed for both his profile and his product.

How Will the Li-Ning-Curry Brand Partnership Work?

Much like Curry Brand’s former set-up with Under Armour, the brand will leverage Li-Ning’s design, production and marketing infrastructure to create and sell its products as its own standalone sub-label. The continued focus of the Curry Brand for the time being appears to be across basketball, golf, and lifestyle (general sports-inspired fashion).

A (Mostly) Mutually Beneficial Partnership

Curry is the perfect conduit for Li-Ning — which currently generates around 99 percent of its sales in Asia — to finally embark on a push for global market share. The deal reportedly includes the opening of dedicated Curry Brand stores in the US and Canada, which will effectively be the first permanent Li-Ning retail outposts in North America.

One major sticking point that both parties will need to navigate off the bat is that Li-Ning is one of several companies identified and accused by the US government and human rights groups of using forced labour to produce their products. It led to Li-Ning products being banned in the US in 2022. It means that Curry Brand and Li-Ning’s first challenge will be ironing out any roadblocks to selling Curry Brand clothing and footwear in Curry’s home market, though this hasn’t appeared to be an issue with similar Li-Ning partnerships with other American stars, such as Dwyane Wade, whose Way of Wade sub-brand sells directly from its dedicated e-commerce site. (Though it’s worth noting that while Way of Wade has been a success in China, its impact on the global basketball footwear market has been relatively limited.)

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There are many questions left to be addressed: Will Li-Ning be able to unlock the potential in Curry Brand that Under Armour failed to? Will Li-Ning regret such an expensive bet on the selling power of an ageing NBA legend? Will Steph Curry be allowed the creative and commercial freedom to leave his own stamp on his brand?

For these very important considerations, only time will tell.

That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM

When LVMH first announced its entry into Formula 1 back in 2024 via Louis Vuitton, I knew it was only a matter of time before the French luxury conglomerate’s largest rival, Kering, sought out a bumper deal of its own in the competition.

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After months of rumours, that deal finally materialised last week, when Kering-owned Gucci was announced as the title sponsor of the Alpine F1 team, from the 2027 season onwards, which will be rebranded to “Gucci Racing Alpine Formula One” and will race in a new livery inspired by Gucci’s classic colours.

Let’s be clear: conglomerates like Kering and LVMH have very deep pockets, but these are huge sums being invested for their brands to be able to market their connections to Formula 1. Louis Vuitton’s sponsorship of F1 will reportedly cost the brand as much as $1 billion over the ten-year term. Meanwhile, media reports (unverified) have suggested that Gucci will pay around $150 million for its Alpine partnership, though the term of the deal hasn’t been disclosed.

It’s very likely that Kering and Gucci felt compelled in some way to enter Formula 1, given that its rival had made the first move and already benefited greatly from one of the world’s most in-demand sports in the eyes of marketers and casual fans. But a reported $150 million is a lot to pay for a bit of FOMO. So let’s dig into what actually made the brand pull the trigger on this bumper partnership.

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• Gucci ultimately came to the conclusion that it couldn’t afford not to be in Formula 1. The brand has long been adjacent to sports, but while its competitors like Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Prada have gone all in with direct partnership deals with athletes and teams, Gucci has opted for more muted collaborations with other brands, such as Adidas and Palace. It meant that as sports became ever more significant as a marketing channel in the luxury fashion ecosystem, Gucci wasn’t really in the conversation.

• Gucci is not the high-flying luxury label it once was. Against the backdrop of an increasingly challenging luxury market, the company has recorded 11 successive quarters of declining sales. It doesn’t look like this downward trajectory will be reversed anytime soon, either. In the first quarter of 2026, the Italian luxury giant reported a quarterly sales decrease of eight percent from the same period the year prior.

• Sport is now luxury, and luxury is sport. To any luxury brand, what sets it apart — beyond questionably overpriced clothing — is its ability to provide access to luxury experiences and aspects of society that others can’t. That access gets the brand invaluable cachet and loyalty from the celebrities, influencers, media and high net worth clients that are essential to its orbit and standing in culture. The Formula 1 paddock has quickly become one of the most sought-after places to be seen and invited to in all of sports, and Louis Vuitton (through its existing deal) has been able to leverage that access for all kinds of hospitality and relationship-building purposes. This is exactly the sort of access and gatekeeper position that Gucci is seeking via its deal with Alpine.

  

The brand’s CEO, Francesca Bellettini, alluded to as much in the press release that accompanied the announcement:

“This reflects our ambition for the brand and the role we want Gucci to play on this stage. Formula 1 represents today a unique convergence of performance, culture, and global reach… Gucci Racing is more than a presence on the grid. It is an expression of who we are and where we want to take the brand,” she said.

It marks a realisation from Gucci that, to be an appealing luxury brand in the current market, you need to have access to the most compelling aspects of the sports industry. And right now, that sits squarely within the world of Formula 1.

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That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM

I’m back in Europe this week, taking some time off. It’s a shame because there is so much happening that needs analysing: Burberry and Palace’s great World Cup campaigns; the Spanish national team signing a formalwear deal with Loewe; and Gucci’s incursion into F1 via its title sponsorship of Alpine. Anyway, usual SportsVerse programming will resume shortly, with some exciting interviews and stories planned as we head into a huge summer of sports.

In the meantime, I wanted to let you know that as of this Friday and every Friday forevermore, I’ll be writing a brand new newsletter, in addition to my own. OffBallFC is dedicated to the culture of the beautiful game, and will give me a chance to write about the sport I have loved since I was a kid, while SportsVerse will retain its usual focus on the intersection of fashion, sports and business.

It’s been so much fun planning the launch of OffBallFC with the rest of the team. We even secured backing from USMNT star Flo Balogun. OffBallFC will be in your inbox every Wednesday (that edition written by NWSL player and Man City lover Madison Hammond) and every Friday from this week onwards. You can sign up for the newsletter HERE. Enjoy!

I joked to a friend last week that I should start a series called Calling Out Industry BS. My article from a couple of weeks ago, calling out the BS that is the Nike pile-on (which is now the second most-read and most-shared article in SportsVerse history), would have been a great first edition. Today’s issue works perfectly as the second in this new series.

But first things first, ARSENAL WON THE PREMIER LEAGUE. A win for the Arsenal is a win for the culture, which makes it all the sweeter, seeing how much it meant to the players who had to put up with so much negativity all season.

Secondly, please take some time to read the great Lois Sakany’s reporting on the conclusion of Rihanna and A$AP Rocky’s partnership deals with Puma. It’s well worth your time.

Rumours of On’s Demise Were Greatly Exaggerated

As I mentioned earlier, the overall theme of this article falls under the Calling Out Industry BS theme.

Back on March 25, when On announced a surprise leadership transition, with long serving CEO Martin Hoffmann to be replaced by co-founders David Allemann and Caspar Coppetti, the market, investors, analysts and (of course) LinkedIn thinkpiece warriors went into a meltdown, spewing out notes, posts and emails about how this signalled trouble behind the scenes at On, and suggested it could be an indicator of simmering turbulence which could finally curtail the brand’s meteoric rise. Many in the market reached the conclusion that because this was On’s second leadership change in a year, it was cause for panic. The company’s stock fell 11.2 percent in one trading day. In other words, premium industry BS and hysteria won the day.

As is often the case, the best way to quell such BS is to let the money do the talking. And that’s exactly what On did last week, when it reported earnings for the first quarter of 2026.

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On announced that it generated $1 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2026, up 14.5 percent from the same period last year. It was the first time the Swiss sneaker giant crossed the $1 billion threshold in quarterly sales. Profit rose 82.2 percent year-over-year to CHF 103.3 million ($127 million). To put On’s breakneck growth into perspective, the company only reached $1 billion in annual revenue back in 2022. It’s now generating that sum every three months.

The earnings resoundingly confirmed that any rumours of turmoil in the brand were greatly exaggerated — and if any trouble did or does exist, it’s certainly not impacting the only thing that really matters: the bottom line.

On’s stock is up seven percent since earnings last week.

No one knows the brand better than its co-founders, who scaled On from a mere idea into the multibillion-dollar sportswear giant (with market-leading growth) that it is today. The fact that Allemann and Coppetti are back at the helm is a positive, meaning faster decision-making, execution and flatter chains of command — all things that have already helped grease the wheels of On’s agile innovation pipeline, while many of its older rivals are encumbered by complex reporting structures and decision-making chains.

Just this week, filings revealed that Allemann, Coppetti and their other co-founder, Olivier Bernhard, purchased a collective $6.6 million in company stock, a classic tactical signal to the market of any founder’s supreme confidence in the future of their brand. As I said a couple of weeks back when CEO Elliott Hill bought $2 million in Nike stock, this is what leading from the front looks like.

On is in good hands.

A Premium Approach for a Premium Brand

Every sportswear company will tell the market it’s a premium, high-end brand. Very few have the credentials to back that bold assertion. So far, On is walking the walk.

