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Germany’s Umbrella Software Development GmbH has a far more hardware-centric approach. The company’s founder, Daniel Held, wanted to bring cognitive training up to the level seen for physical conditioning. The result was the SoccerBot360, a circle of screens surrounding a player on a pitch about half the size of a basketball court. With the screens running projections of match scenarios, players run through multiple repetitions of simulations while coaches and analysts monitor cognitive and technical metrics. In 2016, RB Leipzig became the first to install SoccerBot, at its youth academy. Several other European teams use the devices, either in their own training grounds or at shared facilities, and Umbrella has about two dozen more under construction. “We worked closely with coaches to get it to the level where it can accelerate cognitive functions and skills,” says the company’s marketing manager, Kevin Stelzer. Published research shows positive effects after players train with the SoccerBot on certain skills, mainly reaction time and anticipation. But the setup isn’t cheap — it starts around €100,000 — so the company is building units that teams can rent by the hour to make the system more widely available. Does any of this actually make players better? Woohyuk Chang, a research assistant at England’s Norwich City, acknowledges the uncertainty even though the club dropped £750,000 ($1 million) on a new facility that includes the SoccerBot system. “There’s a lack of scientific evidence around this,” he says, so the club “wanted to research the tech to better understand what it’s capable of.” Chang compares the SoccerBot to a gym. “When we do physical training, we don’t ask about the dumbbell. We’re asking what types of exercises we do with the dumbbell,” he says. “There’s a specific purpose — a football-driven reason why we need that muscle.” Madsen, now director of data science for the Saudi Pro League, where he’s building its data infrastructure, declines to give assessments of any particular technologies. But he says teams shouldn’t necessarily start with pricey systems. He suggests on-field drills that draw on principles from cognitive neuroscience — as he did for FC Copenhagen. “Our first step was to create exercises where we put players into situations where they can only succeed by intentionally scanning,” Madsen says. “If we’re just teaching them to look left and right before receiving the ball, we’re not teaching them what is important to look at. We’re just teaching them to turn their heads.” The World Cup always gives small countries the chance to punch through to the final rounds and challenge perennial contenders such as Brazil, Germany, Argentina and France (see Cameroon in 1990 and Morocco in 2022). When the tournament kicks off, Norway’s team will feature Erling Haaland and Sander Berge, players known for game intelligence and scanning. Those seeking confirmation of the importance of brain training will be watching whether their high cognitive skills can propel them to the elimination rounds. For clubs that have invested, the technologies are a gamble that baby steps forward in developing players’ information processing, combined with training designed to leverage it on the pitch, will yield wins. Whether that proves true will determine if strengthening the brain starts to be considered as important as developing the legs. The impact of that shift will become apparent as new tools like eye-tracking glasses, now offered by several companies, and an EEG that works while in motion, recently developed at Stanford University, come into wider use. Madsen says he’s convinced that ever more teams will investigate the idea of teaching game intelligence, though he’s still uncertain whether it’s really a learnable skill. “In five years, I can answer the question,” he says. “I’ll have enough data. It might be that no one thinks about this anymore. Or maybe every club in the top 50 in the world will have a cognitive neuroscientist.”

“He was always very good at anticipating and seeing passes others couldn’t see,” Fleckner says, “but after the training his speed of intent — how quickly he decides what to do — improved markedly.” What makes Madsen’s framework different from other cognitive approaches is his emphasis on specificity. The three stages of perception he identifies — preprocessing, decision-making and feedback — are trained on-field, not just with computer games or VR headsets. “That’s what Xavi and these players with high game intelligence are doing,” Madsen says, referring to FC Barcelona’s celebrated midfielder ​​Xavi Hernández. “When they receive the ball, they already know where to pass it.” Most people on the field, by contrast, start looking around only after they get the ball. “Your opponent is analyzing the game at the same time,” he says, “so if you make your decision one second before, he’s already behind.” Not everyone is convinced that general cognitive abilities translate to football success. In a 2024 article in Sports Medicine, researcher Job Fransen said he sees no evidence that cognitive training really improves performance in sports. “The claims made for the beneficial effects of these training methods are currently unsubstantiated,” he wrote. Geir Jordet, a professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences who was among the first to study cognitive processes in football, says simply training on a simulator, without having to run or turn or kick the ball, doesn’t connect the dots in ways players must do in real game situations. “There’s a very fluid stream of information going from perception into action,” Jordet says. “It is hard to convert these things that happen off the pitch.” Fleckner counters that even marginal improvements such as a better scan rate or pattern recognition will matter in elite competition. “If you’re 2% better in the Superliga, that could be the difference between first and second place,” he says. Eric Castien