Nike CEO John Donahoe on how Matildas star Sam Kerr is key for their future sport strategy
Every young girl taking up football is asking - what does Sam Kerr wear? For the global boss of the $255bn Nike empire, who’s in town for the FIFA women’s world cup, that is a big deal.
John Donahoe doesn’t hold back when talking about Matildas captain Sam Kerr and the impact she is having not just on women’s football but also on the dreams, ambitions and fashion style of girls and women around the world.
“Sam Kerr is the ‘Serena Williams’ of global football,” the Nike boss proclaims as he sits in the ultra-modern offices of the sportswear giant’s regional headquarters in Melbourne.
“And all of a sudden a young girl wants to play sport, and she wants to play football, so that activity when she goes to one of our stores or goes to a JD Sports, Foot Locker, or Rebel, she says ‘what does Sam Kerr wear?’
“And often it starts with a jersey. I want to wear her jersey, I want to wear it at home while watching the game, I want to wear it to school, I may want to wear it when I play in a junior league,” Nike’s global CEO told The Weekend Australian in an exclusive interview as he visited Australia to meet with his local staff, athletes and attend the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
When Donahoe was in the stands at the stunning Matildas victory over Canada this week he was probably cheering louder than most each time the ball ricocheted from a Matildas boot into the back of the net, with the president and CEO of the $255bn Nike empire heavily invested in the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Kerr, in line to play the knock-out game against Denmark on Monday night after shaking off an injury, wears Nike’s Mercurial Superfly boot as does fellow Matilda Ellie Carpenter while winger Hayley Raso - who scored two goals in the mesmerising victory against Canada - did so with the Nike Phantom GX DF boot.
Nike is also the apparel partner for the Matildas.
Nike is sponsoring 13 federations at the Cup and many of the sport’s most recognised players will be lacing up with Nike boots like Brazil’s powerhouse player Débora Cristiane de Oliveira, known simply as Debinha, Grace Geyoro from France and Crystal Dunn of the US.
And this is where the Nike partnership with elite athletes trickles down to consumers.
It’s helpful of course that the right thing to do is also good for business, and for Nike with annual global revenues of $78bn it has much to gain from being the sports footwear and apparel brand of choice for half the population who for a long time have been ignored or patronised by bootmakers and apparel companies.
“Ten years ago Sam Kerr was probably wearing a boot that was a male boot in a smaller size,” remarks Donahoe.
This is all changing now, and seems to be happening at break-neck speed during the World Cup tournament that has smashed viewing records and Matildas merchandise sales.
The ‘bad old days’ of women’s sport - which wasn’t that long ago - meant female athletes and weekend warriors alike were forced to pick out just smaller sizes of men’s boots and jerseys to compete or exercise in.
Indeed when the Australian women’s national soccer team, which would one day become the Matildas, played their first ever international game in the late 1970s they did so in borrowed men’s kit.
The idea of a soccer boot or shorts specially designed to fit the physiology of the female body was not only neglected, it wasn’t even a concept worth thinking about.
“The growth of women’s sport and therefore the growth of our women’s business is one of the biggest opportunities that we see,” says Donahoe.
“We first say, how can we grow the market, how can we expand the market? And then how can we expand participation within that market. And that’s really what the womens opportunity represents, womens’ sport all over the world is in a phase of almost unprecedented growth.
“We’re seeing that here with the World Cup, which is one of the best illustrations of it around and that’s then has been inspiring young girls all over the world, they see Sam Kerr, they see their people who are becoming their heroes, or athletes becoming their heroes. And so our focus is we absolutely want to be the champion for women’s sport.
“We want to grow participation, both at the elite level, but also at the everyday level.”
Donahoe, who was appointed the president and CEO of the vast Nike empire in 2020 and is also the chairman of payments platform PayPal, has set himself and Nike some pretty big goals when it comes to the washup from the World Cup.
“We want more and more of the best global football players from the World Cup to become household names in their own country. Sam Kerr has that here, and we’d like have three, four or five other Matildas to become household names and then in other countries have the ‘Sam Kerr’ of that country become a household name.”
Donahoe and Nike has plenty of form when it comes to transforming female athletes into global brands and style icons, having worked with tennis champion Serena Williams for 20 years and for Donahoe the similarities between what Serena Williams became and the trajectory of Sam Kerr are eerily similar.
Nike’s work with Williams saw her sport a famous black Nike catsuit at the 2018 French Open in her post-pregnancy return to the game that she claimed at the time made her feel like a “warrior princess”.
“Serena was an iconic global athlete and she loves style, and what she wore on the court and off the court we partnered with her. And with the growth of sports like global football or basketball there are more and more equivalents of Serena.
“Sam Kerr is the ‘Serena’ of global football, Megan Rapinoe or Alex Morgan in the US are the ‘Serena’ of global football in the US,” says Donahoe.
Donahoe is intensely interested in what women want. And as the boss of Nike, the world’s largest athletic apparel company, he is in a better position than most to know exactly that as women shop for boots, jogging shorts or leggings.
For the Nike boss it begins with a basic Nike philosophy, “listen to the athlete”.
“We have got the largest roster of athletes or teams than anyone in the world, and we deeply listen to them about what they care about, what they want.
“With women it is a little bit different to men in two ways. Men want performance and comfort. Women want performance, comfort and style - and they want all three.
“And the second way women are different is they have a more holistic understanding of what sport represents in their lives. For men it is, ‘I do sport and I live my life’. For women, it’s a much more integrative sense of activity and movement, nutrition and mindfulness and rest and community plays a much bigger role.”
Donahoe says an example of athletes driving innovation in footwear and apparel is Nike’s women’s Phantom Luna football boot that many players will be wearing at the World Cup and has already shot a number of goals.
“This is a boot that has been designed completely around female footballers, and so it has a fit and a flexibility and traction pattern that is absolutely geared to the best women footballers in the world and several goals have been scored off that already,” explains Donahoe.
“But that (Phantom Luna boot) was several years in the making. I was watching it go through the Nike sports research lab, and then the kits women players are wearing … we’ve used digital design tools to customise the flexibility, fit and breathability of female athletes. So the jersey is different than a male jersey, that jersey was completely designed for women scientifically - and then we put style around it, which they care greatly about - so we just use those insights from athletes and we drive product innovation that’s authentic to “her”, the elite athlete, and also women consumers”.
Much like Serena Williams, these new global female athletes are becoming style icons for what they wear off the pitch as much as what they wear when playing on the ground.
“The other thing that is true about women consumers is they pay attention to what these athletes are wearing off the pitch almost as much as they do it on the pitch. And so again, this is where the style comes in.
“So these athletes are becoming style leaders. So what she’s wearing, what makeup she’s using, what music she listens to, and so we also spend a fair amount of time understanding and promoting what they’re doing off the pitch.
“They become known as great athletes, but also approachable human beings. And that’s more focused on with the men, and the female consumer cares in that more holistic way.”
In Australia Donahoe knows he is on fertile ground, describing it as probably the “most sports crazed nation in the world” and as women grow their participation in sport the company’s sales of women’s footwear and apparel is growing at a double-digit pace.
As he looks across the huge Nike empire Donahoe sees Australia as a crucial hub for the South Pacific and is fleshing out plans for a retail strategy that links up from the Women’s World Cup to the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.
“What we are talking about is can we make it the decade of women’s sports. Can we make this the decade where the great early progress we are making today builds on itself and builds on itself where women’s sports is the story of the next 10 years.”
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