"We had this era of hyper growth, we had this era of durable growth as we became a public company, now we're in the era of premium growth,” said Dan Schade, On’s VP and general manager, Americas. “It's all about clarifying to the consumer what we mean when we say we're the premium brand in the space — and for us it's a lot more than just price, it's like an earned position from the consumer actually," he told me over video call last week.

The numbers check out, too. As my friend Mike Sykes astutely pointed out yesterday, On’s latest record quarterly gross margin — a measure of how much profit a company makes on sales after subtracting production costs — of 64.2 percent, places it much closer as a business to the metrics of top luxury brands like Hermès and Prada, rather than its sportswear category peers.

Schade explained that the concept of being a premium brand flows from:

1. Product and innovation. Premium begins with the way in which the product is created and brought to life — not innovation for innovation’s sake. For example, On announced its latest and brightest innovation, LightSpray, will get its own luxury treatment via a Loewe collaboration on the LightSpray Cloudmonster performance running silhouette. The technology, which is being scaled by the brand in a new facility in South Korea, with others planned around the world soon, represents the pinnacle of running footwear technology. But pairing it with the luxury credibility of Loewe helps to elevate both its cultural cachet as a fashion item (as well as its price point — another key element of the brand’s premiumisation). The silhouette’s Loewe collaboration retails for $990. Not a bad return for an ultralightweight shoe that is sprayed on by a robot in under three minutes.

2. A positioning that is earned, rather than dictated. Schade explained that it was far more fruitful for the brand to invest its time and resources into showing people that it has a premium offering, rather than telling. After all, people will make that decision for themselves after they see and use the products. “It’s an earned position from the consumer, actually," he said.

The Transition to All-Round Sportswear Powerhouse

Last year, after an interview with co-founder Caspar Coppetti, I wrote about how the next phase of On’s growth centred on its mission to become an all-round sportswear giant, not just a running footwear business.

One thing that major sportswear brands have in common is that the bulk of their sales comes from the lifestyle (i.e. fashion) segment, whether that’s footwear or clothing. It’s a paradox that will forever confuse people unfamiliar with the category: that sportswear companies sell more fashion or sports-inspired products than sports products themselves (e.g. Nike sells far more retro Jordans than it does sneakers designed to actually play basketball in).

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For On, which has long been scaling its lifestyle footwear offering, the next challenge is cracking the sports apparel market.

This work is underway. Apparel is becoming an increasingly important aspect of On’s business.

Footwear will long continue to make up the bulk of the brand’s sales (up 12.2 percent year-on-year to CHF 763.7 million ($939 million) in the first quarter of 2026). But On is quickly scaling its apparel offering, with clothing sales up 45.1 percent to CHF 55.3 million ($68 million) in the same period.

Another key element in the next stage of the company’s growth is its continued expansion in North America as both a performance sports brand and a lifestyle player.

A recent development which will help with the former is the launch of OAC Sprint — an extension of the original On Athletics Club — a major investment made by the brand into its burgeoning track and field presence, in the form of its first ever professional sprint club led by coach John Bolton, to be based in Los Angeles.

The inaugural team features an exceptional lineup of professional and collegiate talent, led by Ghanaian Olympian Benjamin Azamati alongside American athletes Samirah Moody, Max Thomas, and Johnny Brackins.

The benefit of such initiatives extends far beyond having the On logo on the clothing and footwear of athletes at high profile competitions. The insights gathered from athletes in these groups feed directly back into product development and innovation.

"This isn't just an athlete under contract with competition days and non-competition days,” Schade said. “This is a 360-degree approach that puts the athlete at the centre, and they use the brand versus the opposite. Innovations like LightSpray come directly from these moments and these insights."

That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM

As is often the case with major tournaments — be it the Olympics or the World Cup — things often seem very quiet in the build-up, until they’re not. This has certainly been true for the upcoming World Cup. The tournament, which kicks off June 11, has been marred by the messy political backdrop of the United States, one of the three host nations, along with a never ending stream of negative coverage regarding the tournament’s overall inaccessibility to regular fans, either through visa constraints, exorbitant ticket prices, or both.

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Brand marketing around the tournament itself has been so muted in the lead up that people were beginning to question whether a North American World Cup would make a splash at all. But we have now crossed that tipping point, just weeks out from the first game of the tournament, where World Cup marketing has gone into overdrive from brands of all kinds, seemingly overnight.

Leading the charge, of course, is the sportswear industry.

Each of the three major brands has opted for a similar tactic in order to cut through the noise and reach both casual and more traditional football fans. Nike, Adidas and Puma, which as always, manufacture the kits of the majority of teams in the tournament, have all leveraged their foremost cultural (i.e. non-athlete) ambassadors to lead their pre-tournament product and marketing rollouts, even where those ambassadors have no obvious prior connection to football.

Let’s consider some recent examples:

• Yesterday, Puma released a World Cup apparel collection designed by celebrated sneaker designer Salehe Bembury. This was a surprise in and of itself, given that when Puma hired Bembury in 2024, the brand suggested he was hired specifically for design projects across its basketball division. Puma has a strong footballing heritage, and usually enjoys a more flexible creative license than Adidas or Nike when designing playing kits or lifestyle collections for its national federations. The capsule — shot in a picturesque campaign across Los Angeles — features modernised versions of classic Puma silhouettes, including the famous King tracksuit (steeped in football heritage), alongside jerseys, shorts, travel wear, and goalkeeper kits dedicated to the brand’s 11 national federations competing in the tournament. It also marks the launch of the brand’s Velum Nitro sneaker.

• We all know Adidas’ moves by now. Its Backyard Legends short film was a major hit, and featured a cameo from star ambassador Bad Bunny as well as the campaign’s lead, Timothée Chalamet. Though the film featured some of the world’s most famous footballers, past and present (Lionel Messi, Lamine Yamal, Jude Bellingham, David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane), it was the presence of Chalamet and Bad Bunny which catapulted the work into a new realm.

Meanwhile, Nike has used American rapper and brand ambassador Travis Scott as the host and star figure in its Toma El Juego street football series, which it has taken on the road to cities such as Miami and Atlanta over the past year, as well as an activation at Coachella. The brand has used Scott — alongside a rotating cast of other collaborators like 21 Savage and affiliated Nike athletes such as (Brazilian) Ronaldo — to celebrate a more modern take on the game and inject it with a little streetwear credibility.

It’s no coincidence these brands have all opted for a similar playbook. This World Cup will see a record number of teams compete in a record number of games across three countries in North America. It will therefore be the largest ever total addressable market of consumers a World Cup has ever seen. It means that reaching people at scale — be they die hard supporters or people who’ll be watching their first ever World Cup — is essential. To do that, brands need far more than the high-profile athletes on their books, who will likely only reach the former group of fans. It's the blending of athlete appeal with that of cultural ambassadors and hitmaker designers that really moves the needle.

Although the tournament is around the corner, we are far from being done yet. Nike will reveal a pre-World Cup push of its own in the first week of June, so expect fireworks there. The Swoosh has a tough act to follow, given how widely praised Adidas’ rollout has been. Stay tuned to SportsVerse for more analysis when the time comes.

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That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM

In today’s relatively short newsletter, I wanted to check in after several of the category’s brands reported earnings in recent days. As I mentioned earlier this week, May and June were always going to be insightful months into the health of the sportswear industry, given On, Asics, Under Armour and Nike were all due to report earnings. With the Swoosh still to come in June, let’s take a look at how earnings revealed the varying fortunes of the first three names on that list. I have two juicy sportswear market-related articles planned for next week, but for now, let’s dig in:

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• On announced that it generated $1 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2026, up 14.5 percent from the same period last year. It was the first time the Swiss sneaker giant crossed the $1 billion threshold in quarterly sales. Profit rose 82.2 percent year-over-year to CHF 103.3 million ($127 million). Similar to the theme of Tuesday’s newsletter (which focused on the LinkedIn warriors and the armchair experts piling onto Nike), On also received widespread and largely unfounded criticism from casual commentators, investors and financial analysts alike in April, when it announced that longtime CEO Martin Hoffmann was stepping aside, to be replaced by two of the brand’s co-founders (David Allemann and Caspar Coppetti) splitting the role. People began to jump to the conclusion that this was “the beginning of the end of On’s rise”. This set of earnings, which we’ll dig into in detail on Tuesday, accompanied by an interview with one of the brand’s execs, prove that rumours of On’s demise were greatly exaggerated and/or completely unfounded. Apparel is becoming an increasingly important aspect of On’s business as the company transitions from a footwear specialist to an all-around sportswear power player.

