The Retail World Cup: Adidas vs. Nike

• Nike leads early consumer demand, with 28% of its World Cup merchandise sold out in the first two weeks in the U.S., compared with 7% for Adidas.
• Adidas shows stronger financial momentum, with projected revenue growth of 6.8% and earnings growth of 22.2% during World Cup quarters.
• Brand performance diverges, with Nike dominating attention (around 80% of mentions), and Adidas leading on sentiment, trust, and investor confidence.

The FIFA World Cup is one of the most important global sporting events, and it also represents a major commercial opportunity for athletic apparel companies. As national teams compete for the tournament trophy, Adidas and Nike are competing for consumer attention, brand loyalty, and sales.

Adidas enters with a structural advantage as the official FIFA World Cup sponsor and supplier of the match ball, ensuring consistent global visibility. Nike, meanwhile, competes through its partnerships with national teams and athletes, supported by global marketing campaigns. 

Both Adidas and Nike have expanded their World Cup assortments compared with previous tournaments; Nike offers over 800 products across 18 teams, while Adidas offers more than 600 products across 27 teams. 

While the FIFA World Cup is a global event, U.S. merchandise sales offer an early indication of which brand is resonating most with consumers. In the first two weeks of the tournament, Nike significantly outperformed Adidas in sell-through. Around 28% of Nike’s World Cup merchandise sold out, compared with 7% for Adidas, suggesting stronger immediate demand for Nike’s product range, LSEG discovered in collaboration with Centric Market Intelligence. 

Nike also commands a premium price point in the category's most important segment: shirts and jerseys. The average price of Nike's World Cup apparel stands at $125, compared with $95 for Adidas, suggesting stronger pricing power and potentially higher consumer willingness to pay. Moreover, LSEG data shows that Nike retains a clear advantage in inventory efficiency, converting product into cash more quickly and operating with a significantly shorter product-to-cash cycle than Adidas.

While Nike is leading in early world-cup driven demand, Adidas enters the tournament in a comparatively stronger position, and is still favoured in forward-looking expectations. Adidas is projected to deliver revenue growth of 6.8% and earnings growth of 22.2% across its World Cup-related quarters. In contrast, Nike is expected to report declines in revenue (-1.7%) and earnings (-6.1%). Adidas also shows strong profitability, with a return on equity of 24.6%, above the wider apparel and footwear industry.

Investor sentiment aligns with this outlook. Adidas holds a high StarMine Smart Holdings score of 84, indicating strong institutional confidence, while Nike scores lower across several forward-looking StarMine models (Exhibit 1). Adidas also scores a strong 86 out of 100 on the StarMine Credit Text Mining Model, which applies advanced text analytics to conference call transcripts, regulatory filings, Reuters News and broker research to identify signals predictive of credit risk. The high score suggests that both company communications and broader market commentary remain constructive on Adidas' outlook, reinforcing the positive sentiment reflected in other StarMine models. 

Source: LSEG Workspace. For StarMine definitions, see notes below. 

Brand perception during the tournament shows a clear split between attention and sentiment. According to LSEG MarketPsych Analytics (LMA), Nike dominates the overall conversation, accounting for roughly 80% of combined news and social media mentions. But Adidas performs more strongly on sentiment, with perception improving steadily into positive territory by the start of the tournament, meanwhile Nike’s sentiment has been more mixed. Across World Cup-related discussions specifically, both brands generate positive engagement, but Nike attracts a higher level of negative discussion overall.

Sentiment, however, is only part of the story. The LMA Trust Score, a measure of fan affinity and brand goodwill, helps assess whether positive sentiment is translating into stronger brand equity during the World Cup tournament. Adidas' improving Trust Score aligns with the positive reception of its sponsorship presence, product innovation, and tournament visibility (Exhibit 2 red line). 

Meanwhile Nike's softer Trust trend reflects the mixed reaction surrounding its highly visible campaigns and broader corporate narrative (Exhibit 3).

The data presents a clear picture of contrasting strengths. Nike is performing strongly in the short term, with higher sell-through rates, stronger pricing, and faster inventory cycles pointing to effective execution. Adidas, however, leads across longer-term indicators, combining stronger revenue and earnings expectations with positive investor sentiment and improving brand perception across sentiment and trust measures.

Market performance reflects this divide: Adidas shares are up 3.5% year-to-date, while Nike’s shares are down 29.1%. While the World Cup is benefiting both companies through increased demand and global visibility, and Nike leads in immediate commercial performance, Adidas is gaining momentum across financial outcomes, brand strength, and investor confidence, suggesting a strong position for longer-term value creation.

• The StarMine Smart Holdings (SH) model assesses how a company is aligned to institutional investor preferences based on 25 fixed factors (like volume, price momentum, profitability, value, growth, analyst revisions, and leverage).
• The StarMine Credit Text Mining Model, applies advanced text analytics to conference call transcripts, regulatory filings, Reuters News and broker research to identify signals predictive of credit risk
• The StarMine Intrinsic Valuation (IV) model identifies and systematically removes three forms of analyst error and bias to improve the accuracy of longer-term estimates and enhance their ranking and sorting abilities.
• The StarMine Analyst Revision Model (ARM) gauges analyst sentiment and is predictive of future analyst revisions.  
• The StarMine Value-Momentum Model takes advantage of the valuable and complementary information in value and momentum signals.
• The StarMine Price Momentum (Price-Mo) model helps predict the direction of future stock price performance based on historical price trends.