Keith O’Brien (KO) is a WITI contributor and founder of Total Emphasis, a content strategy agency in Brooklyn. His previous WITIs include The 4DX Edition and The Complete Game Edition.
Keith here. We are now into the knockout phase of the World Cup. Bar exorbitant ticket prices, it has so far been a rousing success, full of international tourists discovering Buc’ee’s, Scottish fans making the city of Boston bend to their will through joyous nuisance, and of course, influencers becoming international celebrities.
Like all major sporting events, the World Cup is as much a celebration of commerce and marketing as it is sporting greatness. And no one celebrates this jolt of football-induced pandemonium more than the sporting duopoly of Adidas and Nike (sorry Puma). Since 1998, both have kicked off their world cup festivities by releasing a Super Bowl-sized ad featuring the most famous soccer players in the world.
2026 was no different. Adidas’ Backyard Legends features Lionel Messi, Jude Bellingham, and Lamine Yamal. Nike’s Rip the Script: Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Jr., and more.
If you’ve followed these ads for the past three decades, you’d be forgiven for assuming that Nike, not Adidas, is an official sponsor of the event. Nike has generally put more marketing heft into its creative campaigns, more star wattage, more integrations, than Adidas, even though the Three Stripes has been a FIFA Partner since 1970. That partnership buys them the right to use FIFA’s protected marks: the logo, the trophy, the words themselves. They’re the only ones allowed to even say “World Cup.”
Why is this interesting?
I can think of three reasons. First, despite the wide variety of athletes and potential themes to explore, these commercials always seem to follow the same playbook.
Beginning with Nike’s 1998 campaign, which focused on the Brazilian team passing time by playing soccer in the airport, through to both of this year’s campaigns, the concept is generally “Famous players come together to ply their trade in increasingly bizarre locations and scenarios,” such as…
The airport (Nike, 1998)
A steel cage in the hold of a tanker ship (Nike, 2002)
A Swiss laboratory where scientists teleport players from different eras to settle a bar argument (Nike, 2022)
Perhaps the most famous of the ads, Nike’s 2014 “Winner Stays”—where youth players suddenly turn into famous footballers by evoking their names—shares many hallmarks of Adidas’ 2006 ad “José +10,” where two kids draft that year’s world cup stars, CGI-ing players from yesteryear to play alongside them.
The second interesting element is which stars each brand can use, and what clothing they’re allowed to put them in. As you’d expect, it all depends on who sponsors each athlete. It’s why you have never seen Messi (Adidas) and Ronaldo (Nike) square off in a World Cup ad, despite it being the single most obvious creative idea in the sport.
Sometimes, across their club, country, and individual brand contracts, a player might have three different sponsors. Case in point: Portugal recently ended its multi-decade relationship with Nike, signing with Puma. Ronaldo remains a Nike athlete. His Saudi club, Al-Nassr, also left Nike, to sign with Adidas. That’s why Ronaldo appears in generic apparel in Nike’s Rip the Script ad.
Likewise, in Nike’s 2014 “Winner Stays,” you first see Ronaldo in Portugal red, Neymar in Brazil’s canary yellow, and Rooney in England white. Then Zlatan Ibrahimović arrives not in Sweden’s bright yellow, but the red, white, and blue of Paris Saint-Germain. At the time, Sweden was sponsored by Adidas. Later, Gerard Piqué and Andres Iniesta, two Barcelona players, show up in their club shirts rather than Spain’s, for the exact same reason. In Adidas’s 2022 “Family Reunion,” Son Heung-min appears in a tasteful sweater, because both his South Korea and Tottenham kits were made by Nike.
Neither company will dress their athletes in their rival’s shirt, full stop.
The third interesting point is that these ads are conceptualized and filmed in advance of the teams’ rosters being finalized. Which means some decisions about who to feature don’t pay off. If you pause at this campaign at 4:25, you’ll see an England player who has failed to make any impact at all this World Cup—because he didn’t even make the squad. (Coca-Cola likewise invested in Cole Palmer’s marketability.)
Sometimes, the brands don’t care whether the athlete is in the World Cup or not.
French firebrand Eric Cantona has appeared in four Nike commercials, despite famously never playing in a World Cup. (His infamy from karate kicking a spectator during a Manchester United match has made him an eternally marketable foil.) Cantona appears as an airplane passenger (1998), announcer (2002), a TV host (2006), and actor in a fishing scene (2026).
Both Nike and Adidas have also blended the past and the future. In previous ads, CGI helped feature old footballers. But Adidas’ 2026 ad took it one step further, creating AI David Beckham. As the technology gets better, expect AI to feature more prominently. Pele filming a TikTok after scoring in new Nike boots? It’s not inconceivable. (KO)
* In 2018, Nike made a brief strategic detour to release a bunch of vignettes instead of one big ad; it reversed again in 2022 with the Footballverse ad.
** A special thanks to my research assistant Julian O’Brien for painstakingly confirming athlete presence in the commercials.
The Mexico v Ecuador lightning delay was mitigated by watching all of the above!