Why Erling Haaland chose Nike: A career-long deal and establishing an identity

April 16, 2024

Erling Haaland’s decision to re-join Nike ends a year-long battle between the world’s biggest sportswear brands vying for his signature.

Haaland, 22, initially signed with Nike aged 14, but his deal expired in January 2022 and he was then seen wearing boots produced by Adidas and Puma.

But after months of speculation about which company he will join and whose boots he will wear, Nike uploaded a 10-second video on social media on Friday announcing they had won the race.

A new era of #9.@erlinghaaland is a Force Of Nature.
Are you ready?#nikefc pic.twitter.com/7UZrG0dngq

— Nike Football (@nikefootball) March 31, 2023

The agreement between Haaland and Nike is more than 10 years in length and has been described as a “career-long” deal.

Boot deals usually tend to be much shorter in duration, so, for Haaland, it was about more than simply wearing the infamous Swoosh logo. Details regarding how much the contract is worth to Haaland from a financial perspective are yet to emerge, but he is not going to be at the bottom end of the market.

As is common in contracts, financial incentives are built into the deal and can depend on the number of games played and where the club finishes each season.

The Norway international is said to feel a close connection to Nike, not because of his previous deal, but because he has always admired how they want to break barriers and explore extra possibilities in the future.

In that sense, this was a decision made with his heart as opposed to his head.

At his Manchester City unveiling last summer, Haaland wore club-branded Puma Ultra boots. City Football Group agreed on a 10-year deal with Puma in 2019 to make their kits.

During City’s pre-season tour in the United States, the 22-year-old played — and scored — against Bayern Munich while wearing Adidas X Speedportal boots. He wore the same ones in the Community Shield defeat to Liverpool on July 31.

But for his side’s Premier League opener away to West Ham United, Haaland donned a pair of Nike Mercurial Vapor 14 boots.

He has continued to wear Nike since then and has scored a staggering 42 goals in all competitions.

Players of his calibre and potential rarely come on the market, and he was the only one — along with Kylian Mbappe — being spoken about as a realistic heir to Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi over the next decade or so.

“We think of athletes as influencers rather than endorsers and the stories they can tell and the social influence they can have,” David Cockayne, the founding director of the master’s degree course in sports business and management at the University of Liverpool, told The Athletic in August.

“For someone like Haaland, who is young and at the start of their career, the opportunity to sign up somebody like him, who can relate to younger audiences, will give you that longevity and allow you to hit a broader cross-section of people.”

While Adidas and Puma were in the mix to sign Haaland, he found himself thinking along the same lines as Nike and felt they could create something special together.

The deal between Haaland and Nike took several months to pull together, with Rafaela Pimenta, his agent, leading talks on his behalf. The Manchester City striker also relied on Alfie, his father, for advice.

Part of the discussions centred on Haaland becoming the new face of No 9s, having been inspired by the Brazilian Ronaldo, who was sponsored by Nike throughout his career before retiring in 2011. Ronaldo’s Mercurial R9 boot from 1998 is known as one of the most iconic and identifiable boots of all time.

A close-up of Ronaldo’s Mercurial R9 boots at the 1998 World Cup (Photo: Ben Radford /Allsport)

“His record-breaking scoring has put a stamp on the future of the game, and makes him the heir to No 9 — the next-generation striker,” Nike’s press release read.

It also noted Haaland’s “unprecedented rise through European club football” with his goalscoring capabilities only further cementing “his stamp on the future of the game”.

The deal itself has been described as a partnership that will be more than just about football boots in that it will allow the forward to break barriers in terms of how a footballer can explore his image.

Those close to the deal say it will take time to establish an identity and that will be done step by step as opposed to being rushed, hence a career-long agreement being in place.

Given Nike’s history of creating product lines for their most high-profile athletes — think Cristiano Ronaldo, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, LeBron James and Mbappe — you would think that opens the door to Haaland having something similar.

In September, Mbappe, the Paris Saint-Germain forward and 2018 World Cup winner, unveiled a signature Air Zoom Mercurial boot.

Nike has switched strategies in recent years and decided to pull out of swathes of boot deals, opting to invest in a select few players instead.

Investing in Haaland, Mbappe and Marcus Rashford, with all three players aged 25 and under, suggests the future is bright at the American company.

(Top photo: Ronny Hartmann / AFP)

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