With the ecommerce market expected to reach $20.7 trillion by 2025, major sportswear companies such as Nike, Adidas, Amazon, Alibaba, New Balance, Puma, NBA, NFL and IOC, are set to significantly grow their sales through this online distribution channel, due to the strength of their brands and the ease and accessibility of their online platforms, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData’s latest report, ‘Ecommerce in Sport – Thematic Research’, reveals that Nike and Adidas, with an estimated combined global market share of 42.8%, are the sportswear apparel market leaders and securing endorsement deals with some of the world’s biggest athletes continues to play an important role in their brand building success.

Tanveer Aujla, Sport Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Nike’s partnership with Michael Jordan, which has existed for over 30 years now, is one of the most successful examples of a brand/athlete partnership, with Jordan now owning his own brand of Jordan products under the Nike umbrella. Other significant deals include Nike’s lifetime deal with LeBron James and Adidas’ deal with Lionel Messi.”

A challenge facing these brands, Nike in particular, includes shutting down third-party sellers, who have been making significant profits selling Nike brand products through online marketplaces.

Aujla continues: “Despite Nike’s attempts to stop third party sellers through partnerships with leading ecommerce companies like Amazon, this has hitherto proved difficult to do due to the sheer size and scale of this unregulated market. However, to enhance their growth – in a way that third parties will find difficult to emulate – both Nike and Adidas have expanded into the metaverse in the last year.”

Nike launched its own interactive space called ‘Nikeland’, which allows users to browse Nike gear and footwear, while Adidas launched a line of ‘Into the Metaverse’ NFTs which sold out in an afternoon. Sports streaming is another area of growth with Amazon being the only example of an ecommerce company successfully breaking into this area at this time. The company’s enormous wealth has afforded it the ability to acquire valuable sports rights including multi-year deals with the NFL and the Premier League to boost traffic and subscriber count on its streaming platform.

Aujla adds: “Online shopping works well for retail businesses who can reach a global audience with much less expenditure on infrastructure. The global exposure provides excellent visibility and profile for both the business and their brands with more online marketing tools available now than ever before helping to improve the targeting and effectiveness of a brand’s online ads.”