New Balance is taking over the sponsorship of most of the soccer teams that had been previously signed up by Warrior Sports, its subsidiary specializing in hockey and lacrosse, starting with the new football season in the second part of the year. It is taking on board also several individual players sponsored by Warrior, and adding other sponsorship deals in the world's most popular sport.
Richard Wright, a seasoned 53-year-old British executive who is coordinating the new effort, told us that New Balance has the ambition to become the third-largest brand in the global football category, a position currently held by Puma, which gets about 10 percent of its turnover from football products. It can be assumed that New Balance could more easily achieve this goal than Warrior because of the much wider international recognition of the brand, its 109-year history, its recent strong growth and its recent diversification from running into other sports. As with Nike in the 1980s, its presence in global football will no doubt improve the international visibility of New Balance across its product range.
Wright, who has been named general manager of New Balance for football, has been placed in charge of Warrior's new football development program at the beginning of 2011. He had participated in the launch of Nike's football program in 1982. He worked for Adidas on the Predator and other football boots between 1993 and 1999. He joined Umbro in 2000 to develop its line of football boots and equipment. He did the same at Reebok between 2008 and 2010, but stopped after Adidas decided to de-emphasize the brand's involvement in team sports.
To establish its footprint in global football, Warrior had signed a very expensive six-year contract with the English Liverpool team, reportedly offering twice the amount previously paid by Adidas, or something like £20 million (€27.3m-$31.0m) a year. Warrior subsequently signed up other important teams such as Stoke City, the oldest club in the English Premier League, also known as the Potters, as well as Sevilla FC in Spain, the current UEFA champion squad, and FC Porto in Portugal.
All these clubs will be migrating to New Balance under new contracts covering the jerseys as well as cleated shoes, but Wright declined to say whether the financial conditions had changed. New Balance will not pursue Warrior's previous contracts with a couple of local teams, Randers FC and Persebaya Surabaya, but will continue its deals with the Shamrock Rovers in Ireland, Odds BK in Norway, Sagan Tosu in Japan and O'Higgins in Chile.
New Balance has also signed up another Japanese team, Yamagata Club Sport Emelec, and is working on other deals, especially in the U.S., where more than four times more pairs of football boots are sold than in the U.K. or Germany, according to the company's estimates. The Boston-based company made a public announcement of its new debut in global football at events in London as well as in New York last Feb. 4.
A dozen individual footballers will act as ambassadors of the brand including Kendall Watson of the MLS Vancouver Whitecaps, Aaron Ramsey of Arsenal, the 20-year-old Adnan Januzaj of Manchester United and two members of the Manchester City club, Alvaro Negredo and Vincent Kompany. The latter is also captain of the Belgian team. Other sponsored players include Samir Nasri, Marouane Fellaini, Tim Cahill, Jesus Navas, Fernando Reges and Nikica Jelavic.
New Balance stressed that its football experience with Warrior has been successful, in spite of the limited notoriety of the brand name and its focus on teenage customers. Wright pointed out that Warrior had met its goals, selling for instance more Liverpool jerseys than Adidas. Its sales of Porto jerseys were more than 50 percent higher than those sold by Nike when it was sponsoring the team, he said.
Warrior had a small team of a dozen people working under Wright on its football project at Wilmslow, a town near Manchester. They are all moving to the new corporate European headquarters recently established by New Balance in the same area, at Warrington. The regional sales offices of New Balance and its distributors were selling Warrior's products, and most of them will sell the new collections of New Balance, targeting initially football specialty shops. About 500 New Balance stores around the world will sell the kits of Liverpool and other sponsored teams.
The association of New Balance with the Liverpool team is seen as a logical step as it is owned by the Fenway Sports Group, which also owns the Boston Red Sox, the baseball team sponsored by New Balance for apparel and cleated shoes since 2011.
Most of the New Balance football boots will be made in Asia, but some professional models will be manufactured at the U.K. factory of New Balance in Flimby. It had been making football kits for New Balance in the 1980s, when the brand started a short-lived football program steered by Brian Robson, former captain of Manchester United and the England team.
New Balance reported global sales of $2.73 billion in 2013. Its direct involvement in team sports is part of an overarching strategy that led it to sign up last year two well-known cricket champions, Gary Ballance of the England Test team and Charlotte Edwards, captain of the England women's team, who has been made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