• Meanwhile, On’s Japanese sportswear rival, Asics, continued its meteoric rise, boosted by the popularity of its performance running and sportstyle (fashion) footwear along with its Onitsuka Tiger label, posting record quarterly sales of its own this week. Asics has been on a steadily building hot streak for several quarters now, but revenues of $1.83 billion, up 30 percent compared to the same period in 2025, and profits up 47 percent year-over-year, suggest the company is in all-out offense mode, snagging vital market share far beyond Asia in key markets such as North America and Europe. Buoyed by the strongest quarter in the company’s 77-year history, Asics raised its guidance for fiscal 2026.

• Finally, the embattled Under Armour reported earnings its full-year fiscal 2026, ended March 31. As expected, it wasn’t pretty. Revenue of $5 billion constituted a four percent decrease from 2025’s figure, with an especially sharp drop-off in North America sales of 8 percent. The Baltimore-based sportswear brand, which is in the midst of yet another restructuring attempt by controversial founder and once-again CEO Kevin Plank, also reported a loss of $496 million and an operating loss of $163 million. The bleak earnings bring an end to a miserable fiscal year for Under Armour, which will forever be remembered for the brand’s shock decision to discard its basketball-focused Curry Brand, along with its co-founder and NBA legend Steph Curry, who at the time was under a lifetime endorsement deal with the company. For the upcoming fiscal year, Under Armour said it expects another low single-digit decrease in annual revenue. Time will tell if Plank can pull the brand out of dire straits. Recent history suggests it will be easier said than done.

That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM

There are three truths in this world: death, taxes and people having a hot take on the so-called downfall of Nike. LinkedIn is now a breeding ground for engagement-baiting thinkpieces full of largely unsubstantiated assertions that X campaign or Y strategy is the reason why Nike is no longer the brand it once was.

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There was a surge in optimism — both inside the brand and across the market in general — about the brand’s future when Nike lifer Elliott Hill took the top job towards the end of 2024, and set out an ambitious “Sport Offence” turnaround plan based on re-centring athletes and bringing the company back closer to what it does best: sports.

There were even some big early wins in Hill’s tenure, which suggested to some that Nike was quickly getting back to its old ways and reclaiming its position as the dominant voice in the sportswear market.

But the goodwill afforded to Hill, a charismatic sports fanatic and true Nike man, is beginning to wear thin among influential groups, including investors, market analysts and general fans of the brand.

It’s not that Hill’s turnaround plan for the business is flawed — quite the opposite. It’s simply the case that it takes a long time to steady a $46.3 billion company which has lost its way, especially given how entrenched some of the core problems that set in during the Donahoe era had become. Nike is also battling myriad external factors and is attempting to underscore the appeal of its own clothing and footwear in the midst of an unprecedented commercial and cultural winning streak for its largest rival, Adidas, along with the continued progress of smaller but increasingly influential brands in this space, like On.

But there’s an interesting contrast at play: while many individuals (especially those seemingly outside the sportswear industry) seem to be enjoying bashing Nike at every possible opportunity, the industry itself seems still as enamoured with the Swoosh as it always has been. Everybody still wants to be Nike, even if Nike itself is in a prolonged rough patch.

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Here are some examples of everyone wanting to be like Nike:

1. Lululemon, which is going through its own very complicated struggles, turned to veteran Nike executive Heidi O’Neil, who recently left the Swoosh after 26-year tenure during which she presided over the company’s most successful years. O’Neil was appointed as CEO of Lululemon last month, at which point the internet decided to lay much of the blame for Nike’s recent struggles at her feet, citing her role as a proponent of the brand’s now-abandoned direct-to-consumer push (which was lauded by analysts and investors at the time as revolutionary) as the reason why she was a bad pick for her new employers. Yet Lululemon, which sits up there with the Swoosh as one of the sportswear market’s greatest success stories, deemed O’Neil’s expertise and her proximity to the Nike secret sauce as a fundamental asset to the brand, entrusting her at the driver’s seat of the Canadian brand’s turnaround.

2. Adidas got widespread plaudits for its Backyard Legends short film, which was the crowning moment of a near-flawless product and marketing rollout ahead of the World Cup next month. That praise was entirely warranted. However, it would be remiss of us not to acknowledge that the scrappy, energetic, rousing nature of the campaign — which didn’t take itself too seriously — harked back to the classic Nike football commercials in the 90s, 2000s and early 2010s, like this or this.

3. All the independent cool kid brands want to be like Nike. Whether that’s emerging running and callisthenics adjacent start-up groups/brands like PNP Fitness, NSLB, Energy (profiled in SportsVerse here), or streetwear labels like London’s Corteiz or Paris’ Baara, there’s only one brand on the founders’ vision boards for a dream collaboration: there’s no co-sign like a Nike Swoosh on your product. The way these brands speak to consumers, design, market and release products and collaborate with others is all rooted in the Nike way.

4. The actual Pope rocks Nikes. That’s right, the pontiff Leo XIV was seen in a niche vintage pair of Nike sneakers. Not Adidas Sambas. Not Salomon XT-6s. Not Puma Speedcats. The only sneaker brand that is Vatican-certified is Nike. That has to count for something.

So while it’s certainly the case that right now, Nike is not on a winning streak, it’s also true that almost every brand in sportswear that is performing well right now is doing so by borrowing at least some of the core strategies first laid out in the Nike playbook.

The Road Ahead for Nike

The next few weeks and months will be pivotal.

The brand has a major World Cup marketing push planned for June 3, and it will report earnings for its full 2026 fiscal year at the end of the month. It also has an investor day slated for the fall, when the brand’s leadership will once again be in the hot seat.

The year-end earnings will certainly not paint a pretty picture, but Hill will be hoping he will be able to point to some growth in the green shoots that have been nestling their way out of the rubble of Nike’s collapse of late: namely, the strong growth of its running footwear and apparel business, and the positive direction in which North America sales are trending. Ultimately, investors will need to see more than that to be appeased. To avoid another pile-on, there will need to be some concrete indication that next year’s outlook will point to some signs of a turnaround. Nike stock is trading perilously low, $42 per share at the time of writing, down 33 per cent since the beginning of the year. On April 13, Nike stock hit its lowest point since 2014.

To end on an optimistic note, Nike folk can take solace in three things:

1. Elliott Hill bought $2 million of Nike stock when the company’s shares hit historic lows in April. His messaging has remained resolute: that the brand is in cleanup mode and he and his leadership team are not interested in quick fixes — they are readying Nike for the next 40 years. That is what leading from the front looks like.

2. Even with the forecast low single-digit revenue decline expected for its fiscal 2026, Nike will likely report sales of $44 billion to $45 billion, dwarfing the entirety of its competitors (Adidas included) in the sportswear market.

3. Even the Pope is rocking Nike still. It could be worse.

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That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM

Yesterday, mid-morning New York time, I started getting inundated with messages from people sharing their excitement about the teaser trailer for Adidas’ World Cup campaign, which had just been posted on Timothée Chalamet’s Instagram account and had already racked up hundreds of thousands of views.

I’d been waiting for the reactions. The day before, I obtained a secret link to the full version of the video in preparation for my interview with Chris Murphy, senior vice president of brand marketing at adidas North America. (If Chris’ name is familiar, it’s because I interviewed him back in October in my deep-dive into Adidas World Cup strategy, which you can read here.)

I’ll be honest, when brands or their hard-working comms agencies send out pitches talking up an “exciting new campaign”, I am often guilty of rolling my eyes. It’s not because of anything a brand has done specifically; it's more about the sheer amount of content we are inundated with in the sportswear market, and how so much of it hardly adds value or is remembered even days later. But it took only a few seconds to realise, watching Adidas’ “Backyard Legends,” brand campaign, that this was something very different altogether.

The campaign, which takes the form of a five-minute short film, stars Timothée Chalamet, who is joined by a stellar cast of Adidas’ elite football ambassadors, both active and retired, including Lionel Messi, Lamine Yamal, Jude Bellingham, Trinity Rodman, Zinedine Zidane, David Beckham and Alessandro Del Piero. It also includes a cameo from Bad Bunny, one of Adidas’ foremost cultural ambassadors who has increasingly been integrated into the brand’s overall marketing efforts in sports like Formula 1 and football. There are also appearances for other top Adidas footballers such as Ousmane Dembélé, Raphinha, Pedri and Florian Wirtz.

There’s no doubt that the campaign was designed as a full-on Adidas tour de force, a flexing of the brand’s muscles just weeks out from the World Cup. It’s designed as a reminder that Adidas believes that it is the “original” sportswear brand to cater to football and that it dominates the sport, in the same way that Nike feels that it owns the basketball category.

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Even casting Chalamet was a smart play. It goes far beyond the fact that he’s at the center of the cultural zeitgeist right now. He’s a known lover of football, having played since a kid (evidence: the picture of him playing against now-Liverpool defender Joe Gomez in a youth tournament back in the day, as well as his love for ultra-niche football things, including France’s St Etienne and retro England tracksuits). It means, as well as the bonus of him being one of the most talked-about figures in popular culture, Chalamet’s role in the campaign feels authentic — he’s there on merit.

