- Harry Kane signed with Skechers after unproductive extension talks with Nike
- The Skechers deal includes a retainer and royalty component
- Kane’s profile will be enhanced by his transfer to Bayern Munich
Most fair-minded Spurs fans knew it was time for Harry Kane to leave Tottenham Hotspur for Bayern Munich before the start of this season.
It was less clear — at least for anyone that cared to think about it — why England’s captain would swap a boot deal with market-leader Nike to go it alone as brand hero for a new boot made by Skechers, the self-proclaimed ‘comfort technology company’.
Some commentators view Kane as a left-field choice to lead the Skechers brand into battle in the noisy, disruptive boot market dominated by Nike and Adidas. Equally puzzling is why Kane would give up a chunky deal with Nike to work on a product start-up, albeit with the third-biggest shoe company in the world.
Brand hero
The boot deal with California-based Skechers, announced last month, made Kane the brand hero for Skechers’ first ever line of football boot – the SKX_O1 – a blue, slipper-like boot befitting the brand’s ‘comfort’ positioning.
SportBusiness understands the ‘lifetime’ deal is based on an annual retainer plus royalty component, with Kane taking a smaller base fee for a greater long-term stake in sales.
To understand why Kane was available for such an offer in the first place, however, we need to backtrack to before the last World Cup.
The Nike deal was originally set to renew after the tournament in Qatar, but as The Daily Mail reported in September 2022, talks of an extension stalled following the “impressive and eye-catching” arrival of Erling Haaland on the Premier League scene at Manchester City.
Against this competitive background, SportBusiness understands that Kane and his family representatives – brother Charlie and father Patrick – believed the then-Spurs player was undervalued by Nike, a company known for its exacting analysis of costs and benefits.
According to one industry source, Kane’s team is thought to have demanded more than £2m (€2.3m/$2.5m) per year, almost double the previous deal with Nike, only to be told that Kane’s name on the boots didn’t shift units in the same way as other football stars. In short, the young people who make up the main boot-buying demographic are not so excited by Kane, preferring the cheek of Jack Grealish or the force of nature that is Haaland.
Having “overplayed his hand,” as the source said, Kane “got nothing”. Meanwhile, in March, Haaland was announced as a new Nike ambassador in a 10-year deal reportedly worth £20m per season.
Skechers was waiting in the wings.
Skechers and football
The US footwear company already has an ambassador relationship in football with Jamie Redknapp, the former Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur midfielder-turned-pundit and presenter.
He became the easy-going face of Skechers’ above-the-line campaigns for training shoes throughout 2020 and continues as a digital pitchman and as the face of the brand in the shopfronts of Skechers retail outlets in the UK.
Steve Martin, the global chief executive of M&C Saatchi, was an admiring observer of the Redknapp-Skechers relationship having brought the talent management agency Merlin Elite – which represented Redknapp – into the wider M&C Saatchi agency fold in 2013.
Coincidentally, Martin launched his career as a senior global PR manager at Adidas when Redknapp was also one of a number of players to endorse the Adidas Predator boot.
The marketing and communications chief said he had been impressed with Skechers during his interactions with the brand: “When you tap in behind it, you see the genuine scale of it and how big it is in the US and how big it is internationally, in Asia as well.”
Brand rationale
While Redknapp was operating within Skechers’ existing training shoe portfolio, the football boot promoted by Kane represents a new departure. But Martin can see the brand rationale as well as the route taken to develop the new product.
“Quite a few guys who have been in the athletic marketing trade and shoe marketing trade from Adidas are actually part of Skechers now,” he said.
This group of boot specialists, he added, is a small world. “It’s a clearly defined skillset of how you develop really world-class product. In the world of football, the product is exceptionally good because of the R&D [research and development] that goes into design, development and materials.
“From an Adidas and Nike point of view, the boot business is a massive leader for them, so you can see that a lot of new entrants are trying to break that market share down because even a small slice could be a success because of its global nature.
