Part of the Nike cluster. Related reading: Hoka and Brooks Are Beating Nike Inside ChatGPT · #JustDoIt at 38: inside Nike's $51B slogan.
The 2018 Baseline
Adidas posted double-digit U.S. sales growth in 2018, substantially outpacing Nike and Under Armour across the North American market. The Pharrell Williams celebrity partnership contributed alongside Stan Smith, Superstar, and Pro Model casual sneaker positioning. The Kanye West Yeezy collaboration anchored premium sneaker positioning alongside broader cultural surface infrastructure. Adidas's surge contrasted with Nike and Under Armour quarterly losses across the 2018 period. The broader dynamic: casual sportswear category expansion was an Adidas tailwind, while Nike's traditional performance positioning missed the casual sportswear shift.
The Yeezy Crisis: October 2022
In October 2022, Adidas terminated the Kanye West Yeezy partnership after Kanye's antisemitic public statements. The financial impact was substantial — Yeezy accounted for approximately 8 to 10 percent of total Adidas profit at termination, with an estimated $1.3 billion-plus in annual revenue contribution. Adidas had sustained Yeezy financial dependence across multiple years. The subsequent Yeezy inventory disposition produced phased sales across 2023 and 2024, with proceeds directed to the Anti-Defamation League and the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change. Adidas absorbed a substantial financial loss alongside the reputation work around its corporate response to the Kanye situation.
The Yeezy termination is now the modern reference case for brand celebrity-partnership concentration risk. The transferable lesson: a single celebrity partnership generating 8 to 10 percent of corporate profit is a structural exposure that no governance discipline can fully insure against. Adidas now operates with deliberately distributed celebrity partnership infrastructure rather than concentrated single-partner positioning.
Bjorn Gulden Brought Adidas Back
In January 2023, Bjorn Gulden became Adidas CEO, succeeding Kasper Rorsted. Gulden's prior Puma CEO experience (2013-2022) brought sportswear category expertise and a direct communications style — willingness to acknowledge Adidas challenges publicly, willingness to position the substantive recovery work in concrete terms — that contrasted sharply with prior Adidas corporate communications. The Gulden communications model is now studied as a brand-recovery communications reference: own the problem publicly, name the path forward concretely, deliver against the timeline.
The Samba and Gazelle terrace sneaker category surge across 2023, 2024, and 2025 anchored Adidas's commercial recovery. Bella Hadid endorsement work, sustained TikTok cultural surface, broader celebrity-authentic engagement, and the sneaker category resurgence formed the comeback infrastructure. Adidas posted strong results across the Gulden era. The Samba franchise alone generated billions in revenue across the 2023-2025 cycle and pulled cultural authority back into the brand at a velocity that the broader sportswear category had not seen since the Yeezy peak.
Donahoe Lost Nike the Running Category
Nike CEO John Donahoe (January 2020-October 2024) ran a complicated tenure. The digital-first strategy alongside wholesale relationship recalibration alienated retail partners. Foot Locker, DICK's Sporting Goods, and roughly half of Nike's traditional wholesale base lost allocation or were severed during the period. The product innovation pipeline raised concerns across the sneaker community. The Adidas Samba and Gazelle resurgence was a market share challenge that Nike communications failed to address. The running-specialty channel was the most consequential loss — Hoka, On Running, and Brooks captured the shelf positioning Nike vacated during the DTC pivot.
Nike stock declined 30 percent in 2024. The board replaced Donahoe with Elliott Hill — a 32-year Nike veteran who had previously run Nike's commercial and marketing operations — in October 2024. Hill's mandate: rebalance wholesale, restore the running category, return to brand-led marketing. The full Nike-side analysis of the Donahoe over-pivot and the Hill repair window sits inside Nike PR in 2026: The Citation Share Gap and Nike as CPG Case Study.
Hoka and On Running Are the New Story
The single most consequential category-shift between 2020 and 2026 was not Nike vs. Adidas. It was Hoka and On Running capturing the running-specialty premium segment that both legacy brands had previously dominated.
Hoka (acquired by Deckers Brands in 2013) compounded from a niche maximalist-cushioning specialty brand into a multi-billion-dollar global running franchise across 2018-2025. Hoka's FY24 revenue grew to approximately $1.8 billion — roughly five times the 2018 level. The named-practitioner editorial substrate (Sage Canaday, Believe in the Run, The Run Testers) compounded the brand's category authority across the AI retrieval surface at a velocity legacy operators could not match.
