uhlsport GmbH and Spalding U.S. end their cooperation
United Sports Brands Europe takes over partnership
The sales cooperation between uhlsport GmbH and the US basketball brand Spalding is ending after 18 years. Since 2002 uhlsport GmbH has supported Spalding during the partnership with the US basketball league NBA and sold the official basketballs and basket equipment of the US brand in the most important European markets as well as manufacturing and selling basketball textiles with the Spalding brand on a licence basis.
“An era is coming to an end. We enjoyed an excellent partnership with Spalding for many years and would like to express our heartfelt thanks to Spalding for this. From 2021 onwards, our overall strategy at uhlsport GmbH will be to concentrate wholly on our uhlsport and Kempa brands and to expand them”, said Melanie Steinhilber, uhlsport GmbH managing director.
“We will continue to support our customers and partners as usual until 30 June 2021 and will organise a smooth hand-over to USBE after this time in a way that our customers and partners notice the changeover as little as possible”, added Dominik Solleder, uhlsport GmbH managing director.
The new partner of the US brand will be United Sports Brands (USBE) which has its headquarters in Belgium. USBE will take over textile sales of the Spalding brands from 1 July 2021. This will happen seamlessly and with the same items from the Spalding 2020 collection from uhlsport. The current 2020 basketball and basket equipment collection incl. NBA models will remain available via uhlsport GmbH as long as stocks last.
Patrick Cloots, Senior Vice President International at United Sports Brands: “We are looking forward to this new challenge and task and want to expand the US Spalding brand in Europe further. Our newly created Spalding team will dedicate themselves entirely to this task and will provide a great, comprehensive service for customers and partners with a complete collection.”
Dan Peterson, President, Asia/Pacific and Spalding International: “ We are excited about the opportunities for Spalding thru our new partnership with United Sports Brands Europe. We will work closely together to continue to strengthen and grow the game of basketball. I also want to thank uhlsport for our partnership over the last 18 years.”
