Alas, for the England supporters reading, the football may not have come home last Sunday in Sydney, but the real triumph of the FIFA Women’s World Cup wasn’t the victory of a single team. If this summer has made anything clear, it’s that football is a boy’s sport no more – or, at least, that it’s certainly a girl’s sport, too. Proof of that can be found in the figures. In terms of engagement, this year’s tournament was by far the most successful iteration since its inauguration in 1991. Globally, viewing records have been shattered – in Australia, an estimated 11.15 million (for context, the country’s total population lies around 25.7 million) tuned in to the Matildas’ semi-final against England’s Lionesses; and in England, a combined 14.4 million tuned in to the latter’s final showdown against Spain. Stadium crowds have exceeded the previous record set at the 2015 tournament in Canada by 0.55 million, and an unprecedented number of fans stumped up the cash for official replica jerseys. Beyond the stats, though, the most powerful testament to the tournament’s status as a landmark moment in the perception of women’s football was the electric excitement felt as strongly in sold-out stadium stands across Australia and New Zealand as in packed-out pub viewing parties held half a day behind.
That the success of the Women’s World Cup correlates with a wider increase in the visibility of women’s sports is a given, but that visibility is no coincidence. It is, in large, a consequence of the concerted efforts of cultural powerhouses like Nike, who have played a key role in both catalysing the exponential boom in support for the women’s game, as well as in supporting the players at its heart. An obvious example of how they’ve done that are the billboards you’re very likely to have seen in the run-up to the tournament, starring the likes of the Lionesses’ Chloe Kelly, Lucy Bronze and Georgia Stanway. They’re testaments to “the really noteworthy way that Nike supports players in terms of things like campaigns,” Jill Scott, a former Lioness and current Nike ambassador, says. It’s an ethos that extends far beyond marketing, she stresses, extending to the gear that Nike-affiliated women athletes wear, and the experiences they have on the ground. “Nike’s very unique in the way they connect with the players. They do a lot of research into what the players want,” Jill continues. “It’s not just a matter of them bringing out a product and hoping for the best; they put a lot of work into speaking with the players.”
Granted, this degree of support isn’t exactly new. “We’ve championed women and women’s sport for the five decades we’ve been in business,” Heidi O’Neill, Nike’s President, Consumer & Marketplace, says. And while the tournament’s success was hardly a surprise for the Nike team, it was certainly a vindication of the groundwork that they’ve been laying – both in terms of developing its relationships with the women athletes on its roster, and developing products specifically attuned to the feedback of its women consumers.
Regarding the former, a key facet of the brand’s commitment entails looking beyond athletes’ needs in terms of product, and considering what they require beyond the track, field, ring, pool or pitch to enable them to reach their full potential. “Something that we heard is, sure, how do we innovate product for women specifically, but also how do we serve them, both in the moment of sport and outside of it,” Tanya Hvizdak, Nike’s VP, Women’s Global Sports Marketing, says. At the Women’s World Cup, this approach culminated in the creation of Nike Basecamps for each of the 13 national football federations that Nike sponsors – including England and the tournament’s two host nations, Australia and New Zealand – offering a range of top-tier services tailored to the specifications of each team. “We just said, ‘We have a suite of services. There are perhaps some things that you need us to help fill in the gaps on, or just want us to bring a Nike point of view to.’,” Tanya says.
From boot fitting services to on-call massages, cryotherapy and infrared beds to nail art and jersey customisation stations, compression boots to coffee machines that’ll etch your sorely-missed pup’s face into latte foam— put a big swoosh next to almost any desire you could fathom. And beyond the Basecamp experiences, athletes were supplied with recovery packs replete with sleep tech devices to help curb the jetlag that most players had incurred, as well as group movement sessions – think run-walks, yoga sessions and intensive conditioning workouts – geared as much at fostering senses of community and mental wellbeing as at encouraging diverse forms of activity.
More than nice perks, though, these experiences are firsthand missives of one of Nike’s most recently launched initiatives: Nike Well Collective, a platform rooted in a holistic approach to wellness, spanning five key pillars – movement, mindfulness, nutrition, rest and connection. “It’s built on the idea that for her — and for him, but through the lens of her first — sport is defined differently; health is defined differently,” Heidi says, highlighting the physical rollout of the initiative in the form of Nike Well Collective stores — concept stores that serve as much as community forums as retail spaces. “What we’re hearing from our women consumers right now is how much they want holistic fitness,” Tanya concurs. “So yes, we’re going to continue delivering the most amazing performance product for the athletes, but we’re also going to cover off on the five pillars of holistic fitness and serve them in that respect, because that’s what they want. It’s always about serving our consumers and athletes where they are.”
And it’s by asking them directly that Nike figures that out. One of the brand’s most significant recent research initiatives is Athlete Think Tank, an annual forum that invites of a global cohort of leading women athletes to the table to offer their frank feedback around “what our opportunities are to continue to improve, or some things that we as a brand are doing that they perhaps want more of,” Tanya says. With its third iteration taking place a fortnight ago in Sydney, it was founded with “the objective to have a diverse group of women that cover all of Nike’s geographies — from Africa to Europe to China — covering all dimensions of sport, and making sure that everyone’s voices are heard. Each year, we set out and ask: What are the things that are really important to this group? And what are the things that we need to be aware of as a brand?”