On Running (founded 2010, Swiss, IPO'd on NYSE in 2021 as ONON) built premium-running and luxury-running positioning anchored by the Roger Federer partnership and the CloudTec sole technology. On Running's FY24 revenue ran approximately CHF 2.3 billion — multi-billion dollar scale built almost entirely in the 2020-2025 window. The brand's premium positioning captured the runner-as-luxury-consumer segment that Nike had not directly addressed.
Brooks (Berkshire Hathaway portfolio company since 2006) anchored the running-specialty channel with deliberate technical-performance positioning and the longest sustained editorial substrate in the running specialty press. Brooks's running-specialty Citation Share inside AI engines runs at saturation levels across plantar fasciitis, overpronation, and high-mileage marathon training queries.
The combined effect: Nike's running-category share declined while the running market expanded. The brands that captured the growth had built dedicated category-specialist infrastructure. The lesson for legacy operators: category specialists with deep editorial substrate can compound at scale against generalist incumbents who under-invest in the technical-product retrieval surface.
Puma, New Balance, and the Broader Field
Puma (Arne Freundt CEO since November 2022, succeeded Gulden) has rebuilt with measured Rihanna Fenty x Puma relaunches, the LaMelo Ball signature partnership in basketball, and sustained Manchester City and AC Milan sponsorship positioning. Puma's commercial recovery has been steady rather than spectacular. The brand's modern positioning sits squarely between Nike's cultural authority and Adidas's casual-sportswear strength — a workable but narrow strategic position.
New Balance (privately held, Boston-based) executed one of the most consequential cultural-positioning shifts of the 2020-2026 period. The "Made in USA" Aimé Leon Dore collaborations, the 990 and 1906R franchises, the sustained collaboration program with Joe Freshgoods, Kith, and other premium streetwear partners produced a cultural moment that pulled New Balance into the premium-streetwear conversation for the first time in the brand's history. The "dad shoe" reframing into "premium streetwear" is now studied as a successful legacy-brand cultural repositioning case.
Asics rebuilt momentum across 2022-2025 anchored by the Gel-Kayano and Gel-Nimbus franchise refreshes. The Onitsuka Tiger sub-brand re-entered the cultural conversation through sustained collaboration work. Asics's technical-running Citation Share runs closer to Brooks's than to Nike's — another category-specialist substrate advantage compounding.
Under Armour has not fully recovered from the 2018 challenges. Stephen Curry's continued Curry Brand partnership remains the strongest individual asset. The broader brand positioning continues to search for a clear category lane between Nike and Adidas on one side and the running specialists on the other.
AI Engines Now Pick Sides
The retrieval layer has begun answering category-specific sportswear queries with named recommendations that diverge from traditional brand-equity rankings. The pattern as of mid-2026:
Lifestyle and brand-strategy queries: Nike dominates. Just Do It, Kaepernick, Caitlin Clark, the broader athlete portfolio compound inside AI engine retrieval at scale.
Casual and terrace-sneaker queries: Adidas leads. Samba, Gazelle, Stan Smith, Superstar substrate is dense and current.
Running-specialty queries (plantar fasciitis, marathon training, injury recovery, high arches): Hoka and Brooks lead. Named-practitioner editorial substrate is the structural reason.
Premium-running and luxury-runner queries: On Running leads. Federer partnership and CloudTec positioning compound.
Premium streetwear and cultural-moment queries: New Balance is increasingly cited alongside Adidas and Nike, particularly for 990, 1906R, and the Aimé Leon Dore collaboration cohort.
Basketball-specific queries: Nike (Jordan Brand) retains dominance, with Adidas (Anthony Edwards, James Harden) and Puma (LaMelo Ball) as the secondary cited names.
The category is no longer a Nike-vs-Adidas binary. The AI engines have surfaced a more textured picture in which six brands now operate with category-specific Citation Share leadership across the running, basketball, casual, premium, and streetwear sub-segments. Closing or holding leadership inside each sub-segment now requires sub-segment-specific substrate investment.
