Why On’s move into football is bigger than Kylian Mbappé

There are quieter ways to enter a new sport.

On could have developed a football boot, signed a handful of emerging players, tested the market and slowly built credibility. Instead, the Swiss sportswear brand has announced its arrival in football by taking Kylian Mbappé from Nike and putting one of the biggest players in the world at the centre of the project.

Alongside him is Thierry Henry, appointed Director of Football after working behind the scenes with On since late 2025 on everything from its product approach to athlete relationships and the broader culture it wants to build around the game. Barcelona and Switzerland midfielder Sydney Schertenleib, who first joined On in 2025, will also play a role in developing and testing its football products.

For a company that did not exist until 2010 and remains best known for running footwear, it is an unusually ambitious opening statement.

But Mbappé is only the headline.

The more interesting story is what On is attempting to build underneath him.

On is not treating football like a sponsorship category

One line from On co-founder and co-CEO David Allemann stands out in the launch announcement:

“Football doesn’t need another sportswear brand to do more of the same.”

That’s effectively the challenge On has set itself.

Football doesn’t exactly suffer from a shortage of sportswear companies. Nike, adidas and PUMA have spent decades competing for players, clubs, national teams and consumers. New Balance, Skechers and others have also tried to carve out positions within the market.

For On to matter, simply putting its logo on another football boot will not be enough.

That explains why the structure behind the announcement is arguably as important as Mbappé himself.

Henry hasn’t joined as another retired-player ambassador. As Director of Football, On says his remit spans product, athlete relationships and the way the company approaches the culture and future of the sport. Mbappé will work directly with On’s product teams on footwear and apparel, while Schertenleib will contribute specifically to development for the women’s game.

That makes the proposition feel closer to building a football business than launching a football campaign.

It is also consistent with the wider way On has built its brand. The company has frequently positioned athletes close to product development rather than only using them at the end of the process as marketing faces. Mbappé’s deal reportedly includes both cash and equity, another indication that On wants the relationship to be deeper than a conventional endorsement.

The model inevitably invites comparisons with Roger Federer, who became an investor in On as the company expanded its presence in tennis. Football is a much larger and more crowded test of that approach.

 

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Product first, then scale

There’s also something interesting about what On has not launched yet.

Its first football boots will not be commercially available until 2027. For now, the company is effectively announcing the project before asking consumers to buy the finished product.

That gives the next year particular importance.

On is adapting its LightSpray technology for football, using a robotic process that creates a footwear upper from a continuous sprayed filament. The company says Mbappé and Schertenleib are involved in testing elements including fit and stud configurations as it develops its first boot.

That creates a useful narrative for the brand. Rather than arriving and saying it has solved football footwear on day one, On can invite people into the development process.

 

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Mbappé gives that process visibility. Henry gives it football credibility. Schertenleib gives it another perspective on product development and the women’s game.

The question is how quickly On moves from three recognisable faces to a genuine football ecosystem.

Its launch statement says it intends to work with a highly selective line-up of elite players, suggesting the next phase is unlikely to involve signing dozens of athletes simply to gain boot share.

That would probably be the smarter route.

On does not need to look like Nike or adidas immediately. In fact, trying to do so would risk removing some of the challenger-brand appeal that makes the move interesting in the first place.

The next signings should tell us what On wants football to mean for the brand.

Does it add another established global star? Does it prioritise emerging players who can grow alongside the company? Does it build a stronger women’s roster around Schertenleib? Does it deliberately choose athletes with relevance across fashion and culture as well as performance?

Those decisions will start creating the personality of On Football.

Mbappé gets people to look.

The roster built around him will tell people what they are looking at.

Boots are only the beginning

Footwear is also unlikely to be the endgame.

The Financial Times reports that On intends to launch its first football boots in 2027 before moving into kits and lifestyle products. That potentially takes On into the much larger world of club and national-team partnerships, football fashion and terrace-inspired apparel.

That is where things could become particularly interesting.

Football has increasingly become a fashion and lifestyle category as much as a performance one. Shirts are worn far beyond stadiums. Clubs collaborate with fashion houses. Players sit on the front rows of shows. Football footwear and terrace culture influence products that may never see a pitch.

On already operates comfortably in the space between performance and premium lifestyle design. Its own description of the football strategy talks about connecting the pitch, pavement and runway.

That makes football a logical next territory, but also a dangerous one.

The opportunity is enormous. So is the competition.

Nike, adidas and PUMA have decades of football credibility, established retail relationships, huge athlete portfolios, iconic products and some of the largest clubs and national teams in the world.

On cannot shortcut all of that by signing Mbappé.

Reuters noted exactly that tension in its analysis of the move: a superstar provides instant visibility, but building lasting credibility in football requires a much broader strategy and cultural relevance.

On has bought itself attention. Now it has to earn belonging.

The significance of Thierry Henry

That’s why Henry may eventually prove just as important to the project as Mbappé.

Signing Mbappé tells the market that On is serious. Appointing Henry suggests it understands that football requires more than marketing.