Some of the most noteworthy developments to come out of Athlete Think Tank include Nike’s pioneering Leak Protection: Period short – a response to the finding that “when an athlete’s on pitch and they’re on their period, they’re worried about leaking almost nine minutes of the first half,” Tanya notes – as well as the Phantom Luna football boot, the very same worn by Lauren Hemp to score her goal against Australia in the semi-final.
Of course, Athlete’s Think Tank is but one of a plethora of research programmes that Nike has implemented. “We’ve really been investing in innovation for her, doubling our research and development,” Heidi says, proudly underscoring that, at Nike’s Portland sports research laboratory – a state-of-the-art suite of climate simulation chambers and NASA-worthy workout gear – “70% of the people going through the lab and doing the research are now women” — 90% of whom aren’t professional athletes — resulting in an exponential increase in the number of products specifically designed with a diversity of women’s bodies and needs in mind.
Take this year’s Nike-manufactured jerseys as a case in point. While they may look relatively ordinary to the layperson’s eye, each has been developed using Nike’s proprietary Stealth Evaporation technology, a unique double-knit construction that wicks sweat from the skin while preventing it from showing through. “Each jersey is designed pixel by pixel to build in the breathability where she needs it, the mobility where she needs it, and also the ability to hide sweat where she doesn’t want to be seen,” Heidi says. “I know they may look like a simple kit, but I’m so proud of the innovation that has been poured into it for her. It’s the most innovative jersey that we’ve ever built.”
“It’s really about understanding women and how they want to present themselves in the world,” Tania Flynn, Nike’s VP, Apparel Product Design, says. “With the football kits in particular, we really listened to the athletes in terms of how the shorts were fitting, how high the waistband comes up, the curvature of the short that allows them the right movement. It’s about fine-tuning the product in a way that allows them to perform their best, without realising they’re wearing anything.”
Of course, jersey design is about more than just practicality. As the well-attested surge in demand for replicas of Lionesses’ goalkeeper Mary Earps’ after her incredible penalty save well proves, they’re deeply emotional objects – sartorial artefacts that express an affiliation with a particular community, as well as tools for expressing personal style. In many respects, they’re the perfect token for the increasingly significant overlap between the worlds of fashion and sport, an intersection that Nike has played a key role in brokering. “As a creative at Nike, we’ve always seen what we do as fashion that happens to move with you,” Tania says, “there’s a notion of fashion and sport being one and the same, and both being such an inherent part of culture.”
And, in many respects, Nike’s forays into capital-F fashion have irrevocably shaped its culture, with the brand’s collaborations with some of the industry’s cultiest brands, playing a key role in catalysing the embrace of sportswear in even Paris’ haughtiest studios. Increasingly, they’ve focussed establishing longstanding creative partnerships with esteemed women designers around the world, like Martine Rose or Ambush’s Yoon Ahn, resulting in contemporary fashion-culture defining moments like Martine Rose’s instant grail-status interpretation of the iconic Nike Shox sneaker, or the Aidan Zamiri-directed, The Craft-inspired film for the most recent chapter of Ambush’s partnership with the brand.
While such partnerships allow Nike to access to the cultish communities that have formed around these brands, they also greatly amplify these predominantly independent brands’ reach, introducing their distinct design perspectives to Nike’s vast audience. “We always work with people that will take us somewhere new,” Tania says. “It’s not about doing something that we can do on our own, it’s about bringing those diverse areas together to create something so much more interesting,” a statement well attested by a forthcoming collaboration with London-based Chinese designer Feng Chen Wang.
Comprising an extremely modular jacket that took almost three years to make – one that, she says, the Nike design team remarked upon as one of the trickiest they’ve ever made – it’s a concrete testament to the fact that “Nike really cares a lot about creativity and allowing you to have the freedom to do whatever you think and want to do,” Fengchen says. For her, though, what made the experience so notable was the design team’s interest in ensuring that the end product felt globally relevant, while also speaking directly to the audience she’d worked so hard to cultivate. “I’m the first London-based Chinese designer they’ve worked with, and I think that shows their commitment to working with different talents at a global scale that represent a variety of different communities,” she says.
By now, it should be pretty evident that Nike’s commitment to championing women’s sport and sport culture is both multifaceted and robust, but a question that begs asking is, well, why? What’s the need for such a concerted, continued commitment when, by current metrics, women’s sport seems to be doing just fine? “Because it is our purpose, and it has been our purpose since day one,” is Heidi’s simple response, “but it’s also about inspiring the next generation to stay active and to be in sport, because we know that an active generation has better outcomes.” After all, despite what the rosy headlines around major sporting events imply, there’s still a good amount of work to be done on the ground. “Young women are dropping out of sport disproportionately earlier than their male counterparts,” Heidi continues, “so for us, it’s about having more females set up for success long-term.”
Indeed, it’s in large part thanks to the investment of brands like Nike that the profiles of a panoply of women’s sports – and their players – have risen to the extent that they have, and that the playing field is starting to level. Speaking of football in particular, “there’s been such a rise in the last 15 or so years, to the point that you now see stadiums being sold out,” Jill Scott notes, but the potential to inspire that we’ve seen emerge from the Woman’s World Cup lies within all of the sports that Nike has committed to supporting. “When I saw those Women’s World Cup viewership numbers, I just pictured how many young girls were watching who just might dream a little bigger and see themselves in a way they might not see themselves in sport,” Heidi says. “Athletes, and especially women athletes are on the leading edge of change, and when Nike teams with athletes and really listens to them, innovates for them and champions them, I think it’s going to inspire future generations like never before.”