How New Balance cracked soccer: From Kawhi's NBA deal to Saka and Weah's personalised boots

New York Times

08-02-2025

'We were sort of playing Scorsese, casting for a movie.'
That's how Andrew McGarty, New Balance's director of sports marketing for global football, described his company's early steps into the world of soccer endorsements.
Despite being 119 years old, the American sportswear company, founded in Boston, is a relative start-up in the endorsement world. It was only in 2019 that it took a major step into the NBA, partnering with Toronto Raptors' Kawhi Leonard shortly before they won the Championship. He's now a two-time NBA finals MVP and one of the most recognisable faces in the sport.
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New Balance added another global talent to its roster in January 2023, when Japanese MLB star Shohei Ohtani joined. After being named MLB MVP twice with the Los Angeles Angels, he joined the Los Angeles Dodgers on a 10-year contract worth $700million — the largest contract in sports history at the time — and has since won the World Series.
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Four-time Olympic gold medallist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, the sprinter and hurdler, is a New Balance athlete. While in 2023, the Los Angeles Sparks' Cameron Brink became the brand's first female basketball athlete while she was still playing in the college game.
Its first foray into football came with the Warrior brand, which supplied Liverpool's kit from 2012 to 2015, with New Balance taking over as kit manufacturer in 2015. These days, its biggest clubs are Portuguese side Porto and Ligue 1 outfit Lille
Arsenal and England winger Bukayo Saka joined its ranks in 2020. He became Arsenal's No 7 when he was just 18, helped England to a European Championship final at 19 and now, aged 23, is a bona fide star.
This is what McGarty is referring to when he talks about casting for a movie. When New Balance took those first steps into football — the soccer kind — it wanted the equivalent of a tight squad, to find those few athletes that fit the part. 'It was really important for us that fewer is better, less is more,' said McGarty. 'So we were very selectful, and our hit rate was really good.'
As well as Saka, the other footballers New Balance have signed up include Real Madrid's Endrick, USMNT forward Timothy Weah, Canada's Jordyn Huitema, USWNT forward Michelle Cooper, Colombia's James Rodriguez and, the latest, Jeremie Frimpong. An invincible with Bayer Leverkusen last season, the Netherlands international Frimpong was announced as a New Balance athlete last month.
'This is what I like about them: they're very selective,' he told The Athletic. 'New Balance have big stars.'
The endorsement market has for a long time been dominated by brands such as Nike, Adidas and Puma. And, as a new entrant, New Balance adopted an 'inch wide, mile deep' approach, as McGarty puts it. 'Being a challenger requires that we take a very different approach,' he said. 'We're very self-aware of who we are. We're not trying to be some of our top competitors. We were going up against competitors that have been in the sport for decades.
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'So we came in with a really clear mindset of not wanting to do what everyone else is doing: we wanted to be ourselves and focus on authenticity. We look for players to reflect what's next in football.'
This was their hope for Saka when they approached him in 2020, despite him still being Arsenal's No 77 at that point. He had scored in the FA Cup earlier that year, but would not score his first Premier League goal until that July. Saka had made just 33 appearances by the time the UK Covid lockdown hit in 2020, but New Balance was convinced by his character and that the soon-to-be England international would be the right fit. He now has 250 Arsenal appearances.
'We were canvassing a lot of different players that time and several of the other conversations that we had that didn't end up moving forward started out being very transactional — about the money,' said McGarty. 'I'll never forget with Bukayo, it was him, his parents sitting on either side and his brother Yomi standing behind him. They were early and we were on time, so it made us look late.
'The first thing he asked was, 'Will New Balance support me in launching a foundation someday and giving back to the people of my Yoruba tribe in Nigeria?' I knew immediately that this was the right kid for us. Whether he became the Bukayo Saka that he is today or not, there was always a really high floor because he was a good person who wanted to do the right things.'
It was not a given that Saka would agree to sign up. New Balance was a relative unknown in the world of football endorsements and convincing some players was difficult. 'It was super hard, man,' said McGarty.
To make their case, New Balance tailored their pitch to each athlete. 'It starts with the genuine truth that each athlete is uniquely different,' said Rob Sheldon, New Balance's director of football product. 'It's a failure of imagination not to recognise and respond to that.'
