Herbert wrote:
It is also amazing how Nike came out of nowhere to dominate
In fairness, Nike (or anyone emerging out of the US) has home court advantage on 380M affluent consumers AND they have the benefit of the American based English speaking media outreach to the world. The English speaking media outreach to the world is a huge competitive advantage for American companies in terms of fan out to the rest of the world.
Interestingly if you look at the value of sporting leagues and you look at Bundesliga vs SerieA vs La Liga vs Premier League, the last one has the biggest advantage biggest they are the biggest league in English speaking England and whether you are in Hong Kong, South Africa, LA or Tokyo, you can understand the English league being exported to your market. Spanish League, German league etc does not translate....and of course US sports don't translate to the rest of the world because the rest of the world doing play NFL or MLB (some of the world plays basketball). Soccer is pretty well globally universal, so an English league kind of wins. In the same vein, Nike was able to ride the US media outreach globally. I bit harder to do for a German brand (but obviously well done given Adidas market cap of $58Bm, Puma Market cap of $10B....but NIKE market cap is $117B).
for me the most important takeaway was Adidas "getting" the human side of transactions and power brokering and knowing all the players and having them on their side. Technically I can't say how much better Adidas was over Puma back in the day, but technical dominannce almost never wins commercially. Its just a foot in the door. The human and commerical aspects win over in big deal making.