2017-18 Big Five European Leagues Kit Battle - Adidas & Nike With Less and Less Teams, Strongly Growing Kit Supplier Diversity

In the past few weeks, we looked at the different kit manufactures of the most important European leagues, including the Top 5 European Leagues (England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain). Now let us take a look which brands dominate the kit battle not in one single country but in the Top 5 European Leagues.

Both Adidas and Nike more and more concentrate on deals with the biggest clubs in the past few years, so smaller brands such as Lotto, Macron and Umbro are able to gain market share.

2017-18 Top 5 League Kit Makers

Adidas and Nike make the jerseys for 36 of the 98 clubs of Europe's Top 5 leagues.

Nike leads the market making the shirts for 20 teams, followed by Adidas with 16 clubs. Puma comes third with 10 teams, Macron and Joma supply the kits for 9 teams, respectively, while Umbro and Kappa have six teams under contract. In total, there are 21 different kit suppliers for 98 teams.

Just three years ago, Nike had a portfolio of 26 clubs, while their German rivals Adidas had 18 teams under contract (the two brands make the kits for 8 less teams now than three years ago - 44-> 36).

If we do no look only at the quantity but also at the quality of the kit deals, aboves findings change considerably. It becomes obvious that Adidas and Nike still have most of the best and important teams under contract, followed by Puma. Both Adidas and Nike several times already said that they will continue to concentrate their forces on the most important deals, so the growing kit supplier diversity will not change.

Interestingly, New Balance just have four teams from the Top 5 European leagues under contract, but they also make the jerseys for four teams that qualified for the 2017-2018 UEFA Champions League season (Liverpool, Porto, Sevilla, Celtic). The brand has many high quality deals and less deals with non-successful, not so popular clubs.

Under Armour just makes the kits for one team from the Big 5 European Leagues after they lost Tottenham and Aston Villa was relegated to the Championship.

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