ADIDAS launched new shoes for 41 Olympic disciplines at an event in Paris on Thursday (Apr 18), alongside sponsored athletes including climbing gold medallist Janja Garnbret, as it uses the Games to hone its focus on sports rather than celebrities.

Adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden wants the brand to make shoes and apparel for a wider variety of sports, a departure from its previous strategy of focusing more deeply on fewer sports.

“The Olympics is the sport event where the whole world comes together, big sports and small sports, big and small countries and for us it’s very important that we build products for each of the sports and each of the countries,” Gulden said in an interview.

Sportswear brands such as Adidas, Puma, and their bigger US rival Nike, are betting that their marketing spend and sponsoring of Olympic athletes and national teams will pay off as more consumers engage with sports and buy products like running shoes this summer.

Performance footwear, a category that includes running shoes, grew by 8.2 per cent in 2023, according to Euromonitor, which forecasts a compound annual growth rate of 7.2 per cent for the five-year period to 2028.

But with disposable incomes still squeezed by inflation, brands are having to work harder to convince shoppers to splash out.

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Olympics team kits

“Consumers could be looking to engage more with the sportswear category given this summer’s Games, however capitalising on this increased attention to sports will be challenging across many markets,” said Suzi Gardner, senior research analyst at Euromonitor.

Adidas also launched kits for the Olympic teams it sponsors, including Germany, Team GB, Poland, Bahrain, Cuba, Hungary, and Turkey. Its kits included apparel specially designed for athletes competing in a wheelchair.

As part of a drive to develop a new generation of Olympics enthusiasts, skateboarding, BMX freestyle, and climbing, which made their Olympic debuts in Tokyo in 2021, will also feature in Paris.

Adidas and its peers are also keen to generate a buzz around the Games for Gen Z and teenage consumers, a key demographic for them.

Nike last week invited influencers to a slick show in Paris, where sponsored athletes, including US sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson, British sprinter Dina Asher-Smith, and Kenyan marathoner Eliud Kipchoge, showed off the brand’s new Olympics kits, Moonlighting as models.

“It’s really about the lines blurring between what is fashion and what is performance, and people resonating with athletes to be taste-makers in that space,” said Abbie Zvejnieks, sportswear and retail analyst at Piper Sandler in New York. REUTERS