“I think there are a few brands that can speak to sports the way that we can, and then can also tie the culture piece in authentically,” said Murphy, citing how the likes of Chalamet and Bad Bunny are integrated into the campaign — and in general the way the brand speaks to its consumers — alongside current stars like Trinity Rodman and Jude Bellingham, as well as retired legends in the Adidas orbit like Zidane and Beckham. It means the brand is able to speak to every generation of fan and every genre of consumer, from those focused on the fashion side of football apparel to those into more traditional merch or performance gear.

Crucially, it’s the film’s storyline, not just the presence of its all-star cast, which makes it so noteworthy. It’s a feel-good plot which follows the all-star Adidas players on their way to take on an undefeated neighbourhood team whose exploits and lore are recounted by Chalamet on the way to the match-up. There are small details which create a sense of nostalgia for anyone who has played the game growing up: playing for bragging rights in your local area, throwing shoes (or any other objects nearby) up into trees to dislodge a ball that ended up there after a wayward shot. It’s a scrappy, energetic, rousing spot, which harks back to classic Nike football commercials in the 2000s and early 2010s.

Positive coverage of the campaign teaser alone went instantly viral online, reaching outlets (like the Daily Mail) which typically only write about sportswear companies in times of scandal. It marked another huge catalyst for the Adidas brand (following on from the momentum of the post-London Marathon hysteria).

Even investors seemed moved by the positive momentum generated by the campaign, with Adidas stock up four percent yesterday, and up over 13 percent in the past month.

The Final Countdown

The Backyard Legends film was the final big trick up Adidas’ sleeve before the tournament kicks off. It was the crowning piece in a series of major moments since the end of last year, when the brand began its World Cup offensive with the launch of the official tournament ball at a major event at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Since then, there has hardly been a month where Adidas has not made headlines with a well-executed rollout of many of the 3,000 individual products it has created in connection to various aspects of the World Cup, including partner team jerseys, lifestyle collections, the cheeky recreation of the USA ‘94 jersey, collaborations and even a national team collection for pets, which proved to be another big internet hit.

While he declined to break out sales figures, Murphy said each collection had sold well, adding that “there is still more product to come” before kick off on June 11.

Total Football

The brand’s omnipresence in the lead-up to the tournament was very intentional. Under CEO Bjorn Gulden, North America has long been seen as a critical growth market for the brand — both in terms of sales and for cultural bragging rights, given it’s the backyard of Adidas’ biggest rival, Nike. (Adidas’ attention to detail in football is no coincidence either. Gulden is a former professional footballer himself and to this day obsesses over every detail of the game.)

This fascinating dynamic between the rival brands will play out this summer at the World Cup itself: Nike will have the advantage that the tournament is on home soil, whereas Adidas has the major advantage of being the official tournament sponsor (whose logos and products will be plastered everywhere from the match ball to in-stadium advertising). Among Adidas’ 14 partner federations taking part in the World Cup will be Spain and Argentina, two teams likely to make deep runs in the tournament, and who will be considered alongside Nike-sponsored France as some of the favourites to win it all in July.

Right now, Adidas is a brand that can do no wrong, from athletes running sub-2 marathons in its shoes to healthy earnings reports to a near-perfect pre-World Cup product and marketing rollout. Meanwhile, Nike has plans to make a splash of its own between now and June 11.

The Three Stripes’ dominance in world football is best summed up by the fact that three of the last four World Cups have been won by an Adidas-sponsored team: Argentina (2022), Germany (2014) and Spain (2010). Nike’s sole victory in that period came when France lifted the trophy at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

No amount of Timothée Chalamet-induced hysteria or sexy football-fashion clothing will ever influence how things go on the pitch this summer, but Adidas’ pre-World Cup rollout tells exactly what we need to know about the brand’s intention to dominate the sportswear industry’s football category and remain the go-to brand in the hearts of casual and traditional fans worldwide.

It’s over to Nike now to see if it has anything left up its sleeve to show its German rival who’s boss this summer. My popcorn is ready.

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That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM

As expected, last night’s Met Gala was somewhat overshadowed by criticisms of its backers (Jeff and Lauren Sanchez Besos) and a theme that left a lot to be desired overall.

The proceedings seemed relatively mundane, almost as if everyone was going through the motions.

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The bright spots — as predicted in my article last week — were, of course, the athletes in attendance, who continue to be the most compelling category of public figure and collaborator in the eyes of fashion designers and marketers.

There were no doubt fewer athletes in attendance this year than in 2025, which was by far the most sporty Met Gala in history, given the theme and the sheer number of athletes involved as co-hosts and on the host committee. Nevertheless, there was still a reasonable handful of standout sports stars who made the trip to New York for the evening.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list:

• Basketball: A’ja Wilson (host committee), Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese, Steph Curry, Dwyane Wade, Jimmy Butler, Russell Westbrook

• Tennis: Venus Williams (co-chair), Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka

• (American) Football: Joe Burrow, Justin Jefferson, Russell Wilson

• Other: Eileen Gu, Alysa Liu, Lindsey Vonn, Miles Chamley-Watson

It’s no surprise that any of these names made the coveted invite list. My one callout here is to highlight the fact that the majority of the athletes present were women. It tracks with where the luxury fashion industry and its brands are putting their focus right now when it comes to partnerships and campaigns (Alysa Liu was announced as Louis Vuitton’s latest house ambassador just hours before the Gala).

While many outlets and social media pages will cover which sports stars were in attendance last night and what they were wearing, a more interesting exercise would be to consider who wasn’t there, and why.

The most obvious absentee (on the carpet, at least) was Lewis Hamilton. Many fans queued outside the venue in the expectation that he would be there, given his status as one of the biggest proponents of fashion in the modern era of sports, and also that he typically makes the trip up from Miami directly to New York each year after the race. Commentators were keen to see if he would arrive with Kim Kardashian, who he is rumoured to be dating.

There was no presence at all from the world of Formula 1 as far as I could see, which was surprising given: (1) the entire F1 world was just down the road in Miami for the Grand Prix which ended on Sunday; (2) how keen many F1 teams, drivers and marketers seem on aligning the sport with the upper echelons of the fashion industry these days; (3) the formalised ties between F1 and luxury given the official partnership with Louis Vuitton.

It’s always a shame that the timing of the Met Gala means it always coincides with the NBA Playoffs, the final weeks of the European football season and a crucial phase in the tennis calendar. It means that we rarely see the highest calibre players from any of those competitions. It would be fascinating to see which of football’s big names would make the invite list (you would imagine the likes of Jude Bellingham and Jules Koundé would be sure to make an appearance).

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Given how critical sport has become to the fashion industry of late, it would be interesting to see the Met explore some creative ways to directly integrate athletes into the event, beyond simply handing out invites and ceremonial host committee roles.

Something I could definitely get behind (if done tastefully) is the idea put forward by friend-and-sometimes-workout-buddy , who suggested that the Met could implement a sports-focused theme in the near future. It would take a painstaking amount of research and consultation with athletes and sports historians to make sure it doesn’t come off as gimmicky (like the Vogue World show in 2024 before the Olympics), but if done well, it could be the recipe for re-injecting some excitement into the storied event. My door is always open if Anna Wintour needs advice in this regard.

That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM

The Met Gala is at an interesting crossroads. And sports could well be at the very heart of the reason why.

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We’re just days out from the fashion industry’s closest equivalent to the Super Bowl, taking place Monday evening, and there seems to be a significant drop off in interest and excitement compared to the same time last year. There are various possible reasons behind this:

1. The theme “Costume Art” feels lazy and falls decidedly flat in comparison to last year’s focus on tailoring and Black dandyism (which, in fairness, was always going to be a tough act to follow).

2. Another contributing factor to the Gala’s loss of sheen stems from the backlash to the event being bankrolled by Jeff and Lauren Sanchez Bezos, who reportedly are the primary sponsors and donors of this year’s edition. Enough said.

3. On top of the above, there are simply more serious things going on in the world right now, to the point where an evening of celebrities playing dress up on another red carpet and people paying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure entry leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

All the above have had a tangible impact on the planning for this year’s event. For the first time ever, the Met has reportedly slashed ticket prices from 2025 levels due to weak demand.

However, there’s one big factor that hasn’t been discussed in the drop in interest in culture’s glitziest event: sports. The 2025 Met Gala had an unprecedented level of integration and involvement from the world of sports that far exceeded anything in its near-80-year history. It was the moment that the fashion finally acknowledged the influence of the sporting world and the myriad ways in which athletes had shaped it over the years. It also marked the culmination of the convergence of the sports and fashion industries, which had seen a dramatic intensification of crossovers, commercial deals and sponsorships of all kinds in the three years prior.

