Companies · audited annual reports
Sportswear group valuations, and three numbers people call “worth”
The sportswear groups are among the best-documented companies in sport: they are listed, audited and required to file. adidas reported group revenues of €23,683 million for 2024, and Nike reported $51.4 billion for its 2024 financial year. Neither figure is a valuation, and the difference between revenue, market capitalisation and net assets is where most reporting on this sector goes wrong.
- Largest audited figure on this page
- €23,683m
adidas group revenues for 2024, from the group’s own annual report. Nike reported $51.4 billion for its 2024 financial year in its Form 10-K. Both are revenue, not worth.
Three numbers, three documents, three questions
Revenue answers what the company sold in a period, and it sits in the income statement of an audited annual report. Market capitalisation answers what the market will pay for the shares right now, and it is the share count times the price, both published, neither inside the business. Net assets answer what the company owns minus what it owes, and they sit on the balance sheet of the same report.
Only the third is close to the everyday meaning of "worth", and it is almost never the number quoted, because it is usually the smallest of the three by a wide margin.
The practical rule this site follows is that the label travels with the figure. A number without "revenues for the 2024 financial year" attached is a free-floating large number, and free-floating large numbers are exactly how corporate figures end up in net-worth listicles.
| Company | Figure | What it is | Where it is filed |
|---|---|---|---|
| adidas AG | €23,683m | Group revenues, 2024 | Group annual report, income statement |
| Nike, Inc. | $51.4bn | Revenues, financial year 2024 | Form 10-K filed with the SEC |
Both companies also publish net assets and the auditor’s opinion in the same document, which is where a worth question is actually answered.
Why the sector is easy to document and easy to misquote
Easy to document, because a listed group files on a timetable, in a prescribed format, with an audit opinion attached and personal certification by officers where the regulator requires it. Anyone can open the document and find the line.
Easy to misquote, because the numbers are large and the labels are dull. A revenue figure reads impressively as a company’s "value"; a net-asset figure reads as an accounting detail. The incentive runs towards the wrong line, and nothing in the filing prevents somebody from taking it.
What the filings say about the athletes
Nothing individual. Endorsement contracts with athletes are commercially sensitive and are not itemised in a filing; what appears instead is an aggregate for marketing or "demand creation" spending. That aggregate is documented and it says nothing about any one contract.
This is the point at which the companies section and the earnings section meet. A sportswear group’s accounts document the group precisely and the athletes it pays not at all, which is why the earnings pages print prize money and purses rather than endorsement income.
Questions readers send
What were adidas and Nike revenues in 2024?
adidas reported group revenues of €23,683 million for 2024 in its annual report. Nike reported revenues of $51.4 billion for its 2024 financial year in its Form 10-K.
Is revenue the same as a company’s value?
No. Revenue is what the company sold in a period. Market capitalisation is what the market will pay for the shares today, and net assets (assets minus liabilities) is the closest equivalent of worth. All three come from different places.
Do the filings show what athletes are paid?
No. Endorsement contracts are not itemised. Filings carry an aggregate marketing or demand-creation figure, which documents the company and not any individual deal.
Where can these figures be checked?
adidas publishes its annual report on its own investor pages; Nike’s Form 10-K is in the regulator’s electronic filing system, indexed by company and form type.
Where these figures are published
- 01 adidas AG, Group revenues of €23,683 million for 2024, with the prior year for comparison Annual report 2024, income statement and business performance section
- 02 NIKE, Inc., filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Revenues of $51.4 billion for the 2024 financial year Annual report on Form 10-K for financial year 2024
Other valuations on file
All of them- adidas AG €23.7bn Group revenues for 2024, from the annual report
- Esports company valuations $231m The one esports purchase price a listed buyer disclosed
- McDonald’s $25.9bn Consolidated revenues for 2024, from the Form 10-K
- Pavlok $283,827 Publicly displayed total of the 2014 crowdfunding campaign
- Riot Games $231m What Tencent told shareholders it paid in 2011
- Shark Tank product companies $283,827 A platform-displayed crowdfunding total, the documented kind