Fans are gearing up for the World Cup final on Sunday, but the beautiful game might not end up making Nike's diminished prospects look any better.
As the premier global soccer event, the World Cup is naturally a major exhibition for sportswear companies to showcase their best products, and going into the tournament two teams kitted out by Nike -- France and England -- were heavily favored to win. Yet this weekend will see two Adidas-clad teams, Spain and Argentina, battle for the championship.
Nike's stock is down about 5% since the World Cup started, but this has happened before -- recall that the 2024 Olympics failed to be a much hoped-for catalyst for Nike's turnaround. And while the tournament has drawn interest in the key North American market, Nike ran out of many Team USA jerseys while enthusiasm was at its peak, only to restock after the U.S. was eliminated (and demand understandably waned).
There is some good news. As a team of Bernstein analysts led by Aneesha Sherman highlight in a note Friday, North America spends the most per capita on sportswear, so hosting the World Cup is a meaningful tailwind to the category as a whole, and there has been a notable increase in soccer product-related sales in recent months -- including for Nike.
Adidas, however, looks like the real World Cup winner, as interest in the brand has been very strong:
"Google search interest is up more than 40% in the US and 14% globally, while traffic to adidas.com is up more than 100% since the start of the year, both in the US and globally," Sherman writes. "Adidas has also executed one of its most comprehensive football marketing campaigns in recent memory. "Adidas has captured a disproportionate share of the branded discussion around the tournament, with the brand accounting for 58% of brand-related World Cup social-media conversations."
Adidas's American depositary receipts are up about 4.5% over the past month, and in all, she estimates that the event could drive a roughly low single digit boost to 2026 sales.
"On the other hand, while traffic to nike.com is up low-teens% in the U.S., global trends are muted, likely because of other idiosyncratic events for the brand globally, including reducing classic franchises and pulling back on promotions." Sherman writes. She thinks the company will still get somewhat of a sales boost, but it will be smaller than Adidas'.
Nike did not return requests for comment.
Likewise, there are "[n]o signs of sales inflection in the short term" for Nike, wrote HSBC analyst Akshay Gupta on Tuesday. He warns any World Cup bump is likely to be short-lived: Even though traffic to Nike's website finally returned to growth in June (up 12% year over year, according to data from similarweb), "likely temporarily benefiting from a World Cup related boost," that's well below the 66% jump Adidas recorded.
"The group has not delivered sales growth in the past 11 consecutive quarters" and Nike has already guided for the first half of the new fiscal year to remain weak, he notes. That matters because even if management's tone gets more upbeat in the coming quarters, that will only go so far given Nike's recent track record.
"[T]he market likely to place greater weight on delivered financial performance than on forward-looking commitments," Gupta writes.
Nike also released its 10-K filing for fiscal 2026 on Wednesday, which showed gross margins declined across all regions in the most recently completed fiscal fourth quarter and large reductions in product purchase obligations as Nike looks to clear out excess inventory and reset its merchandise lineup.
With the World Cup winding down, that leaves potential catalysts farther away: Back to school shopping season begins in earnest next month, followed by the company's fiscal first quarter report in September and its November investor day. Expectations are low, but supply chains can't turn on a dime; it will take time for the company to deliver truly innovative and exciting products that can help it regain market share, and most new launches aren't due out until the spring.
Bulls like Guggenheim analyst Simeon Siegel believe Nike's "turn remains a 'When,' rather than an 'If,'" and that will probably turn out to be the case.
Yet the "when" keeps getting pushed further out, and it doesn't look like the World Cup will do much to speed it up.
Write to Teresa Rivas at teresa.rivas@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
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July 17, 2026 16:01 ET (20:01 GMT)
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