At least 20 different athletes were present on the night at last year’s Met Gala. Meanwhile, the event was headlined by co-chairs including Lewis Hamilton and LeBron James, while Angel Reese, Sha’Carri Richardson, and Simone Biles were all selected as members of the host committee.

This year’s billing is very light in comparison. Venus Williams is serving as one of the 2026 Met Gala co-chairs, while A’ja Wilson sits on the host committee, but that’s about the beginning and the end of the sports world’s involvement so far. There will no doubt be a handful of athletes who appear on the red carpet on Monday night, but the lack of athletes involved in the pre-event build up has certainly contributed to less of a buzz around it, alongside the factors detailed above.

There was a time when sports needed the Met Gala more than the Met needed sports. In the past, having athletes involved or invited was very much an afterthought for the event and the media that covered it, which predominantly focused on traditional celebrities like actors, singers and other public figures away from sports. Athletes like Russell Westbrook, who has attended the event throughout his career, were outliers — the exception, rather than the rule. Now it’s the reverse: athletes seem to be a sought-after fixture in co-host roles and on the host committee — an indication of their newfound importance and selling power in the eyes of the fashion world.

Meanwhile, sports events themselves, like the Super Bowl or the Miami Grand Prix (which takes place the day before the Met), have become some of the most in-demand dates on the cultural calendar. It means that wider popular culture is now gravitating to sports and to athletes, rather than the sports world having to step outside of itself to grow cultural appeal at mainstream events like the Met Gala.

The Met will always be the Met, but there is, without doubt, a power shift at play.

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DYM

Nothing helps sell running shoes like athletes breaking records in them.

Adidas had a dream showing in this regard at the London Marathon on Sunday, where not one but two of its athletes (Sabastian Sawe and Yomif Kejelcha) wearing the new Adios Pro Evo 3 supershoes completed the race in under two hours, shattering a barrier in men’s long-distance running many thought was impossible. Meanwhile, in the elite women’s race, Tigst Assefa defended her title in London and broke the previous women’s marathon record time (which she had set herself), also wearing the same shoes as Sawe and Kejelcha.

Now, let’s be clear: the story here is about the mind-blowing achievements that saw Sawe and Kejelcha breaking the long-standing two-hour barrier in the men’s marathon, and about Assefa’s record-breaking run in the women’s category. Some have rightfully pointed out that for the post-race discourse to focus on the shoes and the brands that made them diminishes the achievements of athletes last weekend. But luckily, this is SportsVerse, where we can feel equally comfortable discussing moments of sporting history while analysing the strategy of the surrounding brands in the same breath.

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For example, we can understand the sporting significance of Sawe’s victory by analysing the fact that even Nike was compelled to publicly congratulate him (shock-horror, an Adidas athlete) with a dedicated post on the brand’s Instagram page, lauding his history-making 1:59:30 marathon time. Anyone with knowledge of Nike’s ethos (or that of any major sportswear brand) will know that acknowledging a rival company’s athlete is a big departure from how things are usually done, especially given how much money and marketing Nike poured into its 2017 “Breaking2” event in which Eliud Kipchoge tried to be the first to run 26.2 miles in under two hours. I think we need more of this behaviour in the sportswear market, which can feel a little too tribal sometimes.

A Big Win For Adidas

As I said at the beginning of this article, nothing helps sportswear brands sell shoes like athletes breaking records in them. This is especially true in the running category, which drives such a large proportion of footwear sales for the major sportswear companies and is a key battleground in the never-ending tug of war between Nike and Adidas, given how long-distance running adoption and marathon culture continue to boom among everyday consumers.

The fact that Adidas stock rose as much as two percent on Monday, the first trading day after the race, also pointed to the dual sporting and commercial significance of the moment.

The shoe in question, which will forever go down in sportswear history as the model which helped Sawe become the first athlete to complete a sub-two-hour marathon, was launched by Adidas in limited quantities over the weekend, with a wider release scheduled for the fall marathon season. The long-distance running “supershoe”, which is Adidas’ first shoe to weigh less than 100g, retails at $500. There couldn’t possibly have been a better launch imaginable than the outcome at the London Marathon on Sunday, in both the men’s and the women’s categories. Adidas will be assured that, come the wider release in the fall, the shoe will almost certainly sell out, and its high-profile success will create a positive halo effect on the rest of Adidas’ more reasonably priced running assortment.

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People will be quick to describe this as a big win for Adidas and a big loss for Nike. There has been something of a public Nike pile-on of late, given: 1) the aggressive stock selloff following the brand’s latest underwhelming quarterly earnings for the period ended Feb. 28, and 2) the now infamous “runners welcome, walkers tolerated” poster which drew criticism at the Boston Marathon. (For what it’s worth, I think that criticism was unfair and the situation was blown far out of proportion on the internet.) I’m sure it will have hurt certain folk at the Swoosh that it wasn’t one of their athletes who was first to break the milestone, but Adidas’ gain does not automatically equal Nike’s loss in this instance. Anyone who would have you believe things are so binary does not have a firm grip on how the industry actually works.

The running category is actually one of the few bright spots of growth in Nike’s business right now, and a fundamental vertical on which an eventual turnaround will hinge. It’s also not as if Nike is miles off its rival in the supershoe conversation: at the London Marathon, third-placed Jacob Kiplimo wore a pair of Nike Alphaflys.

The credit of course must go to the two athletes, Sawe and Kejelcha, whose legs and hearts carried the 26.2-mile course in a time many believed wasn’t humanly possible not too long ago. But it’s impossible to dissect their performance without considering the hundreds of thousands of hours of scientific research and development which went into manufacturing, designing and testing the footwear technology which supported them and their rivals in pushing ever closer to times and records that were unthinkable in eras gone by.

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DYM

There’s a new collaboration lane opening up in the competitive world of football fashion.

Football (soccer) teams are increasingly teaming up with famous pop stars, rappers or bands to release co-designed merch such as special edition jerseys and accompanying lifestyle collections.

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The latest to jump on the bandwagon is Italian giant Inter Milan, which partnered with Sony Music to launch a collaboration to mark the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s “I Wish You Were Here” album. The collaboration includes the release of the Pink Floyd Football Club collection, a capsule inspired by the football team founded by the band in the ’70s, which includes a retro jersey and an anthem jacket that the team will wear ahead of its home game tomorrow.

It follows the blueprint laid out by Spotify’s partnership with FC Barcelona over the past few years, which has seen the music streaming giant orchestrate a series of bespoke jerseys for the team’s El Clásico home games, building each moment out into broader merch collections and fan experiences. Previous collaborators from the music world have included Drake’s OVO label, Rosalia and the Rolling Stones. (Be sure to read my deep dive into the strategy behind last year’s sell-out partnership with Travis Scott, which features an interview with Spotify’s global VP of marketing and partnerships, Marc Hazan.)

The Spotify-Barcelona partnership and the Inter Milan-Sony-Pink Floyd relationship are part of a wider trend in which football teams and their commercial partners look to the world of music for fresh excitement and to generate sales through hype or nostalgia. Other examples include Paris Saint-Germain’s partnership with K-Pop group Blackpink, which yielded a collection of co-branded merch last year.

While football teams releasing streetwear collections felt like a novelty just a few years ago, it has become harder than ever before for collaborations to stand out from the crowd, given the amount of new drops and fresh products hitting the market seemingly every day. Take Arsenal, for example, which in the past few months alone has launched different fashion collections with brands including A Cold Wall, Places+Faces and Good Squish.

Multiply this activity across the whole market, which will only continue to intensify as we approach the World Cup this summer, and you quickly realise that consumers are being inundated with an unprecedented deluge of football-fashion merch. Some of it is good — like when a collab becomes a hit,= and a must-have because it truly makes sense and speaks to the culture — but most of it will sadly be forgotten, winding up at the back of people’s closets before long.

It’s why football teams are increasingly turning towards the music world for novel sources of inspiration. It also allows teams to tap into a relatively unexplored area of crossover between the world of music and sports, which are far more intertwined than many would imagine. Take the example of Oasis, with the Gallagher brothers’ history deeply linked to that of Manchester City, and how the imagery and iconography of the 1990s Britpop era recalls nostalgic moments in the beautiful game.

It seems slightly less clear what the exact connection is between Inter Milan and Pink Floyd, but what is apparent is that teams and their commercial partners now view tie-ups with the music industry as the most effective way to stand out from the crowd in the football-fashion merch wars.

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DYM

Basketball once ruled the fashion world with full court force.

Dial it back only a few years ago, and everything from Marni Jersey Bags to the Nike x Dior Jordan 1 to Tiffany & Co. Basketballs were hot shit. Jerseys, sneakers, equipment – anything remotely basketball related – became a sure-fire way for fashion to generate heat. Then things suddenly went cold. Nike Dunks became a punch-line, NBA Jerseys became trash, Tunnel Walk gods began to retreat. Basketball suddenly began to lose its air of fashion prominence faster than a punctured Aime Leon Dore x Tyrell Winston basketball.

