Adidas sponsors Rohit Sharma's footwear.GETTY IMAGES
Price wars have forced global sportswear brands to "drastically cut down spends on cricket in the world's largest market for the sport," according to the ECONOMIC TIMES. The latest company to "throw in the towel" is adidas, which stopped making bats and soft cricket equipment such as batting pads and gloves. Adidas' decision to outsource manufacturing of cricket equipment to third-party manufacturers "comes after rival Nike stopped selling cricket bats in India and pulled out of expensive bat sponsorships for top cricketers." Adidas Senior Marketing Dir Sean Van Wyk said, "We made the decision to license out our cricket hardware and soft goods to JVS." Adidas, which will continue to supply cricket footwear and apparel to the Indian market, only sponsors footwear and apparel for cricketers Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant and Kuldeep Yadav. It stopped sponsoring Virat Kohli last year, who subsequently struck a Rs 100 crore ($15M) deal with Puma. Managers of top cricketers have also "started to look out for separate sponsorship deals" for bats and other cricket equipment for their clients as two deals "often prove to be more lucrative than one." For instance, Kohli may use an MRF-branded willow bat but he sports footwear made by Puma. The companies which have left the Indian market, however, continue to sell bats in markets such as the U.K. and Australia. A global sportswear firm's cricket manager said, "In India, local companies undercut us" (ECONOMIC TIMES, 9/11).
