Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
Pointing to the fact that in the new season of the Bundesliga only one German football team will play in Adidas kits, the national pride and one of the global leaders in the production of sports equipment, the renowned Die Welt estimates that there was a big turnaround in the Adidas’ business strategy.
According to Die Welt, instead of keeping with the long-standing ‘iron rule’ that nearly the entire German first league plays in Adidas equipment, the company turned to the “golden pearl” strategy by investing all the money in the Bundesliga champion Bayern, with which it signed a ten-year contract worth 854 million euros.
“It’s not by chance the only Bundesliga team that plays in Adidas kits will be Bayern, the current champion of the country and champion for the past six years, because it is the only club that is able to compete on an international level,” Die Welt comments, adding that Adidas’ head of marketing Oliver Bruggen confirmed the company’s strategy change, but not the direction that Die Welt predicts. Bruges, namely, explained the termination of cooperation with numerous Bundesliga teams with the need for the company to cooperate more with talented young footballers.
“We will continue to cooperate with top football clubs and selected football associations,” Bruggen announced. In support of the claims of Adidas’s strategy reorientation, Die Welt quotes Peter Rohlman, a marketing expert, who reminds that big sports brands have abandoned the “quantity above quality” motto, whereby earlier they tried to achieve greater presence through sponsorship of as many clubs as possible.
Analyzing the new division of ‘kits’ in the Bundesliga in a global context, Die Welt notes that the Bayern contract with Adidas is only seventh on the financial ranking of contracts of clubs and equipment manufacturers. The first on that list, according to the German daily, is Nike’s contract of €1.16 billion with Barcelona, followed by Manchester City and Nike (€1.6 billion), Real and Adidas (€ 973 million), Liverpool and New Balance (€891 million) and London’s Chelsea with Nike (€874 million).
In the above mentioned analysis, the German daily also included the connection of sports brands with the market’s most expensive players in the world. In the first place is Nike, whose jersey for French PSG is worn by the top Brazilian player Neymar, whose contract is estimated at €180m. Interestingly, the fourth on the list of the most expensive players, Mohamed Salah from Liverpool (worth €150 million), has a sponsorship contract with Adidas, although the club plays in the equipment of another manufacturer.