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The numbers don’t lie. When it comes to the bellwether of basketball fashion — the sneakers — things aren’t looking great.

According to market research by Circana, basketball shoe sales declined by 11 percent in 2025. NPD Group backs this up; five years ago basketball sneakers accounted for 13 percent of US sales; they’re down to about 4 percent today. Meanwhile, basketball singlets have been replaced by football kits from everywhere from the streets to the runway.

There are signs of life, of course. New signature models across the NBA and WNBA have shown that appetite still exists when the proposition feels fresh. The Adidas AE 1, Nike A’One and Converse Shai 1 prove that basketball can still create demand. But a few sell-outs do not equal a full category refresh in the fashion space.

So the real question is not whether basketball can come back. It can. And it eventually will. The question is how it can speed things up.

While the tumultuous gusts of fashion trends will always influence success, there are ways to pragmatically position the sails.

Three words: refocus, repurpose and recontextualise.

Once the master, now the student – basketball needs to learn from the successes of its sporting peers. Football, running and outdoor have all experienced lasting energy in the fashion space over recent years. Not through nostalgia alone, and not through endless collaboration fatigue, but by reshaping who the category is for, what its products can become, and where its culture can show up.

THE THREE STEPS TO RE-ENERGISING BASKETBALL FASHION

Refocus

Basketball fashion has historically been heavily skewed towards menswear.

A lot of that came from the 90s and 2000s, where basketball’s fashion power was deeply intertwined with hip-hop masculinity. Think oversized jerseys, throwback silhouettes, swagger as uniform. Snoop in Kobe. Nelly in the backward Stackhouse. Bow Wow in the oversized Iverson.

Artists like Missy Elliot and Queen Latifah were absolutely part of that world, but the overall tone remained defined by a very particular kind of male energy.

This just won’t cut it today. The sports categories that have grown in fashion over the last few years have done so by expanding beyond their traditional male default. Football kits got away from the blokes, Patagonia vests got away from the Wall St bros and running shoes finally started to get away from the anatomy of the male foot. None of that happened by accident.

As the womenswear-centric lens entered the category, the outputs often became more expansive, more expressive and frankly more interesting. Suddenly we have Liverpool FC kits that have been transformed into frocks. New Balance football boots have become red carpet slippers. Arc’teryx jackets have become wedding gowns. Salomon trail runners have become infused with Margiela MM9 thigh-high tech stockings. Basketball needs its equivalents.

Football had the Wales Bonner x Adidas Originals Samba moment. Not just a successful collaboration, but a cultural reset. It re-authored the category through a womenswear-focused perspective and brought a female audience along with it.
While basketball has come leaps and bounds in terms of its representation of women (i.e. WNBA, signing women to signature deals), the translation to fashion is still nascent.

The A’ja Wilson A’One sneaker is a great step in this direction. According to Bimma Williams x Tracksuit’s “Collab Of The Year” report, 80% found the collab surprising, which is proof that consumers saw the A’One as a fresh direction for women’s basketball, not just a recycled play. A’ja is one of the best players to ever grace the court. Last year, she won the Finals MVP, the Defensive Player of the Year, the scoring title, the regular season MVP, and she was a WNBA Champion. The only player in NBA or WNBA history to pull that off in one season. Pair that with her strong fashion game, and Nike doesn’t just have “another Jordan” on their hands — this is A’ja’s world.

Meanwhile, strong moves from Caitlin Clark’s Kobe 6 Protro, the commercial success of Sabrina Ionescu’s signature sneaker line and Paige Bueckers’ hook-ups with Dapper Dan keep the energy swelling. If basketball wants to regain fashion heat, women cannot sit in the supporting cast. They need to lead the creative direction.

Repurpose

High-top basketball sneakers just haven’t been “it” for a while. While the rise of the Shai 001s might make me eat my words soon enough, the high top silhouette just isn’t for everyone. Moreover, the basketball jersey is still a staple on game day, but its street appeal has lacked the same fashion appeal for a while. Too much of basketball’s product language still arrives exactly as expected.

That is a problem because fashion heat rarely comes from the expected version of a thing. It comes from the translated version.

This is where football has been especially smart. Football attire became source material, transforming into everything from Umbro x Slam Jam’s chainmail suits to Martine Rose’s football suits. The football boot itself — which was previously an unwearable style off pitch — has been successfully retooled by experiments like the Nike Cryoshot where the studs are cleverly wrapped in gel to maintain the codes of on-field play without the hassle. The balance between form and function will win here - a chainmail suit wins the feed with unexpected form while a football boot with gel studs wins the day with a functional retool. One is theatrical. One is practical. Both expand the imagination of the category. Basketball could study the tapes on these.


Not every breakthrough has to be a total silhouette reinvention either. Vibram soles have become the “gorp” accent of shoes that should never set foot on the outdoor trail. Loafers, ballet shoes, and even drink coasters have received the Vibram treatment.

How can basketball translate?

Let’s take a look at the AE1’s, one of the best and most commercially successful basketball shoes of recent years. The signature metallic grate could easily live in other places. In fact, it already is: the AE1 NFL cleat was debuted by Travis Hunter earlier this season. That’s a great sport crossover between basketball and football, now how can Adi bring the signature accent of the AE1 to more fashion crossovers? Bags, eyewear, jewellery, luggage, recovery products, furniture details, retail environments. Not as gimmicky, but as a recognisable material signature that helps basketball live beyond the shoe itself.

That is the broader challenge. Basketball cannot rely on sneakers and jerseys to do all the cultural lifting anymore. It needs a more flexible design system.

Some brands are starting to move in that direction. Way of Wade x Li Ning’s focus on post-game recovery is interesting here. Recovery is a real part of basketball culture, but one that has rarely been treated as a lifestyle opportunity. It’s no secret that basketball athletes are switching to more comfortable footwear for their post-game recovery. Why can’t they look good doing it?

Recontextualise

To break out of a fashion funk, basketball needs to break out of its sport altogether.

Cultural relevance now lives in crossover, not containment. Footballers like Kylian Mbappé sit courtside at the European NBA games. Lewis Hamilton is often seen hanging out at Mile High, watching the Denver Broncos (a team he co-owns). If Caitlin Clark isn’t owning the court, she’s likely owning it on the LPGA tour. In a paper I wrote for SoccerBible in 2024, 89% of their audience said they loved it when they see athletes crossover into other sports. So what about products?

When football’s Total 90 — an iconic 2000s footwear and apparel line designed by NIke — was finding its way back into the cultural bloodstream, one of the smartest styling moves came through tennis. Last year, Carlos Alcaraz showed up in a sleeveless T90 warm up tee - a look that straddled Joga Bonito Ronaldo and 2000s Lleyton Hewitt. Simple pairings like this can set the social world alight. Football and tennis may seem like unlikely bedfellows in a sporting context, but in a cultural context - Alcaraz is a die hard football fan of Real Madrid, David Beckham (ex Real Madrid) comes to watch him play at Wimbledon, the Spanish national football team stops practice to watch him win the French Open, and he is regularly was even recently spotted playing keepy-ups with tennis balls. Crossing over nostalgic performance products between tennis and football, and using dynamic sports icons like Alcaraz to platform it - it’s a heat play that gets the sportstyle spaces talking.

Not only should one recontextualise the product, they should also recontextualise the culture. Recently, Nike ACG took to the mountains to cast an unexpected outdoor lens over football. It took All Conditions Gear very literally, and hosted a football tournament in the snow with Inter Milan. The match, played five-a-side over two 30-minute halves, followed the so-called “rules of nature”, with snow, rocks and trees acting as obstacles – or opportunities – within the game. All players wore the new and exclusive Nike ACG x Inter fourth kit, featuring the iconic Black, Hyper Blue and Safety Orange colour palette. The entire collection was unveiled outdoors through a striking open-air installation. We’ve seen in-game jersey reveals before – Jordan x PSG, Palace x Adidas x Juventus – but to completely recontextualise the game of football through an outdoor lens, with new rules and a dynamic outdoor product display, this stylistically changes how a sport can be seen. The Nike ACG x Inter Milan kits then come to symbolise this idea - making them infinitely cooler than your run of the mill collaboration.

Basketball Will Come Back. But Not By Running the Same Old Drills

The trend cycle moves fast, and it will undoubtedly return to basketball.

There is already movement. Signature shoes are regaining energy. Athletes like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, A’Ja Wilson, Anthony Edwards, Sabrina Ionescu, Angel Reese and Tyrese Haliburton are giving the category a new personality. Designers like Willy Chavarria are bringing unexpected heat to vets like James Harden with Adidas’ Vol. 10 model.

Even resale signals suggest that key basketball franchises still hold serious cultural equity when the proposition is right. Travis Scott’s fragment Jordan 1 had 4.4 million sign ups late last year, setting an industry record.

