Euro 2024 is the 17th edition of the European Championship, a soccer tournament held every four years among the national teams that make up UEFA. But it’s not just national soccer teams fighting for supremacy here. There is also such a thing as the Euro 2024 Battle of the Brands. Rankings and compilations of the best and worst uniforms have long been part of the standard set of materials released before or during the tournament. The most successful models become classics and are then commercialized decades later.
There are six national team uniform companies represented at the European Championship 2024: the so-called “Big Three” of the sports world – Nike, Adidas, and Puma, who In total dress 19 teams out of 24; and Hummel, Macron and Joma, who work with the remaining five.
For the second European Championship in a row, Nike received the largest representation at the tournament. The American company outfitted nine Euro 2024 teams, namely: France, Portugal, England, Netherlands, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland, and Turkey. In second place comes Adidas, working with six national teams: Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Scotland and Hungary. By the way, Nike also had nine teams at the 2020 championship, but the gap from the nearest pursuer was different – Adidas outfitted eight national teams at Euro 2020, and now limited itself to six teams.
Next in the brands’ standings is Puma, which dresses four national teams – Switzerland, Austria, Serbia and Czech Republic. Joma and Macron have two teams each: Romania and Ukraine, and Georgia and Albania respectively. The list is rounded off by the Danish sports outfit manufacturer Hummel, which patriotically dresses the Danish national team.
Eight years ago, the situation among the table leaders was different. At Euro 2016, Adidas was ahead of Nike. Then the German company produced kits for nine national teams, while the Americans dressed only five teams. Comparing with earlier tournaments will not be very correct, because earlier the final stage of the championship included only 16 teams, while since 2016 they have become 24.
By the way, the situation will also be different at the European Championship. It has already become known that Euro 2024 will be the last within the framework of cooperation between the Ukrainian national team and the Spanish firm Joma. After the Euro, the team will be dressed by Adidas, which has already presented sketches of T-shirts in which the national team will perform in the coming fall.
But there is an even more high-profile event. At the end of March 2024, the German national team changed the outfitter: it went to Nike after 70 years of cooperation with Adidas. The deal caused a huge resonance. However, the cooperation of the national team with Adidas will last until the end of the World Cup 2026, the contract with Nike will come into force after the tournament in North America. According to the Handelsblatt newspaper, Nike will annually transfer 100 million euros to the DFB accounts, which is twice as much as Adidas currently pays.
So, we already know who got gold and silver in the brand championship, all that’s left is to watch the teams play.
