With or Without Olympics Gold, Nike Always Wins
Nike's death has been greatly exaggerated. Sure, the biggest sportswear brand on the planet is experiencing some slumping share prices but you know what they say: What goes up, must come down.
Except that Nike is never down for long. Even with minnows snapping at the big fish, there is only one king of the pond.
It's so easy to get caught up in stock market turbulence but the wise investor looks at the big picture.
At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Nike's sliding market dominance was seemingly made obvious by a series of upstarts taking precedence.
For instance, though Nike is one of the event sponsors, it lost some visibility when rival companies' athletes scored quite a few track and field gold medals.
Remember, this is the quite literally the sport that Nike was founded upon, so that its track athletes picked up silver and bronze while adidas, PUMA and New Balance took the top of the podium is quite a feat, especially when Nike was so early to innovate in the realm of the now-dominant "super shoe."
It can't be easy to see so many sportswear rivals racing past the Swoosh, likely made even harder by online commentators snidely flipping Nike's recent ad campaign in its face: Winning truly isn't for everyone, eh, Nike?
All in good fun. But incorrect.
Remember that as recently as late 2023, Nike was touted as the world's most valuable apparel brand and the world's most popular sneaker brand. It's always a good time to soak in apparent schadenfreude whenever the big dog's crown is dented but let's also be realistic: For better or worse, no one beats Nike.
Case in point: whether Nike athletes got gold or not — and plenty of them did — it's still the biggest name in sportswear. This Nike's house; The other companies are just renting it.
Reuters points out that while rivals HOKA, on and adidas saw declining web store sales, Nike's numbers exploded.
Nike enjoyed a staggering 24 million visits to its site — boosted by a landmark performance from Simone Biles — between July 19 and August 1, while nearest rival adidas managed just under eight million.
Further, stats from data aggregation company Similarweb reveal that Nike converted thousands more of these clicks to sales than any of its competitors.
These figures are impressive albeit specific to the very unique scenario presented by the Olympics. They are not a guarantee that Nike's troubles are over. But they are symbolic of a simple truth: The house always wins.
