Product Description

Unlacing the story of how sport became so full of money … Today, sport is big business, and Adidas and Puma are two of the biggest global brands, paying stars, clubs and competitions to wear their label, dominating everywhere from football pitches to magazine pages. This is the incredible story of how the rivalry between two brothers turned sport into an industry. Pitch Invasion also tells the tales of some of the greatest sportsmen of all time, revealing the Pele pact, Boris Becker’s unfortunate contribution to the demise of Puma, and just how Adidas helped Mohammed Ali win his biggest fight. Reaching right up to today’s world of multibillion-dollar corporations, looking at how the arrival of Nike affected the pitch and the significance of Adidas’s recent takeover of Reebok, this is an incredible sporting drama of competition, greed, bribery, passion and shoes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55836 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Metro
Destined to be one of the sports books of the year ... Like Dynasty rewritten by Le Carre.

About the Author
Barbara Smit is a business journalist based in Europe. She investigated the true story of Adidas and Puma over four years, interviewing those involved with the company, declassifying documents and unearthing exclusive stories. This book has been translated into six languages.

Customer Reviews

unputdownable
Not a sports fan by essence, I picked Pitch Invasion up after reading the jacket. I have not been able to put it down since.
Extremely well researched, well written, it reads like a good fiction book. An interesting description of the second world war period, it describes the ascent of money in the sports world in a very detailed way. A business and history book at the same time, I highly recommend it.

Wonderfull author
Barbara Smit truely is a wonderfull author her book is intresting, entertaining and i read it with the biggest pleasure.
Every sentence is tought of and you can really see the quality of her work.
Much thanks for hours of entertainment =]

how sports marketing was created
for sports lover wanting to have an historical journey through sports history and wanting to see the dark side of marketing