Why Adidas Took Its Award-Winning Basketball Sneaker to the NFL
As the 2025 NFL season got underway, we were treated to one last Adidas and Anthony Edwards masterpiece for the game-changing AE 1, with help from Travis Hunter.
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If you’ve read my work over the last few years, you’ll have seen the in-depth reporting I’ve done on Adidas, from interviews with its CEO Bjorn Gulden and other executives about the brand’s post-Yeezy comeback, to this recent deep-dive into the brand’s Formula 1 partnership.
Taking away the success of the Adidas Samba, perhaps the single most valuable thing created by the brand in recent years is the AE 1 sneaker, the debut signature shoe of the one-of-a-kind NBA player Anthony Edwards. The shoe launched at the beginning of 2024 and became an instant hit.
That success gave Adidas credibility in performance basketball on a scale it hadn’t achieved before. The sneaker crossed over into lifestyle and was adopted for fashion as well as basketball use — an increasingly rare proposition in the men’s signature sneaker category. The AE 1 campaigns were also some of the best sneaker marketing pieces created in years, and became cultural hallmarks in their own right.
During Anthony Edwards’ summer tour of China with Adidas, the brand officially revealed the second act: the AE 2. Given the popularity of the AE 1, I felt a sadness that the demands of the sneaker market meant that brands have to churn out updated iterations of a signature sneaker like that, even when it’s such a hit.
I get it: brands want to keep the market fresh and give consumers options. But still, it felt like a shame that such a game-changing shoe would only be on the market for 18 months before a new iteration relegated it to people’s storage closets.
But Adidas is a brand that seems to make smart decisions at just about every turn these days (a major hallmark of its post-Yeezy, post-2023 era). The Three Stripes wasn’t done with the most successful basketball shoe in its history just yet.
Ahead of the NFL season kickoff last weekend, the brand told the world that it has a “little surprise left in the cooler” when it came to the AE 1. Adidas meant this both literally and metaphorically, releasing a campaign narrated by Edwards himself, telling Jaguars cornerback and fellow Adidas athlete (pictured in the video out fishing and enjoying the last of his pre-season) to check the cooler on the boat for a surprise.
Hunter pulls out a pair of cleats, carrying the unmistakable silhouette and honeycomb exterior of the AE 1, but adapted for football rather than basketball. The campaign is smart marketing, blending the star power of two exciting athletes from two major sports.
Hunter, much like Edwards, is also a compelling and highly marketable athlete with an edge to his personality that helps a brand market products around him. He was widely expected to be a nailed-on Nike athlete for life, but shocked the market when he signed for Adidas at the end of 2024 while still in college.
By adapting the AE 1 for footballing use, Adidas is able to extend the shoe’s lifecycle considerably, meaning its unique design DNA and tech does not become obsolete even as the brand gears up to market the sh*t out of the AE 2 in the coming months. The timing is also perfect to launch this crossover moment, given the visibility around the NFL at the beginning of its season, and specifically around Hunter, as the number 2 overall draft pick begins his debut season in the league.
For years, I have wondered why sportswear brands don’t cross-pollinate their performance categories more in this way. It’s just smart business. It helps lend excitement and star power to other categories, which may generate less sales, and in Adidas’ case, helps the brand double down on its mission to challenge Nike in North America by making inroads in sports like basketball and football.
This AE 1 play helps the brand do just that. It’s a sign that brands are increasingly taking cues from athlete behaviour, rather than what marketing agencies tell them to do. Minnesota-based athletes had already been taking matters into their own hands last season, with “both Vikings wide receiver Jordan Addison breaking out a pair of customs last season and Twins pitcher Bailey Ober rocking two separate pairs of AE 1 baseball cleats,” according to Sole Retriever.
It’s also just fun to see when athletes adopt shoes from different sports for their own purposes. Roger Federer began his lucrative relationship with On simply by wearing their (back then, almost unknown) running shoes for tennis training after his Nike deal expired in 2018.
I also loved it when Canadian tennis player and 2021 US Open finalist Leylah Fernandez experimented with wearing a pair of Puma Stewie 2s (WNBA legend Breanna Stewart’s signature basketball shoe) in a series of competitive games in 2023.
Though Hunter switched out his AE 1 cleats after the warm-up up meaning we didn’t get to see them fully in action just yet, Adidas is ensuring the AE 1 will have genuine longevity, releasing the football-adapted shoe for general sale in June 2026.
This strategy is also very versatile. A brand like Adidas has its hands in many different sports. My friend and sneaker marketing wizard Bimma Williams wondered if Adidas would consider making American sprinter Noah Lyles his own AE 1-inspired spikes.
It would also be a fascinating crossover to see Adidas combine Edwards’ star power with Lamine Yamal’s, a newly minted Adidas signature athlete and already a footballing superstar aged 18. A product crossover of some kind would be fun to watch, though it’s unlikely given that Adidas is surely hard at work on Yamal’s upcoming signature product line of his own.
Either way, the floodgates are now open.
Well played, Adidas. Long live the AE 1.
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Until next time!
DYM
banger