Sneaker Wars
Adidas and Puma; the rivalry Nike displaced.
Summary
Barbara Smit, a Dutch journalist, tells the history of Adidas and Puma through the Dassler family, and in doing so writes the history of modern sports marketing. Adolf and Rudolf Dassler made shoes together in Herzogenaurach from the 1920s, fell out permanently during and after the war, and founded competing companies on opposite sides of the same river.
The commercial history is the substance. Smit documents the invention of athlete endorsement as a business: paying athletes to wear a brand, initially in cash handed over in secret because amateurism rules prohibited it, and the escalation of those payments through successive Olympic Games. She covers Horst Dassler, Adolf's son, who understood that controlling the sports federations mattered more than signing individual athletes, and who built relationships with officials at the International Olympic Committee and FIFA. Horst founded ISL, the agency that consolidated the marketing rights to major sporting events, and Smit traces the payments that accompanied those relationships and the ISL collapse in 2001 that eventually exposed them.
She also covers Nike's rise, the Adidas decline in the 1980s and its near-failure under Bernard Tapie's ownership, and the Reebok acquisition. The book combines family drama with a serious account of how sports became a marketing industry, and it is the standard source on the origins of the FIFA corruption that later became a criminal matter. It is journalism and reads quickly.
Key takeaways 7
- Athlete endorsement payments began as secret cash transfers because amateurism rules prohibited them.
- Horst Dassler recognised that influence over sports federations was worth more than contracts with individual athletes.
- ISL consolidated marketing rights to major sporting events and made the federations dependent on a single commercial partner.
- Payments to sports officials were an established business practice decades before they became a criminal matter.
- Adidas nearly failed in the early 1990s under financial ownership that had no interest in the product.
- Nike won the American market by understanding running as a consumer culture rather than as a competitive sport.
- Smit argues that the family conflict between the Dassler brothers created the competitive dynamic that built both companies.
Who should read it
Operators and investors in consumer brands and sports who want the origin of endorsement marketing and of the commercial structure of international sport.
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Where it sits in the reference 2
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