insists you don’t need a lot of expensive equipment to benefit from the recent findings. His Amsterdam company, BrainsFirst, focuses on measuring cognitive bandwidth in specific domains — working memory, attention control, mental agility and so forth — rather than any kind of training. BrainsFirst has signed up more than three dozen clients, including PSV Eindhoven in the Dutch league, Real Sociedad in Spain, Germany’s Eintracht Frankfurt and the Belgian national federation. Watching a Real Madrid practice in 2010, Castien was struck that the players exploited opportunities he hadn’t spotted. “I was thinking, ‘Why are football players seen as not so smart, but people think that I am a smart guy because I went to university?’” he says. On the field “they are geniuses, and I’m the stupid one. So there’s something wrong with that assumption, or we don’t understand intelligence enough.” He came home and asked neuroscientists from the University of Amsterdam to develop tests that might measure the particular brilliance of, say, a Cristiano Ronaldo, Real’s megastar at the time. The company now offers computer-based tests to glean insights into players’ executive function. It charges clubs €25,000 ($29,000) per season for an unlimited number of exams. Some administer more than 1,000 tests a year on players and prospects, Castien says. BrainsFirst has evaluated more than 25,000 players, following them over the years to see how their scores and on-field performance develop. The results, he says, are mixed because a superbly trained athlete’s physical prowess, tactical training or technical skill can make up for a lower score in scanning, and various positions don’t all require the same levels or variants of game intelligence. “You have different brain configurations for attackers, mids, defenders — even for different types of attackers,” Castien says. “So you can’t say you need to score above 60 on information processing, because it depends on your position and the other weapons you have.”

Researchers can’t cut open a player’s brain to see whether training alters its structure, as neuroscientists do with lab animals, or place electrodes on a player’s skull while they’re running at full speed. “So we looked at cognitive capacities linked to high performance,” Madsen says. He came up with 14 brain functions, such as working memory, pattern recognition and scanning ability, that other researchers have found to be common in elite players. The notion aligns with recent research such as a 2017 study Swedish neuroscientist Torbjörn Vestberg published in the science journal PLOS One. Vestberg discovered that elite youth players significantly outperformed nonplayers. More strikingly, better performance on the test correlated positively with scoring more goals, even after accounting for age and other factors. Those conclusions have kicked off a scramble among European pro teams to test and improve their players’ cognitive abilities. In Germany’s Bundesliga, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig have erected simulators — a patch of fake grass ringed by screens where game situations are projected. Dutch club AZ Alkmaar has earned plaudits for its testing of academy players using VR and computer games. And in the Danish Superliga, FC Copenhagen has dabbled in the methods of its onetime youth player Madsen. It’s the 99th minute of an FC Copenhagen home match against Randers FC, the Danish Superliga’s perennial underdog, and it’s not going well for the hosts. The reigning champions have flubbed headers, blown corners and made lousy passes. Moi Elyounoussi, the star Norwegian striker, missed a sliding left-footer in the 11th minute, and Robert Silva botched a clear shot in the 29th. Just before the final whistle, Randers gets a penalty kick on a questionable call in front of the goal and emerges with a 2-1 victory. The missed opportunities aren’t what spoiled the evening for the 26,676 spectators at Copenhagen’s Parken Stadium. It was the missed opportunities to create opportunities. Again and again and again, the home team could be seen standing around, watching the player with the ball. “We failed at the most basic things in football,” head coach Jacob Neestrup said after the match. Fixing that is a top priority for FC Copenhagen’s cognitive development chief, Jesper Fleckner. The morning after the Randers fiasco, Fleckner is training early teens in the club’s development pipeline on VR headsets in a basement gym. A whiteboard in the coaches’ meeting room features a photo of Jonah Hill in Moneyball. Outside, players are running five-on-five drills designed to train their on-field awareness. Fleckner has integrated cognitive assessment throughout the academy’s process. He measures the scan rates — looking away from the ball to check potential player movements and openings — of prospects trying out for the team. And he assesses their creativity and cognitive flexibility using neuropsychological tests to determine pattern recognition skills and memory capacity. “Notice how you can see more just by moving your feet,” he tells one kid. “If you just open up your body, it’s like a half-scan.” Machine learning analysis revealed that total scan rate in VR was the most important feature distinguishing elite from lower-level players, and the team says its younger players now show scanning rates similar to those of pros in the English Premier League (though countless other factors, of course, will also determine whether they reach that level). The drills are mostly used with young players, whose brains are more malleable (the same reason, for instance, that schoolchildren have an easier time learning a foreign language than their parents do). But some members of Copenhagen’s top squad participate as well. Jonathan Moalem, a 19-year-old midfielder, initially saw his performance drop as he struggled to integrate the new information. A few months later, though, his awareness began to increase, and he could use his peripheral vision more effectively.