So no, the category is not dead, nor will it ever be. It just needs an energy rehaul.

Fashion trends will always move in cycles. Heat cannot be controlled. But it can be influenced. For basketball, that means doing three things well.

Refocus on who the category is speaking to.
Repurpose the codes into new product forms.
Recontextualise the culture in unexpected spaces.

And as you may have worked out by now, this isn’t just a recovery strategy for basketball. It’s a blueprint for any sport trying to matter in fashion again.

That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride. And thanks to James for joining us today.

See you next time,

DYM

Yesterday, Vuori announced the next big step in its soaring global expansion.

Tom Holland, the popular British actor (and husband of Zendaya), will serve as the brand’s ambassador and long-term creative partner. The partnership is reportedly the result of his long-held affinity to the brand as well as his friendship with its founder, Joe Kudla.

It follows a curious recent strategy that seems to be paying dividends for the now-global sportswear-turned-lifestyle company: signing handsome and down-to-earth British dudes as ambassadors to help spread the brand’s appeal among the masses. (The previous example being British tennis star Jack Draper, who partnered with Vuori to launch its tennis category after leaving Nike last year, and whose unique appeal in the eyes of brands across the entire fashion spectrum I unpacked in Tuesday’s newsletter.)

In all seriousness, the partnerships with both Holland and Draper speak to just how quickly expansion has come for Vuori. It’s a far cry from the brand’s origins as a scrappy upstart just a decade ago, selling men’s yoga and surf clothing in Encinitas, CA. Vuori sits among a cluster of highly influential brands (among them, On and Hoka) whose stories began in the first half of the 2010s, and grew seemingly out of nowhere to become major disruptors in the sportswear category, collectively stealing significant market share from incumbents like Nike and Lululemon.

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Like all successful activewear brands, Vuori got its break for one simple reason: it found a gap in the market, a problem which persistently bothered consumers, and made it its entire focus, before expanding many years down the line. After realising that men had few places to turn to for genuinely comfortable, well-performing and stylish activewear for activities like yoga, pilates and surfing — a problem that was being solved at the time for women by brands like Lululemon and Alo Yoga — Vuori founder Kudla bet that if he could plug that gap, he would have the keys to a very large and loyal consumer audience.

That bet paid off.

Vuori surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue at the end of 2024, according to analyst estimates, while the brand previously disclosed that it has been profitable since 2017. Vuori is reported to have been readying for an IPO ever since its $825 million raise which valued the company at $5.5 billion in 2024, though it’s unclear whether those plans are on hold for the time being, given the volatility of global markets.

Vuori’s growth is all the more impressive for two reasons: 1) the fact that up until very recently, it didn’t make products for or align itself with any major sports or athletes; 2) it’s an apparel-only brand (compared to its competitors and age-mates like On, which generate the vast majority of sales from footwear).

The partnerships with both Jack Draper and Tom Holland reveal the exact direction in which the brand is headed. With growing and dedicated performance verticals centred around mainstream sports like golf and tennis, as well as an established reputation for training apparel, the brand is doubling down in its bid to translate its sporting credibility into its appeal as a lifestyle/fashion player. The campaign shot with Holland to launch his relationship with the brand shows him in all the above capacities, playing golf and working out (performance) and also in a non-sporting context, wearing Vuori’s more fashion-forward lifestyle attire.

While activewear brands naturally trade on their close proximity to sport and athletes, to scale past a certain point, selling fashion — or the idea of lifestyle lived best in sports clothing — rather than actual sports gear, has to become the objective, whether companies admit it or not.

In Holland, Vuori has the perfect muse — a globally renowned figure not tied directly to sports — around whom it can speak to consumers on the mass market, his fans and others allured by his star power. It’s a near-identical playbook to the one employed by Swiss sneaker giant On, when it tapped Holland’s partner, Zendaya, back in 2024, to become its global ambassador and long-term collaborator in its bid to shift its image from a niche running sneaker company to a global fashion powerhouse.

That bet certainly paid off for On, and if recent history tells us anything, Vuori are likely to make a big success of it too.

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DYM

Over the past few years, we’ve witnessed the emergence of a crop of young athletes that the fashion industry has looked to for help in broadening its audience and consumer base, as sports become an increasingly important driver behind the category’s marketing efforts. In the NBA, the likes of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jordan Clarkson have emerged as real fashion heads, while Prada has worked with Anthony Edwards and Caitlin Clark. Meanwhile, football’s new wave of fashion-forward athletes in the past few years includes Hugo Ekitike and Jules Koundé (no surprise they’re both a part of the very fashionable French national team).

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In tennis — arguably the fashion industry’s OG favourite sport — there has been no shortage of investment from brands seeking to align themselves with top talent as the sport experiences a booming cultural renaissance (and/or unprecedented interest from influencers, depending on your take). Gucci has signed both Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka as ambassadors, while Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta and Dior count Carlos Alcaraz, Lorenzo Musetti and Qinwen Zheng as partners, respectively. Miu Miu has also struck up a fruitful relationship with Coco Gauff via her New Balance endorsement deal, while Lacoste has pushed hard to regain its place in the tennis fashion conversation under creative director Pelagia Kolotouros.

For various reasons, fashion partnerships in tennis on the women’s side of the tour seem to have had a much greater impact and organic feel. Sinner and Alcaraz have been signed to their respective luxury houses for a good few years now, and it seems relatively little has come of those deals (save for Sinner’s eye-catching announcement of the deal at Wimbledon back in 2023). The impact and depth of Gauff’s Miu Miu relationship, for example, has already yielded far more in terms of reach, coverage, and I’d be willing to bet, actual direct sales of product.

The simple fact is that some athletes — despite having lucrative deals and appearing in campaigns when contracted to — just aren’t interested in this side of things and naturally treat it as they would any of their other commercial obligations. So you can instantly see where interest is organic, e.g. with someone like Gauff (who clearly takes an active role in the design and marketing of her New Balance-Miu Miu products) or someone like Sabalenka (who is visibly delighted with her relationship with Gucci). The same goes for any sport. It’s just unfortunate that in tennis, there is a clear lack of organic interest in fashion from the men’s tour's top players.

The ATP (governing body of the men’s tour) has been making efforts to shift this perception, with little luck so far. Since the beginning of the year, the ATP has introduced its own version of tunnel fits, with its “Athlete Arrivals” series, which attempts to turn player arrivals at tournaments into runway or red carpet-style moments. So far, it has left a lot to be desired.

The Exception to the Rule

Jack Draper, the world no.25 player hailing from the UK, is one person bucking the trend on the men’s tour. There is a very strong case that, from a fashion perspective, he might just be the most marketable guy in the sport right now.

Racking up the Deals

Since leaving Nike after his deal expired in July 2025, Draper has steadily scaled his presence in the fashion industry through a series of savvy partnerships and by adopting an organic, easy going brand of content on his personal channels, which sets him apart from his peers.

He became the first player to sign an apparel deal with Vuori, becoming the inaugural face of the fast-growing California activewear brand’s tennis category and leading its push into the sport. Draper then signed an on-court footwear deal with Asics (since Vuori doesn’t make performance footwear of any kind), maximising his income and visibility by representing two brands on court (and in their marketing efforts) rather than just the one.

Beyond savvy sportswear deals, it’s Draper’s fashion partnerships which have served to differentiate his profile, landing him coverage in publications like Vogue. His role as a Burberry ambassador has seen him lead a cast of fashion-forward British athletes the brand has turned to kickstart its revival in recent years, including the likes of Arsenal’s Eberechi Eze. The deal — active since 2025 — has seen Draper star in campaigns and sit front row at the brand’s London Fashion Week shows.

Draper’s latest deal, announced just last week, came in the form of a collaboration with Swedish sneaker label Axel Arigato, under which he co-designed his own editions of three of the brand’s existing silhouettes. The products will hit the market this spring, according to the brand. This level of hands-on integration in a fashion deal is probably mirrored only by Gauff’s Miu Miu relationship, and most likely no one on the men’s tour.

A huge part of Draper’s appeal as a muse and partner to these brands, and of course to his fans, is his personality. He appears in many ways to be a down-to-earth guy who doesn’t take himself too seriously and isn’t afraid to express his interests outside of tennis — or to get a spontaneous buzz cut and turn it into his new look.

Despite the significant disruption to his promising on-court progress in recent years due to injury, Draper is achieving considerable commercial success as a muse and collaborator to a wide range of brands across the fashion and sportswear industries, thanks to his unique personality on the men’s tour. This is no doubt just the beginning.

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DYM

There’s a lot to talk about today. Where do we begin?

We begin by discussing Nike’s earnings, of course, which the company reported on Tuesday for its fiscal quarter ending Feb. 28. I won’t spend too much time on it because it’s really much of the same story we’ve become accustomed to seeing of late:

• Nike reported sales of $11.3 billion, which marked a 3 percent decrease from the same period last year.