“That said, it still has to be based on really good product, good design, great marketing and obviously an alignment with talent. With Skechers, there’s definitely momentum to evolve that brand – and that’s what you’re seeing with Harry Kane now.”
Kane the marketer
Is Kane, like Redknapp, a good brand fit? Headquartered in Manhattan Beach, California, the brand’s origins are far from those of the Chingford-born footballer, an unlikely superstar in many respects, but ‘one of our own’ at Tottenham Hotspur before moving to the ‘Hollywood’ club Bayern Munich.
Kane’s previous marketing efforts, it should be noted, have not always worked flawlessly. When he was encouraged to recite lines in a digital advertisement for ‘Harry’s shaving products’ — apparently balanced on the crossbar of a goal from his local park, intoning “I am not afraid to be myself” — the performance, or at least the script, was widely ridiculed on social media.
When going upmarket as an ambassador for Hugo Boss in 2018, the player’s essential Harry-ness may not always have translated into images of aspiration either. That said, Kane was still endorsing Boss Parfums and skinny suits in 2021.
For the player, though, the deal narrative with Skechers has been presented as something else altogether – a kind of self-realisation and striking out into new territory, with the player’s “I’m Just Kane” moment coming in the Skecher’s press release announcing the partnership. “Own it, own who you are. Own what you want to achieve,” he was quoted as saying. “And that’s what I feel like I’ve done throughout my whole career.”
Despite the hard sell on launch, the shoe brand should actually align well with Kane’s current conservative portfolio of global sponsors, which includes Fortnite, Topps, Cadbury, Amazon and Toca Social – the latter being an ‘interactive football and dining experience’ at The O2 venue in London.
World-class talent
Marketers may not get as excited by Kane as they would by David Beckham or Paul Pogba in their prime, but they understand the value of his talent and credibility as a record-breaking goal scorer for club and country.
Nick Palmer-Brown, head of sport and entertainment for global PR and marketing agency FleishmanHillard across EMEA, has worked on sponsorship and communications strategy for top tier brand partnerships, including Adidas and Uefa.
The Kane-Skechers deal, he has concluded, makes sense: “Harry Kane is a famous and safe bet for a famously safe shoe brand. But history tells us that if you want to score in the football landscape and boot market, brands must think and behave disruptively if they want a market share, especially when you’re going up against established, culturally savvy powerhouses such as Nike, Adidas and Puma.
“For any brand partnership entering a new sport, to be successful you absolutely must have credibility. So, if you look at the Kane deal at face value, having one of the greatest goal scorers of all time, with natural synergies to your core brand values, is a sensible move from Skechers.
“You might question how much Kane’s profile lands culturally when you’re aiming to impact an entrenched football fan market. But Skechers have at least given themselves time to try – and with the world’s eyeballs on Kane’s first ever transfer, as he continues the prolific goal scoring he’s famous for – it’s looking like good a decision so far.”
Similarly, M&C Saatchi’s Martin argues that the Kane brand should not be underestimated and that good things are likely to emerge for both parties. “Whatever team you support, Kane is liked in the UK because of what he does at a national team level and then, in Germany, he’s very respected. Joining a brilliantly run club that’s always in the Champions League with a huge fan base, is a great opportunity for him.
“On top of that, he’s a good guy. He’s straight-talking, honest and a family guy, which is quite refreshing and a differentiator. In the crazy world of football, having a good, straight-up guy who performs on the pitch and is not completely distractable in what he does off it – like a lot of them are – is quite refreshing.
“He’s also got a very strong social media following that will probably be built on over time, because it doesn’t have to be all about global ad’ campaigns. It’s about the impact of social, the impact of PR, and that’s where the association needs to be driven.”
Kane currently boasts more than 16 million followers on Instagram and 2.7 million followers on TikTok.
Martin predicted that the Bayern player is likely be the “first cab off the rank” in support of the Skechers boot brand, with more brand ambassadors to come. He concluded that it was also sensible for the US firm to give the player a share of the upside in the deal.
“He’s got a genuine business interest in it, so it’s not just good for Skechers, it’s a partnership that can continue to evolve for both of them,” he said.