Nike FootballX….. The division to represent street football from the Swoosh. This is the image of street football that I personally grew up on. My teen years I spent imagining I was playing on the rooftops in Berlin or the downtown streets in the outskirts of Paris. I loved the brand. It’s one of the main catalysts for the forming of Sydney Street Crew if I’m being real with you. I spent day after day watching high quality advertisements and buying ALL the latest gear…. I could probably still name the exact technical name of each boot Nike Football X dropped all those years ago, that’s how invested I was.
But as soon as it popped up…. It was gone. For anyone getting into street football now, this may be the first time you are hearing about this Sub-brand of Nike, but I’m telling you they were absolutely everywhere…. Until they weren't. Nike was single handedly building a presence for street football years before the likes of Adidas or even Puma touched it. But this is where you can start to dissect what Nike Football X really was. It was pure marketing. I know I know, it seems really obvious, but to the demographic they were pitching and pushing this towards… i.e. younger Slavi…. It was like gold…. And it worked, I already told you that I watched absolutely everything the sub brand put out, I idolised it, bought all the gear, and could name all the products. Nike got to the niche first, they had first movers advantage and used this to sell products. Is that a problem? NO, not at all. They’re a sports brand that sells gear and clothing, what else can you expect?
Nike subsequently ended Nike Football X as the niche of footballers who don’t watch traditional football, or go to stadiums, or idolise high end footballers was beginning to be tapped into by the other brands. It was already a small market, keep in mind this was before TikTok and just before Instagram was truly mainstream and was taking over the world. Adidas, Puma, Red-Bull had all jumped in, held their own events, made their own ads, sold their own gear all to the same demographic, and just like that it was completely oversaturated.
Street football was abandoned by Nike, because they couldn’t justify the cost of marketing in this way, as new forms of marketing were becoming available and were cheaper. They held events until around 2018 and 2019, but that was the tail-end, and even then the tournaments weren’t labelled as Nike Football X, they were just showcases.
Maybe we can get Nike FootballX back one day, but Street Football as a whole needs to become a much larger market for that to even be a thought….. Little side note from me: At the time of writing this opinion piece, you can still find the very few remaining pieces of Nike Football X products on the likes of Goat, Ebay or Stock X, just search “Proximo X”....
