After months of speculation about the future of Umbro, Nike have announced the sale of the Cheadle based brand to the Iconix Brand Group for an estimated £140 million.
Nike first announced its plans to sell Umbro this May in order to shift the company’s focus. Since then, Nike have signed many of Umbro’s past players, and have also taken over Umbro’s biggest kit sponsorships in the form of Manchester City and the English national team. Speaking about the sale, Mark Park, Nike’s CEO said “Umbro has a great heritage, but ultimately, as our category strategy has evolved, we believe Nike Football can serve the needs of footballers both on and off the pitch.”
Umbro will now be owned by the Iconix Brand Group, the owner of many fashion brands such as Ed Hardy and Mudd. How a fashion group manages a famous sports brand is yet to be seen, but Umbro fans will most certainly be hoping that this move doesn’t pull the brand back into a period of mediocrity, like the one it endured before it was bought by Nike in 2008. Neil Cole, the owner of the Iconix Brand Group said in a statement “Umbro is a true, authentic football brand with a global loyal consumer fan base and we are thrilled to be adding it to our portfolio of iconic brands.”
The deal is expected to be completed by the end of 2012, so we still may be seeing some high profile athletes, like Joe Hart, leave Umbro in the near future. The move away from Nike may also result in many of the people that work behind the scenes jumping ship, meaning that the quality of product that Umbro release may be affected. We have seen prototypes for the 2013 Umbro Geometra Pro floating around the web, meaning that Umbro will continue to produce its control boot that is extremely similar to the Nike CTR360 Maestri, but we have yet to hear about Umbro’s other boots.
Very much an interesting situation, and we’ll be eagerly awaiting any other news we hear, specifically about how Umbro’s products will be affected by this move. In the meantime, do you think Umbro has a bright future ahead? Leave your comments in the section below!
About Isaac Abraham
really sad to hear about this. nike is somewhat annoying me by doing this, making it seem as if they’re better. but all you have to do is glance over at the whole ozil case to see just how crazy they really are.
Indeed-marketing and dinero makes one do ‘crazy’ things.
I’d say it was all a very calculated and ultimately successful
attempt at getting at the English FA; they figured that they had the licence to the EPL to supply balls and ergo by acquiring Umbro they could make further inroads to supply balls at all levels of the league pyramid, manufacture the kit etc. (which we know England fans in their droves will purchase given their blind loyalty to a very ordinary side that consistently lets them down) and in the process asset-strip Umbro and sell them off. Even if they did make a loss, Nike is obtaining a very lucrative contract and giving an offer to good to refuse for the den of thieves that is the FA.
In saying that, I don’t expect much for the new England kit in truth; Admiral’s 1982 kit was a design icon and a kit outside of Umbro’s earlier efforts I appreciated; thus if the French one is any indication it will be an abject failure. Truth be told I’d be insulted were I English that a foreign entity is supplying my national team’s kit given the proud history of the game there etc.
completely agree. I was just thinking that nike bought umbro in the first place to get a kit and ball deal with the FA.