Germany's Adidas eyes Euro supremacy

Words: Ronan Shields

Source: Adidas

Adidas has raised its earnings forecast for this year to €1.6bn based on the back of an Euro 2012 boost as both Germany and Greece bear its iconic three strips in this evening’s Quarter Final.

The sportswear giant’s football unit believes that its marketing activity is set to yield record dividends for a single year, with earlier sales forecasts coming in at €1.5bn.

Speaking yesterday at a conference hosted in Warsaw, Adidas’ global CEO Herbert Hainer said the boost in sales, including the shipment of over 1m Germany replica tops, meant it was set to be the most successful year yet for the European sportswear brand.

The increasing challenge of Nike in the football sector has prompted the sportswear giant to up its marketing and sponsorship activity and UEFA’s Euro 2012 tournament has been a focal point ahead of this year's Olympics.

Recently this has included Adidas sponsoring the official match balls of UEFA’s Euro 2012 and the launch of the brand’s first football-themed Tumblr website as the tournament began.

Adidas is using its Tumblr page, which is a micro-blogging site similar to Twitter but with more of an emphasis on multimedia content, to upload content featuring its products and brand ambassadors, see below.

As the tournament progresses the German sports giant is also using other digital media outlets as part of its digital media activity during the tournament.

This includes the use of the Twitter hash tag #unleash as six of the original 16 tournament finalists, including tonight’s Quarter Finalists Germany and Greece, wore Adidas-branded kits.

Of course, there is an irony that German-based Adidas’ brand should emblazon the shirts of both tonight’s contestants given the ongoing economic woes of Greece and the friction this is causing with Germany in the political arena.

In fact, when looking at the football jerseys of all the P.I.I.G.s nations (Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Greece) in the Euro economic zone. Only Portugal (Nike) and Ireland (Umbro) sport jerseys manufactured by non-German brands, Puma makes Italy’s kit.

But with Nike, Umbro’s current parent company, looking to sell-off its Manchester-based brand that could soon change. Who says 'it’s only a game'?