According to Sport England, more than 60%of adults in the UK would class themselves as ‘active’, participating in 150 or more minutes of sport per week. That’s a total of 27.1 million people taking part in sporting activities on a regular basis.
But who plays just one sport? When you consider that these minutes are likely spent taking part in multiple distinct activities, each with their own unique equipment and apparel, that’s a huge market for sportswear in the UK alone.
And the UK sports industry is even more than this grass-roots activity. The spiritual home of rugby, cricket, golf and netball (to name just a few) has an outstanding level of sports viewership too. And with each major league comes lucrative sponsorship deals for brands.
High sports viewership offers brands direct access to millions of attentive consumers, with brands spending 6.7 billion on sporting sponsorships in Europe alone in 2017.
The sports market is both multi-faceted and expansive. Brands invest significant time and effort on offering innovative and quality products to the market, and millions of pounds on subsequent marketing campaigns often involving huge sponsorship deals and adverts.
Which brands are winning a share of this enormous market, and what else can we learn about the Sports industry from Attest’s first Sports Brand Index?
Highly Dominated Market
In total, 79 different brands were named by UK consumers. This figure is relatively low, with an average of 100-200 brands named in other industries.
This is because the market is dominated by a few, exceedingly well-known players.
Astonishingly, two names make up more than 64% of Unprompted Brand Recall. Both are big-name sports/fashion fusion brands: Adidas achieved 18.8% of recall; and Nike knocked all other brands out of the park with 43.5% of recall.
It’s significant that both these brands span the sport and fashion worlds, doubling their pervasiveness and appeal. Even people who are not directly interested in playing sport may well own, or wish to own, Nike or Adidas clothing.
The rising athleisure trend has brought sportswear even further into mainstream clothing category, and both Nike and Adidas capitalise on this, for example with fashion trainers not meant for activity.
Following behind are a number of other apparel brands (Reebok and Puma both narrowly missed out on a Top 10 spot), as well as a variety of brands from other fields: media channels (Sky Sports and BT Sports); high street outlets (Sports Direct and JD Sports); and even individual teams (Manchester United and Arsenal).
A brand needed only 1% brand recall to be featured in the Top 9 brands within our Leadership Matrix. More than half of the Top 9 brands achieved less than 2% recall, leaving them trailing behind the top two: the sports market is well and truly dominated by Nike and Adidas when it comes to unprompted brand recall.
Surprisingly, in third place was ‘Football’ (5.1% recall). It’s highly unusual to have a non-brand ranking so highly, and it raises a few interesting points.
It demonstrates clearly the dominance of football in the minds of UK consumers when they think of sport. For many, sport = football. The sport is a brand in itself.
In addition, many football teams, and even one football player, were also named (Cristiano Ronaldo). No other sports enjoyed this dominance, and it indicates clearly which sport brands should be looking to sponsor for maximum brand awareness in the UK market.
It’s surely no coincidence that, on the pitch and on our televisions, 7 of the 20 premier league football teams are wearing either Nike strips (Chelsea, Man City, Tottenham, and Brighton) or Adidas strips (Man United, Watford, and West Brom). It’s highly-likely that, come the end of the football season, it’ll be either Nike or Adidas whose logo is on display as one of their teams goes to collect the premiership cup.
Strategies like this reinforce people’s perceptions of these two brands as dominant, leading winners.
Unusual NPS
The industry-wide average NPS for the sports industry was a commendable 31.7%.
Considering the industry at large, NPS increased to 33.8% amongst male respondents, and dropped to 29.7% amongst females.
Older generations were more satisfied on average, with NPS increasing to 35.6% among the over 40s, compared to 30.4% for those aged between 18 and 39.
NPS was higher than average amongst Londoners (at 36%), interesting considering that shortly after our survey was taken Nike launched their ‘Nothing beats a Londoner’ advertising campaign. We’re interested to see how these figures shift in our next quarterly report.
This may be an indication that those living in London (and other large cities) have greater access to sporting facilities and a more active attitude than other areas of the country, comparing this to the East of England, where NPS was just 9.8%.
It may also be a reflection of having so many top flight football teams in close vicinity.
Interestingly and quite unusually, average NPS dropped to 18.92% for the Top 9 sports brands in our Leadership Matrix, indicating that recall wasn’t always driven by positive perception.
The lowest NPS within the Top 9 was FIFA, with the only negative score on the board (-30%). The corruption scandal which began in 2015, and was featured prominently in the media until 2017 when the resulting trial finally took place, has obviously had a significant impact on FIFA’s likeability.
Several arrests were made across the world; Sebb Blatter, FIFA’s president at the time, was forced to resign; and the FBI’s investigation into widespread bribery, wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering within the association triggered the opening of cases in Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany and Switzerland. Evidently, the atrocious morals of the people at the company’s top have not been forgotten.
The low NPS of FIFA and Sports Direct are responsible for lowering the average NPS amongst the Top 9, as the biggest-hitters, Nike and Adidas, both scored above-average on NPS.
The highest NPS was for Under Armour (50%) and correlated with their similarly strong Purchase Intent and subsequent Brand Strength.
NPS within the Top 9 brands does vary considerably, from -30% to +50%. Showing that increased recall can be for both positive and negative reasons, so isn’t always a good indicator of likeability.
Purchase Intent
Purchase Intent is at a steady level amongst the Top 9 sports brands. Average Purchase Intent is 43.78%, with a comparable median Purchase Intent of 44%.
