Adidas chief hits back at World Cup ball criticism 12/07/2010 |
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Adidas chief executive Herbert Hainer has insisted that criticism of the Jabulani World Cup ball has not harmed the company’s brand.
Players and managers have slammed the ball for being hard to control and unpredictable in the air.
But Hainer said: “This is always the case that before the World Cup there are some complaints, mainly from goalkeepers. It is quite clear the ball is faster, because the ball is rounder. Players have to get used to it. We like that people are talking about our products.”
For the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Adidas will try to make the ball easier to control, while maintaining its speed, Hainer revealed. Adidas has provided the tournament match ball since 1970.
“With the technology we have, we can keep the ball as fast as it is today, and we can make it very usable for every player,” he added.
Adidas and Nike, the world’s two largest sporting goods makers, said they experienced a “double-digit” sales boost from the World Cup.
Adidas’s sponsorship of the event will help it record football-related sales of 1.5bn Euros this year – an increase of 15 per cent on the European Championship two years ago, Hainer said. It has sold 6.5 million replica jerseys and 13 million Jabulani balls.
“There is no doubt that Adidas is the winner of the World Cup,” Hainer continued. “It doesn’t matter whether you take it in exposure for the brand, in terms of sales, or in terms of market share.”
However, Nike brand president Charlie Denson claimed that more than half the players involved in the tournament in South Africa were wearing his company’s boots.
“It’s been our best World Cup ever,” he said. “In the last quarter, Nike brand football sales were up 40 per cent.”
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