Three Lessons Across Eight Years
Celebrity partnership concentration carries structural risk. The Adidas Yeezy termination is the modern reference case. A single celebrity partnership generating 8 to 10 percent of corporate profit creates a tail-risk exposure no governance discipline can fully insure. Distributed celebrity portfolios are the post-Yeezy operating discipline.
CEO communications style is brand reputation infrastructure. Bjorn Gulden's direct communications were an Adidas reputation recovery accelerator. John Donahoe's communications style was a Nike reputation challenge across a complicated tenure. Elliott Hill's first quarters have repositioned Nike's external posture noticeably. The CEO is part of the brand's earned-media compound — not adjacent to it.
Category specialists with deep editorial substrate compound at scale against generalist incumbents. Hoka, On Running, and Brooks built the running-specialty Citation Share that Nike now needs to recover. New Balance built the premium-streetwear cultural moment by treating collaboration work as a sustained editorial program rather than as transactional marketing. The pattern reproduces across consumer categories. The brands that invest in category-specific editorial substrate over multi-year horizons capture AI engine retrieval that paid marketing alone cannot produce.
The 2018 picture was Adidas surging on casual-sportswear positioning and Nike struggling. The 2022 Yeezy crisis reversed Adidas's momentum. The Bjorn Gulden era beginning January 2023 rebuilt Adidas through the Samba and Gazelle terrace sneaker resurgence. Meanwhile, the Donahoe DTC over-pivot at Nike (2020-2024) lost the running-specialty channel to Hoka, On Running, and Brooks. Elliott Hill returned as Nike CEO in October 2024 with a wholesale-rebuilding mandate. The 2026 picture is more textured: six brands now hold category-specific Citation Share leadership across running, basketball, casual, premium, and streetwear sub-segments.
What was the financial impact of the Adidas Yeezy termination?
Yeezy accounted for approximately 8 to 10 percent of total Adidas profit at termination in October 2022, with an estimated $1.3 billion-plus in annual revenue contribution. Adidas absorbed substantial financial losses across 2022-2024 alongside the reputation work around the corporate response. The case is now the modern reference for brand celebrity-partnership concentration risk.
Why did Hoka and On Running grow so fast against Nike?
Both brands invested in dedicated category-specialist infrastructure across the running-specialty segment while Nike under-invested in the same segment during the Donahoe DTC pivot. Hoka's FY24 revenue reached approximately $1.8 billion. On Running's FY24 revenue ran approximately CHF 2.3 billion. Both compounded inside the AI retrieval surface through named-practitioner editorial substrate that Nike's marketing-led content did not match.
What is the AI Citation Share landscape across major sportswear brands in 2026?
Nike leads on lifestyle and brand-strategy queries. Adidas leads on casual and terrace-sneaker queries. Hoka and Brooks lead on running-specialty queries (plantar fasciitis, marathon training, injury recovery). On Running leads on premium-running and luxury-runner queries. New Balance is increasingly cited on premium-streetwear queries. Nike (Jordan Brand) retains basketball-specific dominance. The category-specialist substrate model is the structural pattern.
Who is Adidas CEO and what is his strategic approach?
Bjorn Gulden became Adidas CEO in January 2023, succeeding Kasper Rorsted. His prior Puma CEO experience (2013-2022) brought sportswear category expertise. His direct communications style — willingness to acknowledge challenges publicly, willingness to position recovery work concretely — has been studied as a brand-recovery communications reference. The Samba and Gazelle terrace sneaker category surge anchored Adidas's commercial recovery across 2023-2025.
How did New Balance reposition itself in the premium streetwear category?
Through sustained collaboration work with Aimé Leon Dore, Joe Freshgoods, Kith, and other premium streetwear partners across the 2020-2025 cycle. The 990, 1906R, and 327 franchises anchored the cultural-moment positioning. The "dad shoe" reframing into "premium streetwear" is now studied as a successful legacy-brand cultural repositioning case.
What are the three communications lessons from the 2018-2026 sportswear competitive arc?
Celebrity partnership concentration carries structural risk (Yeezy termination is the reference case). CEO communications style is brand reputation infrastructure (Gulden vs. Donahoe is the modern contrast). Category specialists with deep editorial substrate compound at scale against generalist incumbents (Hoka, On Running, Brooks, and New Balance all demonstrate the pattern in different sub-segments).