• Nike-owned Converse continued its freefall, reporting an eye-watering 37 percent decrease in sales year-over-year, the latest of successive quarters of similar results, which will only intensify calls for Nike to offload the struggling legacy sneaker brand. Buyer-of-brands-on-life-support Authentic Brands Group is (unsurprisingly) reported to be interested in an acquisition.

• As we’ve grown accustomed to hearing, the main bright spot for Nike came in its running category, which continues to see double digit growth.

• Finally, Nike forecast a further decline in sales for the current quarter between two and four percent.

Investors seem to be losing hope in the ambitious turnaround plan and optimism put in place by CEO Elliott Hill when he took the top job in October 2024. Tuesday’s earnings sparked a dramatic selloff, with Nike stock down as much as 15 percent on Tuesday, and down 31 percent since the beginning of the year.

Turning around a business of Nike’s size takes time, and much of Hill’s frustration must come from the fact that (1) he is trying to generate sales and excitement during an extremly unstable geopolitical and business environment, both domestically and globally; and (2) that the turnaround plan he is trying to enact seems actually to be the right one, but there is only so much goodwill investors are willing to concede before making their frustrations known.

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Now, onto more juicy topics. The sportswear industry rumour mill has been in full swing over the past week.

The main rumour concerns the reports that Real Madrid and France forward Kylian Mbappé is set to leave Nike after being affiliated with the brand for 20 years (in other words, since he was eight). Said reports (initially reported by Le Parisien, from what I can see) claim Mbappé's Nike contract will expire this summer, following the World Cup, and that both Adidas and Under Armour are preparing offers to secure his services thereafter.

Now, there’s no guarantee this will bear out. Neither Nike, Mbappé, nor any of the alleged interested parties have commented on the matter. It could be true. It could be false. It could also be a bargaining tactic to help inflate a bumper contract renewal for Mbappé to stay at Nike. But if it does happen, there will be many fascinating things to consider, which we can speak about now:

1. There’s no getting around the fact that Mbappé is the jewel in the crown of Nike’s football business. At 27 years old and entering his prime years, he is by far the most commercially relevant football player in world football. Mbappé has played an increasingly important role in Nike marketing, and earlier this year launched his own “player edition” Mercurial boot. Losing him to a direct rival would be hard to take, especially given that a core tenet of Nike’s turnaround strategy is to position its relationship with elite athletes, teams and organisations at the core of its marketing and product efforts. Football is also one of five core sports categories Nike is honing in on as part of its strategy to return to growth.

2. These things happen. Athletes occasionally jump ship from one brand to the next in search of a better deal, just as they would do in securing a transfer to a new team. Just as is the case for sports teams, too, sportswear brands know that no singular athlete or team is bigger than the business (unless your name is Michael Jordan, who quite literally is the business). Often, these types of moves are reported by the media and social media warriors as a major loss for the brand in question, when internally these developments are considered an occupational hazard. Adidas lost its 70-year-long sponsorship of the German national football federation simply because Nike put in a bid they couldn’t justify matching. There’s no doubt it stung the pride of the German brand known for its history in football, but the world kept spinning, no one died, and people moved on. The same will be true if Mbappé does decide to cross the floor.

3. As my summary at the beginning of this newsletter showed, Nike has bigger fish to fry right now (although Mbappé is a very big fish I’m sure they would love to keep frying). Ultimately, keeping him will not be what saves the brand from its current predicament, though it would certainly help in a small way. Like we’ve discussed before on SportsVerse, endorsement deals are rarely the revenue-driving enterprises the outside world believes them to be. While of course athletes like Mbappé help to sell products, their main benefit is for a brand like Nike to be able to associate itself and its appeal with the top tier of sporting excellence.

4. It makes sense that Adidas and Under Armour would be interested in signing Mbappé if he leaves Nike. What brand wouldn’t? Adidas is the football brand, and Mbappé would slot nicely alongside its roster of stars like Jude Bellingham and David Beckham, who straddle the worlds of sporting superstardom, fashion credibility and celebrity status. Meanwhile, Under Armour is nowhere near as credible in football, but has made the sport one of its priorities as it bids to claw back its status in the sportswear industry after a very difficult few years.

In summary, there’s no guarantee at this stage that any of this will bear out. If it does happen, it will be no doubt reported as a massive loss for Nike (which isn't untrue), and people will also link it to other recent “defections” from the Swoosh to the Stripes, like Arsenal’s Martin Odegaard this week. Either way, players and teams switching sides between different sportswear brands is simply how things go — keeping that in mind will be helpful should such a move materialise in this instance. (Case in point: Red Bull Formula 1 team is reportedly joining Adidas, becoming the latest team on the grid to ditch its long-standing relationship with Puma, as the Stripes continues its tactical offensive in Formula 1, which began with Mercedes.)

Anyway, I enjoyed writing this newsletter, if you couldn’t tell. Just as sports media loves to feast on transfer rumours, I’d like to start a tradition of analysing sportswear transfer rumours like this (with the caveat that they have to be at least semi-credible). Maybe I’ll start a column, who knows.

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That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM

When Lewis Hamilton left Mercedes at the end of the 2024 Formula 1 season, it dealt a major blow to one of the most valuable fashion partnerships in sports.

That season also turned out to be Tommy Hilfiger’s last as a partner of the Mercedes F1 team. Whether Lewis’ departure was the causal link which spelled the end of the partnership was never disclosed, but the seven-time champion’s close friendship with Hilfiger himself, his global ambassador role with the brand and his well documented love of fashion were central to the partnership’s existence to begin with. Tommy Hilfiger at Mercedes no longer felt quite right.

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(This is the reason why I have long been fascinated with the sports and fashion intersection: because of how frequently performance developments and strategic sporting considerations can affect high value contracts on the fashion side of things.)

Back then, it could easily have been perceived as a major blow to Tommy Hilfiger, the brand behind one of the most transformative fashion partnerships in the modern era of Formula 1. The departure from Mercedes was also significant because of Tommy Hilfiger’s deep involvement in sports long before it became fashionable. The brand had had various commercial dealings in Formula 1, such as driver and team sponsorships, dating back to 1991.

But since the end of its Mercedes partnership, Tommy Hilfiger has pursued an aggressive marketing strategy — entering a wider range of sports and channels than ever before — that has placed the brand back at the forefront of the modern sports-entertainment landscape.

January marked the splashy launch of the brand’s landmark partnership with Liverpool FC, which has already proved to be a fruitful, forward-looking collaboration, helping to evolve the concept of the pre-game tunnel walk in the Premier League.

Tommy Hilfiger was also swift to ensure it wasn’t out of Formula 1 for too long, and signed a deal to become the apparel partner of Cadillac F1, forming an all-American partnership ahead of the team’s inaugural season on the grid. The brand also played a central role in the F1 movie, for which it acted as the official apparel sponsor for the fictional APXGP team and was the fashion partner to the high-budget production in general.

Then, this week, the brand revealed its latest play in sports, in the form of a partnership with NFL player and soon-to-be husband of Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce. Kelce has become a global brand ambassador and “creative collaborator”, whose impact will be felt in a “series of campaigns, collaborations and events spanning fashion, art, music, entertainment and sport,” the brand said in a release.

The brand added that “the multi-season partnership will showcase co-designed menswear and accessories refreshing ‘Prep Made Current’ through Travis Kelce’s vibrant lens.” (I have no idea what this means, so if anyone knows, let me know.)

Aside from making me wonder who writes these brand press releases, the partnership with Kelce is yet another smart play by the all-American brand. The NFL is a fast-growing cultural entity with increasing relevance and connectivity to the fashion industry, as February’s Super Bowl demonstrated. A partnership with the league itself is not possible currently since that designation is filled by another all-American mass market label, Abercrombie. But the tie-up with Kelce allows Hilfiger a smart (and most likely, cheaper and less complicated) entry point to speak to the NFL audience in the absence of a league-wide deal.

Kelce’s proximity to the entertainment industry also feeds into the brand’s strategy of having its products and ambassadors sitting at the nexus of sports, entertainment and fashion (e.g. the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Zendaya and Damson Idris, or the brand’s role in the F1 Movie).

Kelce’s proximity to Taylor Swift no doubt played into Tommy Hilfiger’s desire to sign him as the new face of the brand. The partnership also represents a savvy way for the brand to benefit from coveted exposure, thanks to the new relationship with Kelce, one of the league’s highest profile names in the NFL’s increasingly visible tunnel walk tradition.

Critics of this deal could point to the fact that Kelce may not be the first person someone thinks of when considering athletes with a natural affinity for fashion. But his profile and status represent everything that Tommy Hilfiger is going after with its new sports strategy: high-profile, big-ticket partnerships that allow the brand to speak to the largest consumer audiences out there, focusing on those attracted in equal measure to the worlds of sports, celebrity and entertainment.

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That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM