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Nike experiences gold rush thanks to website visits and sales due to the Summer Olympics


Nike experiences gold rush thanks to website visits and sales due to the Summer Olympics

From

Reuters

Published


8 August 2024

The Summer Olympics are proving to be a rare success for Nike, as the global sporting event has helped boost demand for the sportswear giant’s new products and outperform the competition, website searches by market research firm Similarweb showed.

Reuters

During the opening week of the Olympics, July 26 to August 1, Nike and Puma increased visits to their direct-to-consumer websites, while Adidas, Hoka and On saw their visits decline compared to the previous week, according to Similarweb.

Attendance peaked at 2 million on July 31 after U.S. gymnast Simone Biles won her seventh Olympic gold medal after the United States won its third gold medal in the women’s team event.

Of those visits to Nike.com, 86,900 resulted in a sale, according to the data, while Adidas had a total of 532,500 visits, of which only 3,600 were likely to result in product purchases.

“If Nike-sponsored athletes and teams continue to win, it will likely increase their popularity and therefore they will likely continue to see high sales for the remainder of the Olympics,” said Daniel Reid, senior insights analyst at Similarweb.

Nike had said it would spend more money on these Olympics than any previous games as it hopes to boost sales and compete with emerging rivals. CFO Matthew Friend said in June that Nike would reinvest nearly $1 billion in customer-facing activities in fiscal 2025, including product launches and deepening its sports marketing portfolio through campaigns during the Paris Olympics.

The world’s largest sporting goods manufacturer and official sponsor of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams has launched a whole range of products, from Jordan 4 Retro SE shoes to an Olympic Electric Pack consisting of 55 shoes, including new designs of Alphafly 3 and Pegasus, that have piqued consumer interest.

On resale platform StockX, the Jordan 4 Retro SE Paris Olympics Wet Cement, which retails for $225, traded over 8,373 times through the end of July, making it the best-selling Olympic product on the site.

Yet Nike is lagging behind brands like Roger Federer-backed On, Deckers Outdoor’s Hoka and Adidas in the running, performance and casual footwear category this year. The sporting goods giant is struggling to come up with innovative designs and is making some strategic mistakes.

“(Nike is) still a struggling brand overall. But the Olympics definitely drives interest in these things… Nike is the real winner there,” said Drew Haines, director of merchandising at StockX.

© Thomson Reuters 2024. All rights reserved.

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