German sporting goods marketer adidas-Salomon AG took
its first major plunge on the Internet yesterday with the
decision to form a marketing and e-commerce
relationship with U. S. sports media company
SportsLine.com and its Sports.com European subsidiary.
According to the letter of intent for the three-year
deal, adidas will advertise its brand and products on
CBS SportsLine at www.cbs.sportsline.com and
www.sports.com. In addition, adidas products will also
sell on Sports.com, which operates local-language
online stores in the U.S., Germany, France, Italy,
and Spain.
“We don't look at e-commerce today as separate from
the Internet, but we want to look at this as a whole
[and] we want to exploit the opportunities,” saidPeter Csanadi, spokesman of adidas.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed,
although Csanadi said it was in the millions of
dollars.
The alliance will cover the U.S., Europe and Asia, a
new market that SportsLine and Sports.com soon intends
to enter. Plans call for cross promotions between the
two online companies and adidas, including
co-marketing through Web- and land-based events.
While little is known about the e-commerce aspects of
the deal, Csanadi said that contextual sales
will play an important part in the deal. So, for
instance, visitors to the Sports.com site will soon be
able to buy an adidas product displayed on a player's
visual by simply clicking on it.
In return, Sports.com will get offsite advertising and
sponsorship sales support from adidas media buys.
Based in Herzogenaurach, Germany, adidas first started
selling online to U. S. consumers in mid-1999.
Visitors to www.thestore.adidas.com can buy over 500
company products. European consumers, on the other
hand, were able to buy adidas products only March
onwards at www.adidas.com/thestore.
adidas last year recorded revenues of nearly $5
billion, most of it through bricks-and-mortar store
sales of footwear, apparel and hardware products under
the adidas, Salomon, Taylor Made, Mavic, and Bonfire
brands.
