Manchester City will be $US121.6 million better off per season for the next decade.
It’s a major coup for Puma, the poor cousin of Adidas and Nike. All of the clubs in the Manchester City stable are now set to be kitted out by Puma, including the A-League’s Melbourne City.
Adidas sponsors cross-city rivals Manchester United for $83 million a season, but Nike forks out $246.9 million a season to Barcelona.
Serious numbers, but annual turnovers between the trio are in telephone numbers.
Nike is the biggest with $36 billion, requiring a tick over 73,000 employees.
Adidas’ turnover is $21 billion, with 56,888 employees, while Puma’s $4.14 billion turnover with 11,495 employees shows how much the company struggles in the intense worldwide battle of the sporting shoes.
Manchester City will soon be sponsored by Puma. (Walter Bieri/Keystone via AP)
Yet Nike is the youngest of the big three, having been founded in Oregon USA in 1964, compared to Adidas in 1924, and Puma in 1948, both in Herzogenaurach, Germany, 23 kilometres north-west of Nuremberg.
But it’s the Dassler brothers, Adolf and Rudi, who are the real story.
Adolf, better known as Adi, was how Adidas (Adi-Das) got its name. The brothers had the sporting shoe dominance virtually exclusively until World War 2.
But in 1948, Adi and Rudi had a major breakdown in their once close relationship, so Rudi went down the road to start Puma in direct competition to his brother.
Their breakdown was so severe that when Adi died in 1978, four years after Rudi, Adi was buried at the opposite end of the local cemetery.
Being an Adidas wearer, it was hard to see why the breakup was so bad, having had the privilege to meet Adi in the early 1970s on one of his visits Down Under.
He was the easiest bloke to get on with, had a keen sense of humour, and literally lived every hour of every day for the company that bore his name.
But one fact can never be denied, the company with the three stripes was the trail blazer.
The sporting sponsorship market has skyrocketed in value since Adi and Rudi’s days. Clubs now pay top dollar for the right to make a team’s shirt, recouping that money back and more in shirt sales.
Puma sponsors a number of Premier League clubs, with Arsenal being the highest profile team in their stable
With Arsenal’s deal ending in 2019 as they shift to Adidas, Puma knew they needed to make a big statement. After signing a deal with the defending Premier League champions and Champions League favourites, they certainly did just that.
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