The story of how Nike saved football

Believe it or not, there was a time when football was losing popularity.

Yup. The beautiful game as we know it was under threat from the most damning problem that any sport can face: boredom. And it took a group of marketing nerds to save the day.

Going backwards… literally

Professional football evolved for around 100 years, growing faster and larger than any sport in the world. 

But by the late 1980s, the game started to plateau. The Italia 1990 World Cup and 1992 European Championship was the turning point for many fans.

Analysis from Opta Analyst found that the 1992 European Championship group stage saw the lowest scoring in history, averaging around 1.75 goals per game.

• The same study found that the 1992 European Championship saw the most back-passes to goalkeepers (18.6) per 90 minutes. For context, the 2004 European Champions saw just 6.9 per 90.

• The 1990 World Cup also saw Ireland’s goalkeeper Packie Bonner hold the ball for six minutes across the 90.

Picture Diego Simeone’s Athletico Madrid side. Now, imagine every team played that low-block style. 

You get the idea. It was boring and borderline frustrating.

But why?

It’s simple. There was no backpass rule. This meant that goalkeepers could pick up the ball from a backpass and hold on to it for however long they wanted.

This, plus the fact that the Italian’s defensive style was in vogue, meant that matches became a game of Who Can Score First And Waste The Most Amount Of Time. It doesn’t have the same ring to it as the game we currently know. 

The backpass rule was born swiftly after the 1992 Euros to stop this from happening. This was an important change for football. Like the offside rule was in 1872. 

But the backpass rule hadn’t been around for years, yet football had enjoyed a long period of success. 

There was something else missing. At that time, there was a dearth of superstars capturing attention. It’s no wonder why the English top flight rebranded to the Premier League in 1992 to freshen things up.

Football was losing its pizzazz. Its flair. Its dynamism. And that’s where the marketing boffins at Nike came in.

Just Do It… with a lot of money

You’ll know Nike as the sportswear brand. But that’s like saying Leonardo Da Vinci was just a painter – it’s only partly true. 

Nike is a marketing genius. With masterful storytelling, Nike has seen success with American sports and their strategy was simple: “create superstars to stir up emotion in fans,” per Havard Business Review. 

Phil Knight, Nike’s CEO and founder, decided that the 1990s was the time to deploy this strategy to football. They saw that Basketball had Michael Jordon, golf had Tiger Woods and baseball had Bo Jackson. Yet the world’s biggest sport didn’t boast the same luxury. 

It was a big gamble. Success wasn’t inevitable. Nike had already tried its hand at football but failed in the 1970 Mexican World Cup. If it didn’t work this time, Nike risked not breaking into the biggest sport in the world - again. 

But with interest in football and its players waning, it was the perfect time to roll the dice.

Nike’s first stop? The Brazilian national team of course… 

• In 1994, Nike convinced 8 of Brazil’s World Cup squad in the Nike Tiempo Premier boot. That year, Brazil were crowned champions in California. 

• In 1996, Nike made the largest deal ever involving a national side, sponsoring the Brazilian squad for £100 million.

This was a good start, but the 1998 World Cup proved to be the turning point. It was the first time in football that a brand put the athlete front and centre of a campaign. With Ronaldo Nazario as Nike’s poster boy, the Oregan-based brand created one of the most iconic sports adverts of all time in the lead-up to the tournament. 

Knight told HBR: “To create a lasting emotional tie with consumers, we use the athletes repeatedly throughout their careers and present them as whole people.” 

Since then, Nike continued to do this to build hype:

• Ronaldinho’s Crossbar was the first video to reach 1 million views on YouTube.

• The Switch campaign was the most shared advert from Euro 2016, reaching 93 million views.

• The Write the Future advert was viewed 20 million times online within five weeks, leading to double the social media buzz enjoyed by Adidas.

The list goes on. 

With world-class marketing, Nike filled a gap that was missing in the 1990s. They gave fans a reason to watch football beyond the sport itself. Once again, football was about flair and expression which recaptured a disillusioned audience.

Now, Nike continues its storytelling and applies the same strategy to the women’s game. Whether or not it proves effective, only time will tell. But we sure think it has a good chance.