Henry has been involved since late 2025, before the division was publicly launched. On says he has contributed to both the product and strategic approach and will now have responsibility across athlete relationships and football culture.

That’s a smart distinction.

There are plenty of brands that can pay a famous former footballer to appear in a campaign. Giving one a meaningful role in shaping the category creates a different proposition.

Henry also brings something particularly useful for a challenger brand. His relevance moves between generations. He has credibility from an elite playing career, remains culturally recognisable, understands the modern media environment and can speak to the product from the perspective of someone who actually played at the highest level.

Put Henry alongside Mbappé and Schertenleib and On has effectively constructed three different perspectives on football: legacy, the current elite and the next generation.

The challenge will be converting that advisory credibility into products people genuinely choose over Mercurials, Predators and Futures.

That is a much harder battle.

With Mbappè moving On, what does it mean for Nike?

It is impossible to discuss the move without looking at the company Mbappé has left behind.

Mbappé had been associated with Nike since childhood and had become one of the defining faces of its modern football business. Reuters described his switch as another high-profile loss after Lamine Yamal moved to adidas and PUMA took over the Premier League match-ball contract.

The timing makes the departure particularly uncomfortable.

Nike is already in the middle of a wider turnaround under CEO Elliott Hill. Its shares had fallen around 35% during 2026 by the end of June, while the company has been dealing with weak sales in China, inventory pressures and increased competition from newer sportswear businesses.

Mbappé leaving does not create those problems.

But it adds to the narrative around them.

Nike is not suddenly short of football talent. Its World Cup campaign this summer featured a formidable roster including Cristiano Ronaldo, Erling Haaland, Vini Jr., Cole Palmer, Jamal Musiala, Virgil van Dijk and Alexia Putellas, among many others.

At the very top of the current men’s game, however, Mbappé was particularly valuable because of the combination he represented: performance, global fame, youth, commercial appeal and potentially another decade near the centre of football.

That’s difficult to replace directly.

The more useful question for Nike may therefore not be who replaces Mbappé?

It may be what does the next Nike Football generation look like?

Haaland and Vini Jr. are obvious pillars. Palmer and Musiala represent younger talent with significant upside. Nike also has an enormous women’s football presence and deep relationships across clubs and national teams.

The company does not need to panic-buy another superstar.

What it does need is to make Nike Football feel culturally and product-wise difficult to leave behind.

 

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Challenger brands can now recruit differently

Perhaps the most consequential part of the Mbappé switch is what it says about the sportswear market itself.

For decades, moving from Nike to a much smaller brand could have been viewed as sacrificing some of the global platform that came with the Swoosh.

That calculation is changing.

Athletes increasingly have their own enormous audiences. Social media reduces dependence on brands for distribution. Equity can make a partnership entrepreneurial rather than transactional. Smaller companies can offer athletes influence over product, marketing and the direction of an entire category in ways that may be difficult inside an established giant.

Mbappé is not joining On simply to become another athlete on a roster.

He is becoming the athlete around whom its football proposition is being built.

That’s a very different pitch.

It’s the difference between joining an existing machine and helping create one.

For On, that may be the most powerful recruitment tool it has as it considers who comes next.

What the next few years could look like

The interesting thing about On Football is that Friday’s announcement is really the starting gun.

The rest of 2026 can be used to build curiosity around the product and show Mbappé, Henry and Schertenleib inside the development process. Then come the first commercial products in 2027. From there, the likely growth areas become clearer: a carefully selected athlete roster, a stronger presence in the women’s game, football apparel and lifestyle, and eventually the possibility of team partnerships if On wants to compete at that level. The confirmed part of that roadmap is the 2027 product release; how aggressively On expands beyond it remains to be seen.

The temptation will be to move quickly.

But On’s greatest opportunity might come from doing the opposite.

If it can remain selective, build genuinely distinctive products and establish a recognisable point of view on football before chasing mass scale, it has a chance to occupy a space that does not simply imitate the established brands.

That’s the difficult part of entering a category as mature as football. It’s not enough to be new.

You have to give people a reason to believe new is better.

Behind Sport Takeaway

On could have entered football by signing a few players and releasing a boot.

Instead, it recruited Kylian Mbappé, put Thierry Henry in charge of shaping its football strategy and started developing products alongside athletes before those products are even available to consumers.

That does not guarantee success. Football is one of the toughest sportswear markets in the world, and Nike, adidas and PUMA have advantages that have been built over decades.

But On has done the most important thing a challenger can do at the beginning: it has made people pay attention.

Mbappé gives the brand immediate relevance. Henry gives the project credibility. LightSpray gives it a product story. Schertenleib gives it a foothold in building for the future of the women’s game.

The next stage will reveal whether this becomes a headline-grabbing signing or the beginning of a genuine new force in football.

And for Nike, Mbappé’s departure should probably matter for a different reason than simply losing one athlete.

It is evidence that challengers no longer want to nibble at the edges of the biggest sportswear categories.

They increasingly believe they can take a seat at the top table.

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