Adidas Takes The North American Sports Equipment Beyond NBA.

In September 15th, headquartered in Germany.

Adidas announced that it has officially become the Jersey and head guard of the NHL (North American Hockey League National Hockey League).

This is a seven year cooperation agreement which replaced the sports brand Reebok of the same parent company, which has been providing equipment for NHL since 2005.

The deal will start from the 2017-2018 season, and Adidas will also become the official partner of the World Cup of Hockey in Toronto in 2016.

This is the second sport that Adidas has embraced in 2015. In January this year, Mark King, the president of the North American company, announced that it would sign a endorsement agreement with the largest number of 250 players from the US National Football League (NFL) and 250 major league baseball players (MLB) in the next three years, and two months later, Adidas also terminated the 11 year cooperation agreement with NBA.

NHL is the highest level professional ice hockey game in the world. It is also one of the four major professional sports in North America. The remaining three are MLB, the National Football League (NFL) and NBA familiar to Chinese consumers.

NHL has 30 teams, 23 of which belong to the United States, and 7 of them belong to Canada. They are Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

Restricted by the restrictions of venues and popularity, some hockey players have not received widespread attention in China, but some middle-class families have regarded the sport as an extracurricular training when their children are 6-7 years old, and sent them to amateur training courses. In Canada, as a national sport, this sport is very hot. Almost every citizen has their own support teams and players. In the United States, its influence is not as good as that of NBA and super bowl, but there are also a large number of highly loyal viewers. According to the latest valuation of Forbes magazine last year, the average value of NHL team has increased by 18.6% in the past 2014, reaching a record high of 490 million dollars.

Whether it is to avoid confrontation with Nike in the field of basketball or try to create a more comprehensive and professional brand image in the small elite movement, Adidas now has all the North American professional sports except NBA.

With two different brands of the group, "people may ask, what's wrong with Reebok?"

Mark King, President of North America, said, "since 2010, Reebok has entered the field of sports and fitness", which means that Reebok will focus more on those participating in CrossFit (including aerobic fitness, gymnastics, track and field mixed fitness), Spartan competition and other fitness training groups.

Last December, Reebok announced its 6 year cooperation agreement with the UFC (unrestricted Championship) and became its official global equipment partner and signed several gyms worldwide.