Tel Aviv, Israel - February 14, 2025.Stylish close-up of feet of a person wearing blue Adidas Spezial sneakers and frayed denim jeans, standing on a paved urban surface with graffiti background.
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In the highly competitive sportswear industry, Nike holds a commanding lead—but its lead is narrowing. Adidas, the number two player, just reported double-digit growth across all segments and markets in the fourth quarter of 2025, reaching $29 billion (€24.8 billion) in annual sales. Nike, on the other hand, just reported flat third-quarter sales of $11 billion, down 3% in constant currency, and is guiding to a low-single-digit decline for the full year after generating $46.3 billion in 2025, following a 10% drop.
Nike is particularly challenged in its international markets. In North America, Nike is growing—up 5% through the third quarter, where it generates about 45% of sales. But elsewhere, it’s fading. In the EMEA, Nike’s second-largest market, revenue was down 2% constant currency over the last nine months. Asia Pacific/Latin America dropped 11%, and China was off 12%. Its fall in China—once its primary growth engine—is particularly painful. The company warns sales there could drop by as much as 20% in the fourth quarter.
As Nike struggles to reverse its downward slide, its corporate reputation has been falling alongside. RepTrak’s just released 2026 reputation ranking of the world’s top 100 brands showed Nike fell from number 21 among the world’s most respected brands in 2024 to number 50 today. On the other hand, Adidas has soared to number two on that list, behind only Lego. In 2024, Adidas was just slightly ahead of Nike at number 16.
RepTrak’s report is based on 230,000 consumer surveys conducted by Dynata across 14 major economies at the end of the year. Respondents must not only be aware of the company but have an informed opinion about it. Seven drivers of reputation are measured—Products & Services, Performance, Innovation, Leadership, Conduct, Citizenship and Workplace. To qualify for the study, a company must have global revenues about $2 billion and global familiarity above 20% across the 14 countries measured.
“To rise from where Adidas was three years ago to number two is phenomenal. It’s a real contender for number one—it wouldn’t surprise me if Adidas were able to further raise the bar next year,” shared Stephen Hahn, RepTrak’s chief reputation and strategy officer. And he would know—he’s spent more than a decade tracking how global brands rise, fall and earn their place in consumers’ hearts and minds.
Hahn is quick to point out that Nike still has a strong global reputation. “Being ranked 50th in the world today is still pretty good, so it’s not devastating news,” he said. “But as Adidas has gone up, Nike has gone down—and it’s not a coincidence.”
He describes Nike’s fall as a “referendum” on the many steps and missteps it has made over the past three years, most of them under previous CEO John Donahue, until current CEO Elliott Hill was brought out of retirement to course correct in October 2024.
Given the parallels to Adidas and its leadership change, Nike may have another two-to-three years ahead for the business and reputation to recover. But the path forward is treacherous. The decision to pull back from wholesale retail to concentrate on DTC engagement backfired, contributing to a decline in its Products & Services score in 2023.
“To be a highly resonant brand, you have to foster what I call ‘participation,’ where customers don’t just buy your product or services but want to be part of the experience,” Hahn explained. “By primarily limiting Nike to direct-to-consumer, it missed a big part of its channel of opportunity. You’re actually restricting your success—narrowing the stakeholder ecosystem.”
Then, in 2024, when Nike laid off 1,600 staff members, its Conduct and Workplace scores took a dive. The company also lost its ambassador advantage. RepTrak’s ambassador score measures the number of people willing to actively advocate for the brand. Nike’s ambassador score fall signaled a weakening of word-of-mouth and a loss of meaningful connection within its core community.
It’s this erosion of community connection more than anything else that is weighing on Nike’s reputation score, while lifting Adidas. Hahn captures the distinction succinctly: “Adidas is about ‘we,’ while Nike is about ‘me.’”
He continues, “Adidas has achieved a sense of shared purpose and mission within a community of like-minded people—that’s the multiplayer strategy that differentiates it from Nike. One can argue Nike is more self-serving, more about the athlete and winning, about me and my success. But the athlete plays on a team sport, so it’s hard to translate that ‘we’ feeling.”
Hahn sees the “we vs. me” divide becoming more impactful as AI is increasingly used not just to recommend products to buy, but as a way stakeholders form opinions about a company.
“AI comes to the table with an opinion and a judgment so when you search for something related to Nike, it is affected by what people have said and experienced in the past,” he explained. “If you are asking AI to recommend the coolest brand of soccer cleats, it’s going to be influenced by the news cycle and favor a brand like Adidas because people are saying nice things about Adidas—having a multiplayer conversation. AI has effectively become a stakeholder with an opinion that is affecting other people.”
Looking ahead, Hahn predicts the rivalry between the two brands will command international attention at this year’s World Cup, pitting Nike against Adidas on one of the world’s biggest stages, with the stakes high for both brands’ business and reputations.
“You’re going to see Adidas play out versus Nike all the time,” he said. “And if there was World Cup for reputation today, Adidas would win the game two to zero over Nike, because it’s better positioned further along in terms of reputation management.”
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