*Football Clubs Try Training a Body Part They’ve Ignored: The Brain* As the World Cup begins, more coaches say “game intelligence” can be taught. By Paul Tullis, Bloomberg June 10, 2026 at 12:01 PM GMT+8 Ever since the first humans started kicking around animal bladders for fun, the importance of simultaneously keeping track of both that object and your opponent has been clear. Over the millennia, individuals appointed to tell players out on the meadow what to do (they came to be known as “coaches”) began to focus on that skill. Eventually these coaches developed a variety of names for what’s effectively the same idea: In American football it’s called field vision or riding the hash; basketball players speak of court vision; hockey players refer to ice vision; and in cricket it’s known as finding the gaps. In the world’s most popular sport, it’s called game intelligence. A key element of this is scanning — looking away from the ball for teammates, opponents and empty spaces on the football pitch to identify weaknesses. But that has traditionally been viewed as an intangible skill players are born with, something that can’t be taught. To know where the ball is going next is what separates the merely physically gifted from the true superstars, such as Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappé or Bayern Munich’s Harry Kane. An entire squad of players at that cognitive level would be less prone to tactical errors. And very difficult to beat. In the past several years a few football mavericks began to think that if game intelligence can be defined, perhaps it could be measured. And if it can be measured, maybe it can be taught. Their efforts have been accelerated by technological advances including eye-movement pattern analysis with superhigh-speed video and monitors that can peer inside a player’s brain while they’re in motion. “For decades we’ve talked about game intelligence, but we haven’t known what we mean when we say it,” says one such maverick, Jes Buster Madsen, a football fan and promising player who switched to neuroscience once it became clear his brain could move faster than his feet. Now companies are tapping into research by Madsen and others to develop technology they can sell to teams in dynamic, fluid sports such as football and hockey. A Dutch company working with researchers from the University of Amsterdam created tests to assess a player’s potential for high game intelligence, and a German software maker has built a 360-degree football simulator. A Norwegian company called Be Your Best, which Madsen advised, has sold virtual-reality machines to almost 20 clubs including the Seattle Sounders and Union Berlin. It says players using its equipment show an average increase of 28% in their scan rate after nine weeks of training, and a 44% gain in awareness (acting on information gleaned from scans). Seeing numbers like that, dozens of pro clubs; national teams headed to the World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the US this summer; and even some youth leagues have invested in technologies to leverage the one part of the body they’ve historically done little to train: the brain. They’re trying to boost the cognitive capacity of players with VR drills, neuropsychological tests and more. Some teams have poured millions of dollars into infrastructure. Others have formed partnerships with tech companies peddling cognitive training systems. And a growing body of neuroscience research suggests they might not be wasting their money. When the Covid-19 pandemic kept Madsen away from his lab at the University of Copenhagen in the spring and summer of 2020, he began looking for a way to stay busy until he could get back to his fMRI brain scanner. As a former player for FC Copenhagen’s youth team, he began perusing research on cognition and football and discovered it was a very short reading list. “The whole field had as many papers as are published on Alzheimer’s every week,” he says. “Basically nothing on game intelligence — decision-making — in football.”

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Remuzzi, the Nike spokesperson, said succession planning happens on an ongoing basis. “We have a deep bench of talent, and we will continue to develop our talent pipeline to meet the needs of the future,” she said. For all the turmoil, Nike remains the world’s largest sportswear company — a position that, while increasingly challenged, is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. During Founder’s Week, Knight acknowledged the company was at an inflection point, but reminded staff that Nike had endured difficult times before. “Take it from the old guy who’s seen every up and every down: We’re going to be fine,” he told employees in a memo. “Hard moments have a way of clarifying things.” _— With assistance from Brad Skillman and Redd Brown_ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-06-10/nike-stock-sinks-over-40-as-ceo-hill-s-turnaround-efforts-stall?srnd=homepage-asia

Almost a decade earlier, Nike built an entire marketing campaign around Eliud Kipchoge’s attempt to break the mark with its “Breaking2” project. He ended up missing the mark by 26 seconds. (Kipchoge eventually beat that goal, but not in a race eligible for world-record status.) “In other sporting arenas there’s just a sense that they’re perhaps still playing second fiddle to some of these more innovative, smaller brands,” said Saunders of GlobalData. *‘What We Live For’* The World Cup looms as a chance for Nike to show off for a massive global audience. “This is a moment where we prove ourselves, this is what we live for,” Camilo Andrade, the company’s global vice president and general manager for football, told Bloomberg TV this month. Nike is running a major promotional campaign and is dressing teams including the US, France, England and Brazil. But the release of the jerseys became a blunder. As players began sporting the company’s shirts earlier this year, observers noticed a puckering at the shoulder. Customers