The deal
Pan-European soccer’s UEFA governing body announced last week it had entered exclusive negotiations with US sportswear giant Nike to become the official match ball provider for all three tiers of UEFA's men's competitions for the 2027 to 2031 cycle.
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The four-year contract covers the top-tier Champions League (UCL), second-tier Europa League, and third-tier Conference League, which together comprise 531 matches per season.
The US company beat off competition from incumbent supplier Adidas and challenger Puma, after reportedly offering double the current fee UEFA receives, to supply that body's entire competition slate for around $45 million per year
Adidas later confirmed it would not renew its role as match ball supplier to the UCL but would continue to supply other tournaments.
Adidas has held official match ball status for the UCL since 2001, but its initial contract only covered the competition’s final. The agreement was then expanded to encompass all UCL matches from the 2006-07 season.
Adidas took the contract from Nike, which held the rights between 1998-99 and 2000-01. That previous deal was also limited to the final match.
French sports retailer Decathlon, meanwhile, has provided the match balls for the Europa and Conference League since 2024.
Should the deal go through, Adidas will continue to supply the match ball for the UCL for the 2026-27 season, while Decathlon’s Kipsta brand will do the same for the Europa and Conference Leagues.
The news comes a week after UEFA launched its official match ball tender, which is being managed by sports agency Relevent Football Partners on behalf of UC3, the joint venture between UEFA and the European Club Association, which controls the marketing, sales, and delivery of commercial rights for club competitions.
Why it matters
For UEFA, it is the latest significant deal secured by Relevent Football Partners since winning the contract for the commercial rights to UEFA’s club competitions between 2027 and 2033, replacing Swiss agency Team Marketing, which held the designation for 30 years.
Relevent said the move to combine the rights to cover all three competitions “reinforces the strength of all competitions and further validates the belief in both their individual and collective value.”
Conrad Wiacek, head of analysis and consulting at Sportcal (GlobalData Sport), comments: “Nike's move to take over match ball supply for UEFA club competitions from 2027 onwards is further evidence of the influence that Relevant partners have had over UEFA's commercial strategy since taking over commercial operations from Team Marketing.
“While the UEFA competitions have always carried a premium price tag, Relevant has managed to increase the commercial revenue for UEFA to over $1bn annually, suggesting that UEFA's decision to 'Americanize' the commercial process is paying dividends. While traditional partners such as Adidas and Heineken have lost out to their American rivals, UEFA's bottom line has certainly benefited.”
In October, Relevent announced international beverage company Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) had entered exclusive talks with UC3 to replace Heineken as the beer sponsor of UEFA’s club competitions for the 2027 to 2033 commercial cycle for a reported $230 million per year.
Heineken had been a sponsor since 1994, with its last renewal with UEFA in September 2023, worth around $128 million per year.
The agency also expanded its sponsorship deal with soft drinks giant PepsiCo, covering all men’s club competitions after a highly competitive process.
As well as the first global sponsorship sales process for the next UEFA club competitions cycle, UC3 and Relevent also recently went to market for broadcast rights in 19 markets across Europe, Central America, and South America.
These include major territories such as Brazil, Canada, Belgium, and Portugal, with contracts on offer for the next four-season cycle – beginning in 2027-28.
Globally, UEFA is attempting to secure a 10% increase on the existing value of the rights.
The current rights, for the three-year cycle which got underway in 2024 and runs through 2026-27, are worth about $3.8 billion per year, with UCL clubs earning almost 75% of the revenue from UEFA’s rights sales.
Earlier this month, Japanese satellite TV network Wowow retained exclusive broadcast rights to the UEFA men’s club competitions and added the UEFA Women's Champions League to its offering for the first time.
In terms of other recent deals, Ziggo Sport, the Dutch broadcaster, is set to retain its rights in the Netherlands for the next cycle after becoming the governing body's preferred bidder and entering into exclusive negotiations with UC3.
In Mexico, meanwhile, Telecoms giant America Movil has added the Europa League and Conference League to its UCL deal in Mexico and Central America.
Broadcast rights to the UEFA competitions were already allocated in the 'Big Five' European markets of the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France late last year.
Rights in the US for UEFA club competitions are held by Paramount-owned CBS Sports until 2030.
The details
Upon entering exclusive negotiations, Nike effectively ends Adidas’s reign as the match ball supplier for UCL matches, as well as Decathlon’s association with the Europa and Conference Leagues.
In accepting Nike’s bid, the pair will now hash out the finer details of the partnership before finalizing and announcing its conclusion.
It has been widely reported that a change in supplier will mean the UCL will no longer feature its iconic stars, with the Guardian news outlet stating that Adidas holds the rights to the design. If true, the last match to feature the star ball, which has become synonymous with the competition, would be the 2027 Champions League final on June 5 at Madrid’s Estadio Metropolitano.
However, UFEA documents seen by Sportcal name the governing body as the exclusive owner of all intellectual property rights of the competition, including "certain key elements of the official match ball design," meaning UEFA and Nike may still be able to feature the stars on their new ball design.
A trademark registered in May 2011 with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) also names UEFA as the owner of the star ball design until April 2030.
The deal leverages the massive scale of the UCL, which attracted 1.18 billion viewers last season, according to UEFA.
The agreement continues a three-way battle between Nike, Adidas, and Puma to secure the biggest match ball contracts in soccer, with the trio outbidding each other for a slice of the pie.
While the new deal will come as a blow to Adidas, the sportswear giant still supplies the match ball for the flagship FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship national team tournaments.
The German brand will also be returning as the official ball supplier for the top two German soccer divisions, the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga, from the 2026-27 season, taking over from Derbystar.
For Nike, meanwhile, securing the contract highlights the company’s ambitions in the sector, having already wrested from Adidas a contract to become the primary kit supplier of the German Football Association (DFB) two years ago.
However, Nike lost its major ball supply contract for English soccer’s top-tier Premier League to Puma, which took over ahead of the 2025-26 season.
Puma also replaced Nike in Italy’s Serie A from the start of the 2022-23 campaign and has also been La Liga’s official ball supplier since 2019-20.
Since taking over in 2024, Nike's chief executive, Elliott Hill, has vowed to refocus Nike on core sports like soccer, highlighting at the company’s latest earnings call the potential of the upcoming FIFA World Cup as an opportunity to “catalyze the football marketplace for quarters to come.”
The comments came on the back of Nike's Q3 earnings announcement. Despite flat year-over-year revenue growth, Nike did beat analyst estimates, with revenues of $11.28 billion.
However, while the company’s performance in China was better than expected, its performance across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) faltered.
Wiacek said: “For Nike, a deal like this was essential given the company’s increasingly poor financial performance, so this could be a unique but expensive way to claw back some financial performance and reclaim some cultural cache."
