American sports kit manufacturing giants, Nike are already in plans for an extended deal with Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), even as the company’s most creative jersey at the 2018 World Cup will be showcased on Friday by the Super Eagles against Iceland.
The Eagles will wear their hugely popular home kit for their next two World Cup Group D matches against Iceland and Argentina.
Nigeria have been designated as the ‘home’ team for the game versus Iceland on Friday in Volgograd as well as against Argentina on June 26 in Saint Petersburg.
They first wore the very creative ‘home’ kits when they lost 2-0 to Serbia in a friendly in London in March.
The team played with the less popular all-green ‘away’ strips when they lost 2-0 to Croatia in their opening group game in Kaliningrad last weekend.
Down the line, Nike will at the latest in August agree a new sponsorship deal with the Super Eagles on the back of the roaring marketing success the country’s World Cup jerseys have achieved.
An official said a new deal will most likely include Nike paying a lump sum to Nigeria as retainer fee, just as was the case when the country’s national teams sported adidas kits.
The official added: “We’re very much encouraged by how everything has come together between us and Nigeria and we want to do more business.
“Sales of the World Cup kits have broken all records and projections. I believe that at the most by August, we will have a new contract in place.
“At the moment, the country gets royalty fees from the sale of each shirt, but we will most likely consider paying a retainer in the new contract.”
