How adidas Built a Star-Studded Sports Community on Social (HBBIP #107)

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While I’m still buzzing about all the amazing content and speakers at CreatorIQ Connect, the time has come to leap back into the flow of your Regularly Scheduled Programming. That’s right: get ready for more of the graphs, brand spotlights, qualitative analysis, and jokes that you know and tolerate.

But who to profile as I get back into the swing of things? Which brand should I queue up next in this never-ending playlist we call HBBIP? 

Well, since HBBIP requires me to stay both active and nimble, and since I’m always striving to take a global approach, and since I’m keen on examining the inner workings of creator marketing for some of the world’s most iconic brands, I’ve got an idea. Also, that last sentence applied the rule of three, which is such a nice number, don’t you think? 

If only there were a brand that encapsulates all those points and more…

The Top Brand of All Time (of the Week): adidas

That’s right: it’s everybody’s favorite German sneaker brand (entschuldigung to Gabor and Brütting), the pride of Herzogenaurach—adidas!

Known for its high-wattage partnerships, wide-ranging offerings, sneakerhead bona-fides, and the iconic three-stripe decal, adidas is the very model of a modern major athletics company. As such, we’ve seen a correspondingly steady growth in the brand’s creator-based performance metrics over the past five years. It’s an upward trajectory as clean, geometric, and indelible as that three-stripe decal, just with, you know, five bars instead of three.

Take, for example, adidas’ global creator count. After all, it all starts with how many creators are posting about you.

adidas Creator Count (Global): 2020 - 2024

A nice progression, though things ultimately kick into higher gear via a more pronounced leap between 2023 and 2024.

adidas Post Count (Global): 2020 - 2024

As you might expect, it’s a similar story for post count, with that same gradual rise and steeper spike from 2023 to 2024. And for what it’s worth, adidas’ global creator and post counts for January to September 2025 are on track with meeting its 2024 totals. Whether or not the brand continues to grow is dependent on its Q4 activations, but of course, that tends to be a busy season. So this winter, look out for a fresh pair of Stan Smiths under the non-denominational holiday shrubbery.

As for engagements and impressions, it was a similar story:

adidas Engagements (Global): 2020 - 2024

A little steadier, but still the expected trajectory.

adidas Impressions (Global): 2020 - 2024

And here’s impressions, which provides a variation on a theme, while also offering a twist that’s a little more interesting from a data-gathering perspective: look at that 2024 spike!

We can dive a little deeper by investigating adidas’ impressions on a monthly basis from January 2020 all the way up to September 2025, and seeing where that momentum is coming from.

adidas Monthly Impressions: Jan 2020 - Sept 2025

Well, apparently those impressions are actually coming from 2025! And it’s true: after racking up 28.8B impressions in 2024, adidas is already up to 24.8B impressions from January to September 2025, well on pace to smash another annual record.

We’ll look into what sparked such dramatic spikes in June and August 2025, but first, let’s test a theory. As longtime readers know, whenever I see a surge in impressions—especially in a global market, where many platforms still have room for growth—my first thought trends toward TikTok. But upon assessing data for the last 12 months (October 2024 to September 2025), that doesn’t appear to be the case.

October 2024 to September 2025

Looking at a breakdown of adidas’ global impressions by channel from the last 12 months, it’s clear that Instagram is still Platform Number One. During that time period, adidas’ Instagram impressions were up 21% YoY, while its TikTok impressions were up 29%, meaning that while TikTok is technically outpacing Instagram, we’ve got a long way to go before there’s any hint of an inflection point.

All this begs the question that my readers might beg me to answer: why is adidas growing? And, of course, how is the brand leveraging creators to achieve this growth?

The answer is simple, at least to pretty much everybody outside of the United States: football. (To everyone inside the United States, I mean ‘soccer.’)

I took a look at adidas’ top global EMV-drivers from October 2024 to September 2025, and a certain pattern stood out. I don’t think you have to be all that adept at research and/or insights, or all that knowledgeable about football, to notice this pattern:

adidas’ top global EMV-drivers from October 2024 to September 2025

Among these top 20 EMV-drivers, we have:

• 14 accounts associated with football
  • Seven football content aggregator accounts
  • Five official club accounts
  • Two pro footballers
• Two sneaker-affiliated content aggregators
• One general sports content aggregator
• One Formula 1 team
• One seemingly confused ultramarathoner (did you take a wrong turn somewhere, Sergio?)
• One basketball-affiliated account

It hurts me as an American to say this, but football’s status as the world’s one true sport: confirmed.

I’ve written before about how the Premier League (and Formula 1) have reached new heights by embracing creator marketing, and adidas’ formula looks pretty similar, just on an even grander scale. So much of adidas’ momentum stems from the fact that it’s included in pretty much every piece of content related to certain clubs, but nothing proved more impactful than a longstanding partnership with Real Madrid. 

Not only was the iconic La Liga club adidas’ top EMV-driver by a wide margin, driving more than the combined totals of United, Arsenal, Juventus, and Liverpool, it was also responsible for that spike in engagements we saw in June. That was when Real Madrid kicked off its training camp, keeping football fans everywhere entertained with behind-the-scenes content featuring new manager Xabi Alonso and new star player Trent Alexander-Arnold as they adjusted to the club. (Let me tell you as someone who never heard of this man before today: Trent is very popular online.) In August, meanwhile, online buzz mainly flowed from the UEFA Champions League, which held its first two legs that month. The whole football world turned up decked out in new kits from adidas, including fits for Real Madrid modeled by Jude Bellingham. Though even that content wasn’t quite as head-turning as, uh, whatever is going on here.

By making itself inseparable from the world of football, and in turn inseparable from the world of sports at large, adidas has cemented its place as one of social media’s savviest brands. I didn’t even touch on some of adidas’ other engagement-driving partnerships across alternative sports leagues, including Anthony Edwards and James Harden of the NBA. Also, some guy named Messi posted about them a whole bunch. The list of adidas’ top EMV-drivers honestly reads like a who’s who of the biggest names in sports and fashion, which is a pretty good place to be as a sports apparel brand.

You might think that amid that mix of superstars, there weren’t a ton of small-scale creators. It’s true that adidas’ community skews toward powerhouses, but that’s not to say that micro-creators aren’t out there. Look no further than adidas’ commitment to building a 50k-strong team of micro-creators via NIL programs and collegiate athletics. 

Still, when you’re competing with the Messi’s of the world, it’s hard for those micro-creators to break through with topline impact. Nonetheless, there were two micro-creators among adidas’ top 50 EMV-drivers over the last 12 months:

• Brazilian marathoner and pizza enthusiast Miguel Morone
• Indonesian content aggregator and 2025 winner of the ‘Most Accurate Social Media Handle’ award, Die Hard adidas Fan

By sponsoring and supporting everyone from amateur athletes to the world’s premier pro teams, adidas is building a community to be reckoned with. Football may sit at the core of the brand’s operations, but it’s clear that adidas has made successful inroads across sports at large. And while only one lucky person in Indonesia can claim the Instagram handle, there are Die Hard adidas Fans everywhere on earth.

Oh, and by the way adidas, if you’re reading this and you want to make one more of those fans, I do need new running shoes…

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