Six Things We Learned From Nike Earnings
A World Cup boost, an earnings beat, but worsening China and Converse woes.
Hi everyone, welcome back to SportsVerse, my twice-weekly newsletter that tells stories you can’t find anywhere else about the intersection of sports, fashion, business, and culture.
Nike, which is under tons of turnaround pressure, reported earnings this week. The results were mixed, but shed light into where the strategy is heading, so I’m back for another collaboration with my friend Jessica of The Consumer Collective to dissect the major topics from Nike’s earnings call and discuss what we’re actually seeing on the ground with the brand.
CEO Elliott Hill was under considerable pressure heading into Tuesday’s earnings. The (very narrow) beat has bought him much-needed time, and while results still don’t make for pretty reading, there are some early signs that his “Sport Offence” turnaround strategy is beginning to take hold across the business — even if it’s not being reflected in growing sales yet.
In this special issue, we highlight six important things to pay attention to at Nike right now — from where the company’s embattled stock goes from here to Converse woes to an incoming retail reset.
Where does Nike stock go from here?
Nike’s share price has been a hot topic of conversation in recent months. It was up as much as 4 percent yesterday but despite the positive momentum following earnings, finished Wednesday trading around $43 per share, just shy of a historic 11-year low. The question is whether Nike’s current position is fully priced in, or if the stock still has potential to dip below the $40 mark. Though some feel that Nike’s results, which marginally beat expectations and showed signs of progress, will be enough to kick-start a slow rebuild of the brand’s stock market value, I believe investors remain impatient to see results. I would not bet against a further sell-off should progress continue to be so slow, or begin to stagnate in quarters to come.
– Dan
What next for Converse?
Converse’s annual revenue came in at $1.2 billion, down 32 percent on a currency-neutral basis from last year’s sum of $1.7 billion “due to [sales] declines across all territories,” according to Nike. As I said in my recent article on the Converse dilemma — which surprisingly became SportsVerse’s most-read article ever within 24 hours — that $1.2 billion is a small but not insignificant portion of Nike’s total annual revenue of $46.4 billion. Converse has been tanking for several quarters now, and the heritage lifestyle sneaker brand’s poor performance is causing unwanted strain on the Swoosh’s bottom line. It’s why rumours swirled that Nike is exploring a potential sale of Converse, rumours that were only fuelled by Nike’s recent decision to bring Converse’s cornerstone athlete ambassador, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, over to its own signature basketball roster. It’s worth noting, however, that Hill has stressed on multiple occasions that Nike is in it for the long run with Converse, the brand which he is taking painstaking efforts to restructure, after placing Swoosh veteran Aaron Cain at the helm in July.
– Dan
The World Cup Effect
I recently took a deep dive into Nike’s World Cup strategy, in which I interviewed various executives who told me that this was the first major sporting event where the effects of Hill’s “Sport Offense” turnaround strategy — everything from refreshed product, re-energised go-to-market rollouts and splashy marketing moments like “Rip the Script — would be meaningfully felt across the business. They were not lying.
By the start of the World Cup on June 11, Nike had already sold 250 percent more international federation kits than in the same period of the 2022 World Cup, Hill told investors on the earnings call yesterday. The latest Mercurial boot (or cleat), which launched just ahead of the tournament, became “the fastest-selling 24-hour launch for cleated footwear in the history of Nike Direct,” Hill added. Beyond sales, the World Cup is a critical marketing battleground. Nike said it has generated around 1.5 billion views of its various World Cup marketing content pieces by the first week of the tournament.
While big sporting events like the Olympics and the World Cup don’t necessarily translate into generating meaningful sales uplifts for sportswear brands, they are nevertheless critical arenas in which brands can establish momentum and perceived dominance over their rivals.
“The World Cup is always a moment to prove ourselves. It’s one of the toughest battlegrounds in sport, and we’re coming with our best,” Hill said. “We’re leading the conversation in shaping football culture, a strong early proof point for the Sport Offense. As we move into fiscal year 2027, we’re focused on building on that momentum.”