Six of the Top 9 sports brands scored above 40% on Purchase Intent. This indicates that recall is correlated with a likelihood to buy, and that the sponsorship deals and large marketing budgets putting these brands in front of consumers on a daily basis are translating into revenue (or will do).
Take for example Nike, which has a 53% ‘very likely’ to buy Purchase Intent, and has seen its global revenues grow 8% (on a currency neutral basis) in 2017, to 4.4 billion.
On the other end of the spectrum, Sports Direct had the lowest Purchase Intent within the Top 9, with only 28.57%. This is to be expected. With two press-worthy scandals in as many years, Sports Direct’s brand has taken quite a beating recently. In case you missed it (if you were living under a rock, for instance) back in 2015 it was reported that that Sports Direct were exploiting their employees with harsh working conditions and below-minimum-wage pay.
Then, in 2017, consumers were exposed to new allegations around Sports Direct forcing employees to speak English at all times. Just like FIFA above, bad publicity is likely driving down Purchase Intent for Sports Direct, as well as a very low NPS of 4.76%.
The highest purchase intent was registered by Under Armour and Arsenal, both with 58.33% and a clearly loyal consumer base.
Key Attributes
What do consumers associate with the most recalled sports brands?
Looking at our wordcloud, there’s a wide variety of consumer priorities when it comes to sports brands. While some people are concerned with style-based qualities (‘fashionable’, ‘trendy’ and ‘stylish’ feature prominently), others are preoccupied with technical, performance-based attributes (‘comfort’, ‘quality’ and ‘innovative’ all feature).
This illuminates one of the main reasons both Nike and Adidas are so successful in this space. On the one hand, they are sponsoring professional athletes and emphasising the sporting excellence of their products, while on the other they are teaming up with style icons to create products that sell for their look rather than their practicality (both brands have collaborated with Kanye West, for example, to create the cult-status Yeezy trainers).
Notably, both ‘Reliable’ and ‘Trusted’ feature, showing that the sporting scandals mentioned above do bring the overarching ethics of the sports brands to the front-of-mind for consumers.
Sports Brand Index Leaders
The overall leaders of our first Sports Brand Index were as follows:
| Brand name | Recall | Purchase Intent | NPS | Brand Strength | Total Brand Equity |
| Nike | 45.30% | 0.53 | 41.06% | 94.26 | 4270.00 |
| Adidas | 18.80% | 0.48 | 30.85% | 79.26 | 1490.00 |
| Manchester United | 1.70% | 0.41 | 35.29% | 76.47 | 130.00 |
| Under Armour | 1.20% | 0.58 | 50.00% | 108.33 | 130.00 |
| JD Sports | 1.80% | 0.44 | 11.11% | 55.56 | 100.00 |
| Arsenal | 1.20% | 0.58 | 16.67% | 75.00 | 90.00 |
| Sky Sports | 1.90% | 0.32 | 10.53% | 42.11 | 80.00 |
| Sports Direct | 2.10% | 0.29 | 4.76% | 33.33 | 70.00 |
| FIFA | 1.00% | 0.30 | -30.00% | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Average | 8.33% | 0.4 | 18.92% | 62.7 | 706.7 |
| Median | 1.80% | 0.44 | 31.00% | 76.47 | 100.00 |
You can see how this looks plotted as both Total Brand Equity (TBE) and against the matrix of ‘well known and well liked.’
Important Takeaways for the Sports Industry
The sports industry is led by two key players: Nike and Adidas. The lessons we can learn from these imposing figures are that investment in sport sponsorship, alongside heavy-duty advertising campaigns, translate into industry-leading levels of awareness.
This awareness drives their outstanding Total Brand Equity scores, 4,270 for Nike and 1,490 for Adidas. However, neither of these two brands tops the table for NPS or Purchase Intent.
Under Armour, with their comparatively low 1.2% recall scored higher on both these metrics. So although Nike and Adidas were more easily recalled, this isn’t necessarily made up of the loyal fans Under Armour boasts.
It’s also clear that widely-publicised scandals are having a noticeably negative impact on NPS and Purchase Intent for Sports Direct and FIFA. This, in turn, affects their Brand Strength and Total Brand Equity. It’s unclear whether the publicity has had a positive impact on recollection of these brands, but it is clear that the awareness isn’t driving desire to buy (the two named brands had the lowest Purchase Intent of any brands in the Top 9).
Additionally, the naming of sports brands, outlets, TV channels, and teams speaks to a multi-faceted industry. That said, no female-specific brands were named (Lulu Lemon, Sweaty Betty, Fabletics for example) nor were any female-only sports, teams or athletes. This may be in part due to the fact that women-targeted sportswear is largely perceived as overpriced, and overall it demonstrates that there is a great way to go in the fight for gender equality in sport.
In Conclusion
More than half of the sports industry is ‘owned’ by two main brands. It’s notable that these brands straddle the border between practical sportswear and fashion, appealing to and recognisable within two distinct markets.
Many sports brands have a clearly defined consumer, whereas both Nike and Adidas successfully appeal to both athletes and non-athletes alike.
Whether you’re a brand sponsoring a tournament, a football team or a sports equipment outlet, there’s a place for you in this varied industry.
If you see your brand’s name included in this report, and you’d like deeper, more targeted data on which aspects of your strategy need work, get in touch to find out more about how we can help. Measuring these key metrics is crucial to maintaining a healthy brand that will keep you in the upper echelons of the industry.
And if your brand wasn’t featured, we can help you run a tailored brand equity matrix specific to your category or target consumer (e.g. just for runners, tennis fans or for Premier League viewers).