Olympic: A War Of Shoes

Athletes will fight to stand on the podium this summer.

For Nike (Nike) and Adidas (Adidas), the Beijing Olympic Games is a competition for the twenty-first Century world dominance of sports shoes.

Although all previous Olympic Games are a scuffle between the two old enemies, this year's war is particularly fierce because Beijing is the gateway to a vast new market.

China has a population of 1 billion 300 million, and most of them do not have sports shoes.

Both companies hope that China will become the second largest market in the next few years in the United States.

Swangard said: "this is the biggest competition in the field.

Such a growing market has never hosted an Olympic Games. "

This is especially important for Adidas.

After a bad deal launched in 2005 against Reebok (Reebok) failed to revive Adidas's performance, the company found itself being pushed down by Nike.

Adidas sees this summer's Beijing Olympics as an opportunity to rally.

According to many reports, Adidas has paid about $100 million in cash and sponsorship for partner rights.

The company will provide clothing for athletes, volunteers and technical officials, and sponsor interactive online games with several Chinese athletes as its role, so that its brand will be presented to the audience.

While Nike is taking another route, its core is still sponsoring a specific athlete.

Paul Paul, managing director of Warsaw Sports Marketing Center (Warsaw Sports Industry Center), University of Oregon (University of Oregon), said: "Nike never needs to enter the market through official sponsorship."

Relatively speaking, Adidas, headquartered in Germany, has strong strength in the European market, while in the flagship market of Nike, the United States is relatively weak. Nevertheless, Nike has made its global position ahead of the rival in the past 3 years.

Sporting Goods Intelligence (sporting goods Intelligence) said that Nike's global market share of 36% dwarfs Adidas with a market share of only 21.8%.

Adidas has been involved in the once glorious Reebok brand, which contributes about 6% of its parent company's total performance.

Indeed, this paction saved a little cost by making Reebok join Adidas's production structure.

The company also succeeded in stripping its distribution network and giving up discount stores that affected its brand image and price.

But Barbara Smit, an industry expert and author of The Sneaker Wars, points out that there is still a need to re launch the brand to increase sales.

"We haven't seen any results so far," she said.

Adidas plans to open 4000 stores in China before the opening of the August Olympic Games, including a 10000 square foot store in Beijing.

The number of storefronts of Nike is also close to this figure.

It is very necessary for China to build its own retail shop in such a country as a comprehensive sports shoe chain like Foot Locker.

The problem facing Adidas is that although it has become the official clothing partner of this Olympic Games, Nike has more spokesmen for top athletes.

These include Swiss tennis king Roger Federer (Roger Federer) and Australian track and field star Mott Ram (Craig Mottram), as well as veteran basketball star Kobe Bryant (Kobe Bryant) and Lebron James (LeBron James).

Nike's athletes are not able to ensure that they win the Olympic Games. This fact means that the athlete's performance route is risky, but if these athletes win the game, Nike will get a bigger return.

In order to enter the local market, the company signed 22 contracts with 28 Chinese sports alliances to provide equipment for most of the players in these alliances.

This means that China's marketing focal point and NBA Houston Rockets player Yao Ming will also be wearing Nike's basketball uniform although Yao Ming has signed a contract with Adidas's Reebok department.

This contract is only one of the 40 contracts concluded by Nike and many other national alliances, such as the United States, Germany and Russia, which ensure that team members will be equipped with Nike equipment in the Olympic Games no matter which company they provide for personal endorsement services.

Therefore, for the majority of the 3000 athletes in the Adidas camp who will participate in the Beijing Olympic Games (about 1/3 of the total), they can only wear Adidas equipment on the podium.

In the competition, they will be equipped with Nike equipment.

Adidas's main spokesmen include American basketball star Dwight Howard (Dwight Howard) and Chinese soccer star Ma Xiaoxu.

According to Swangard, Adidas's official Olympic partner status will not be affected too much by the unstable political climate (with protesters' accusations of China's human rights record).

Because Adidas's main goal is to set up business in China, it can gain tangible benefits by letting the locals know about its support for China.

Although the referee and the staff will appear in the Beijing arena with Adidas equipment, most of the attention athletes will be competing in Nike equipment and appear in most of the broadcast time. They will appear in the live broadcast of the match, as well as in subsequent videos and videos that will be repeated over the next few years.

As Smit said, "high jumpers will wear Nike clothing during the high jump, while Adidas dress when they receive the prize.

Which option do you prefer to make?