– Dan
Sportswear and Jordan Brand
Although Nike urgently needed to reclaim market share in running and performance, the brand has also been losing ground in sportswear — a category that, combined with Jordan streetwear, accounts for half of Nike’s total revenue. The challenge has been self-inflicted, in part. An oversaturated marketplace flooded with Air Force 1s, Dunks and Jordan 1s eroded the exclusivity and cultural heat that made those silhouettes powerful in the first place. In FY2026, Nike took $2 billion worth of classic franchise product out of the market, a necessary but painful reset.
On the earnings call, Hill acknowledged the problem and outlined a path forward. Nike now has dedicated teams for sportswear and Jordan streetwear, each focused on serving those consumers more intentionally. In the second half of FY2027, sportswear will introduce more than a dozen new footwear styles. Crucially, Hill was clear that this wouldn’t simply mean going back to the vault and reissuing retro silhouettes. The intention is genuine newness, new innovation and new silhouettes that earn their place rather than borrowing heat from the past.
Perhaps the most interesting signal from Hill was the repositioning of the sportswear team toward a more community-driven model, working on the ground with local creators, investing in authentic storytelling and accelerating local product creation. That’s exactly what the category needs and should help propel regions like greater China, EMEA and LatAm to better performance.
In the last year we have seen silhouettes like the Moon Shoe, Shox, Air Max 95 and Rift resonate with consumers, but the brand has not fully driven or amplified that momentum itself. The energy has existed — Nike just hasn’t been in the room when it happened. The strategy Hill is laying out is precisely what has been missing. And his point about creating a performance halo that elevates the broader brand is the right instinct. When Nike wins on the field, it earns the right to win on the street.
Jess
Investments in digital
At a time when AI tools and technology have been widely discussed across retail, Nike had been notably quiet on the topic, which stood out to me as troubling knowing the brand’s history as a data-driven company under former CEO Mark Parker. So I was glad to hear Hill hint at further investments in technology on the earnings call.
Hill noted that Nike has redeployed resources from its Nike Direct technology teams to better support the company end to end across the entire value chain. The brand is investing in advanced tools and capabilities to improve speed, precision and reliability across everything it creates — from Air Manufacturing and materials innovation to how it plans, makes and moves product to market.
Under Parker, data was at the center of Nike’s DTC strategy, allowing the brand to better understand its consumer and further localize its approach across its top-tier cities. I expect the renewed investment in advanced tools to help; Hill noted the plan is to operate with greater discipline, improving planning accuracy, strengthening inventory management and expanding margins over time.
Jess
Retail Reset
Hill said Nike plans to further invest in how it shows up as a premium brand in both digital and physical retail, pointing out that in FY2026 the brand elevated more than 150 stores with sport-led experiences. That’s progress. But a lack of retail theater remains — and the temporary SoHo store that opened in April fell short of showcasing what a genuinely exciting future Nike experience could look like.
More broadly, the sport-led in-store experiences have improved the perception of the brand as a true sports company, which matters. But Dan and I keep discussing that core Nike ability — to make you feel something, to inspire you to be your best, to feel like you’re on top — and that feeling doesn’t only come through product or marketing, the emotion comes through walking into a store or shopping online and feeling like you’ve entered a world that’s entirely Nike’s own.
As the brand reignites its product innovation and builds momentum through in-person events, it also needs to revive the DTC shopping experience. The House of Innovation spaces that opened in 2018 genuinely felt like stepping into the future of retail at the time. Today they’re starting to feel stale and they no longer match the image the brand is actively trying to rebuild. Nike needs its retail experience to evolve at the same pace as its ambition and on a global scale.
Jess
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
See you next time,
DYM
 | A guest post by
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Visiting Paris’ House of Innovation made me inspired for Nike’s products as it gives into the allure of Nike. Experiences like that are much needed in fan engagement
Converse is interesting. For a brand that has an iconic product, it feels like Nike hasn't done anything with it. Combine that with Jordan brand, I wonder if Nike actually has the ability to competently run a second brand.