Kylian Mbappé’s move from Nike to On is unusual even by football’s increasingly aggressive sponsorship standards. After nearly two decades with Nike, the Real Madrid and France forward has become the centerpiece of On’s entry into football, with a deal reported to include cash and equity. He’ll also work directly with the Swiss company on the development and testing of future footwear and apparel. Stadio previously broke down Mbappé’s move from Nike to On and the role Roger Federer’s relationship with the company played in building On into a global sports brand.
On isn’t entering football with Mbappé alone. Thierry Henry, who left Nike for Reebok in 2006 during his playing career, is now On’s director of football. Barcelona midfielder Sydney Schertenleib, who first joined On as a training and lifestyle ambassador in 2025, is also helping test products for the women’s game. The structure makes Mbappé less like a conventional endorser and closer to a founding athlete for a new football division.
Boot-brand switches that reshaped the market
Harry Kane offers the clearest recent comparison. Kane moved from Nike to Skechers in 2023 just as Skechers launched its first performance football boot, the SKX_01. His agreement was announced as a lifetime global deal, and Skechers said Kane had tested the boots before their release. Three years later, its football range extends well beyond that original model. Kane gave a brand with almost no elite-football identity an immediate reference point.
Lionel Messi represents the opposite kind of switch, one whose impact became clearer with time. Messi wore Nike early in his Barcelona career before joining adidas in 2006, then signed a lifetime agreement with the German brand in 2017. Today, Messi’s relationship with adidas boots feels almost inseparable from his image. Lamine Yamal followed a similar path in 2024, moving from Nike to adidas and becoming the first player besides Messi to officially wear Messi’s Spark Gen10s signature line.
Aitana Bonmatí made her own high-profile jump in 2024. The then-reigning Ballon d’Or winner left Nike and joined adidas, which introduced her with personalized Predator boots ahead of the Paris Olympics and a campaign across Barcelona. Rather than positioning women’s football as a separate sponsorship category, adidas placed Bonmatí inside the same global football roster occupied by Messi, Yamal, Jude Bellingham and other headline athletes.
When the player becomes part of the product
Neymar’s move from Nike to Puma in 2020 was built around heritage. Puma put him in the King and connected the Brazilian directly to Pelé and Diego Maradona, two of the boot’s defining historical names. It gave Neymar a lineage as well as a product. Henry’s move to Reebok 14 years earlier worked differently, using his personality and cultural profile to make him one of the faces of the brand’s “I Am What I Am” campaign.
Ada Hegerberg’s Puma-to-Nike switch in 2020 showed how the same competition was accelerating in women’s football. Nike signed the inaugural women’s Ballon d’Or winner to a 10-year agreement while she was recovering from an ACL injury. The length of the commitment stood out. Since then, individual women’s boot deals have become substantially more prominent, with Catarina Macario’s Nike agreement another example of brands building larger commercial relationships around individual players.
Chloe Kelly’s move from Nike to adidas in 2026 pushed that competition further into product design and culture. Adidas signed the Arsenal and England forward to wear the F50 Sparkfusion, a boot developed around the performance requirements of women players, then introduced her through a campaign featuring British rapper Kano. The player, the product and the cultural positioning arrived together.
Sponsorship contracts have their own transfer windows
Rose Lavelle’s move shows how quickly these relationships can change. New Balance released a bespoke “Sweet Chaos” version of its Tekela v3 for Lavelle in March 2021. Two months later, Nike Football announced that the USWNT midfielder had joined its roster. A personalized boot can make a partnership look permanent from the outside, but sponsorship contracts have their own transfer windows.
That thread connects Messi, Neymar, Kane, Bonmatí, Hegerberg, Kelly, Lavelle and now Mbappé. The most revealing sponsorship switches aren’t necessarily the ones attached to the largest rumored checks. They’re the ones where a brand gives the player a different role: signature athlete, cultural figurehead, product collaborator or the face of an entirely new football business.
Mbappé’s On deal may be the clearest version yet. He isn’t joining an established football roster and competing for attention inside it. He’s helping create the roster, the products and the story from the beginning.
