Beginning with the 2017-18 season, Adidas reportedly starts making uniforms for all 30 NHL teams.
Adidas has made several aggressive moves recently to recover its number two spot as the world’s biggest sports apparel company and this week it added another feather to its cap by winning the contract to make the jerseys for the National Hockey League.
Adidas needs a boost and some new opportunities, too. Last September, Adidas slipped to third place, behind Nike and Under Armour, for the first time in the company’s history. With changes at the top, now, and these new contracts starting, Adidas hopes to reclaim lost ground.
At least by Rick Westhead’s reckoning, this deal “might” open up NHL jerseys to begin including advertising in the future, though no details on just how that might come about were given.
An inside source said that it is likely that Adidas will try and move the jersey designs toward having some connection with the company, perhaps trying to employ the “three stipe” company motif somewhere on the uniforms.
Because of that, the speculation appeared to be that if the NHL allows Adidas to add its three-stripe company branding to the jerseys then “why not advertising” from other sources at the same time? This idea, though, seemed to be just speculation in Westhead’s report.
TSN’s Westhead also notes that Adidas beat out Under Armour, the recently named number-two sportswear producer in the world, as well as Bauer Hockey, to land the new deal. Adidas will pay the league somewhere about $70 million a season for the rights to sell jerseys to fans.
This isn’t the only big sports news that Adidas enjoyed this month. The company also announced that it signed Houston Rockets star James Harden to a $200 million contract to wear its shoe line.
Harden wore the Nike Hyperchase exclusively during the last few seasons, which boasted solid sales. So, Adidas hopes that a Harden signature shoe might help the company reclaim its number-two spot.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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