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That ethos is applied all the way down to the minute details of the boots they make for the players. 'We do foot scans to understand how their feet are constructed, where there is pressure, or where they've had prior injuries to understand their foot morphology, anatomics, and in-game personas,' said Sheldon. 'Thinking about how Saka plays, how he receives and releases the ball are behaviours that we can reflect and respond to.'
New Balance describes it as a 'co-authored' approach. Saka's habits on the pitch were 'central to the generation' of New Balance's Speed Control Stud — an extra stud on their new Furon v8 boot to help players stop. It was designed using Saka's in-game data, which showed how he accelerates towards a defender, stops to stand them up, then explodes past them with pace.
'We had a vision meeting with Bukayo in December,' McGarty said. 'We rented a space in west London, curated the entire thing and spent the entire day with him. It was basically a Bukayo Saka shrine. We get feedback from him and walk him through the different pillars of what's important to him and the partnership. We ask questions and listen. We were whiteboarding it, essentially.'
Saka has also been part of collaborations with Stone Island and Aime Leon Dore in the 2022 World Cup and 2024 European Championship respectively, which New Balance sees as a way to fuse the soccer and fashion worlds on a bigger stage. The sports brand also tries to reflect the personalities of the athletes in their marketing. One of their most memorable campaigns was a follow-up to a casual remark by Leonard after he joined the Raptors in 2018, describing himself as a 'fun guy'. A few months after he was announced as a New Balance athlete, up went a billboard: 'Fun Guy.'
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That thinking was then applied in north London in 2021, when a 19-year-old Saka had just completed his first year as Arsenal's No 7 and helped England reach the finals of the Euros. At the time, he was affectionately known as 'Lil Chilli', a nickname given to him by then-Arsenal captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who also gave him a chain bearing the nickname. New Balance commissioned a mural outside Highbury & Islington Station, near Emirates Stadium, tagged: 'Little Chilli brings heat.'
'We asked him to wear that chain on the shoot for that campaign,' McGarty said. 'It was very lighthearted and fun. We're not trying to be serious or have our athletes just hold up boots and say, 'Buy now'. That's so unoriginal. At the time, Bukayo was Little Chilli, now he's Big Chilli. We've evolved that, which he really owned. We had conversations with him in product and marketing, and he wanted us to move on from the Little Chilli thing.
'He's growing up before our eyes, and I have no doubt he can be and will be the best player in the world. I truly believe he'll win a Ballon d'Or someday.'
As well as a growing stable of individual endorsements, the brand is also continuing its work with teams. Although New Balance's deal with Liverpool ended in 2020, it still works with other clubs and is on the verge of announcing the addition of more Champions League clubs. 'If you look at the clubs that we work with, like FC Porto and Lille, they're relentless clubs from smaller cities who always punch above their weight,' said McGarty. 'That's how we see ourselves as a brand.'
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Of course, one common pitfall for sports brands is tinkering with the traditional, cherished aspects of a club's strip. It's something New Balance is conscious of.
'It's done in partnership with the clubs, often with fan groups as well to make sure you land that,' said Sheldon. 'It's our responsibility to explain and communicate why we've taken a certain direction. So if it is slightly off-centre to the binary interpretation of a home kit, we have to communicate the reason for it. It's about making sure that the fans understand it's not a frivolous decision.'
And then there's the latest deal: Frimpong. Speaking to The Athletic just before the deal was announced, Frimpong said that part of the attraction to him, as well as the selective roster, was that New Balance agreed to help him with a community project. The right-back launched Pathways last year, aimed at helping people aged 15 to 22 find careers if they are cut from a football academy.
'When you're young and it's time for scholarships and you don't get one, I saw how teams will just leave you,' he said. 'Football's everything, and not to get in and then be left behind is really sad. It was about, in this scenario, if you don't get a scholarship it doesn't mean you're not going to be a footballer or have a different career.
'For New Balance to tell me that they want to help was really nice. They've got resources like boots and clothing that are useful for the company, especially in Africa.'
Another project for soccer's endorsement start-up to work on. Having been in the sport for just a decade or so, McGarty said New Balance are 'just getting started'.
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(Top image: Illustration by Will Tullos/The Athletic; photos by Nigel French, Max Maiwald, Angel Martinez, all via Getty Images)