buying their own versions began complaining about the issue. Nike acknowledged a design flaw but left little recourse: Its guidelines for teams were to iron or steam out the puff, a person familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. Nike’s Remuzzi said the jerseys’ performance wasn’t affected by the issue, and the company has “worked with our federations to ensure kits show up as intended.” The jerseys’ problems, however, run deeper than puckered shoulders. The tops, made from 100% textile waste and using a performance cooling technology, took longer to get to retailers than expected, according to the person. Earlier this year, the company projected that only about 60% of the inventory it had planned for its March launch was expected to reach retailers and the company’s direct-to-consumer channels, according to an internal note reviewed by Bloomberg News. At the time, Nike had expected roughly 98% of the inventory to be available ahead of kickoff. “Getting WC26 to this point required real lift,” one person wrote in the note. The issue is expected to extend beyond the World Cup. The same technology used in the national team kits is also being incorporated into jerseys for Nike-sponsored club teams, forcing the company to prioritize inventory for some of its high-priority teams. Demand for the World Cup gear was stronger than anticipated, Nike spokesperson Remuzzi said, which affected how the company put product into the market. Outside of sports, Nike’s non-technical business, called sportswear, has been struggling. It is in an earlier part of its comeback, the company said in March, adding that the business posted a double-digit decline. While Hill’s efforts to rebuild relationships with wholesale partners has led to sales growth in the channel, sales for Nike’s direct-to-consumer business dropped 4% from a year earlier in its most recent reported quarter. Nike’s gross margin has slipped to about 40%, down from just under 45% two years earlier. *Buying the Vision* For the first time since Hill took the helm, Nike is set to invite investors and analysts to campus in the fall, a first real look at the retailer’s longer term plan. It will be “critical to determining whether us analysts and investors buy the vision,” said Bloomberg Intelligence’s Goyal. The event coincides with Hill’s two-year anniversary leading Nike. As he approaches that mark, having already come out of retirement, the question is who will take the role next. Hill has reshaped Nike’s leadership team and removed a management layer. The two presidents under Donahoe, Heidi O’Neill and Craig Williams, were at one point considered to be internal CEO prospects, but have since left the company. There is no clear person who would be next in line for the top job. All the while, layoffs have been hitting teams. Just this spring, Nike said it was cutting 1,400 roles, which came after job reductions at Converse and across distribution centers.

The company’s trouble spots, meanwhile, keep getting worse. In Greater China, the company is expected to report a near 20% drop in revenue for the most recent quarter, hurt by local competition. Sputtering sales in the region are expected to offset the gains in North America this year. Nike’s Converse division saw quarterly revenue plunge 35% from a year earlier, and the company has slashed its marketing spending on the brand. At Converse’s Boston headquarters, free snacks were pulled back. While total revenue has weakened, demand for Nike goods has hardly disappeared, said Simeon Siegel, an analyst with Guggenheim Securities. “People are still buying the product and they’re buying a lot of it, which means the problem they need to fix is reestablishing brand equity, not reestablishing brand velocity,” he said. Still, the shift in focus on where Nike sold shoes led to a lack of innovation, he said. A new release under Hill is the highly touted Nike Mind, footwear that is purported to be mind-altering, with the ability to help get you “out of your head, connect with your surroundings and stay more present in the moment.” “I want to see more innovation layers,” Neuberger’s McCarthy said. “We need to know when all this work and reorganization of the people and innovation and all that is going to start to come through.” Nike’s Remuzzi said the challenges reflect the scale of the overhaul underway. The product pipeline for the next two years is “sharp and impressive,” she said. Wholesale Hiccups Hill has bet heavily on using major sporting events to reestablish Nike’s credibility with athletes and consumers. In February, the company used the Milan Olympics to relaunch ACG, its outdoor brand, as a more performance-focused athletic brand. ACG, short for All Conditions Gear, has become a bigger priority. Around the time of Hill’s arrival, Nike executives told employees the company was investing more resources into the business, which it viewed as an “incredible growth opportunity,” according to an internal note reviewed by Bloomberg News. The rollout was designed to make a statement. Nike outfitted athletes in new Therma-FIT Air Milano jackets that used the company’s technology to create lightweight warmth. A bright orange “All Conditions Express” train ferried guests from Milan to the Alps, complete with a showroom and cafe cart. Hill himself wore an ACG jacket during an interview with Bloomberg TV from Milan. “These sport moments are critically important to our brand,” Hill said at the time. “You will see us continue to invest in the ACG brand.” Despite the splashy launch, Nike struggled to get ACG into key big-name outdoor retailers, according to a person with knowledge its wholesale efforts who asked not to be identified to discuss confidential information. Some retailers expressed concerns that some items in the line were too expensive. Remuzzi said the company has partnerships with “top retail partners” as well as two dedicated ACG stores, and it plans to hire additional sales representatives to continue its expansion. And while the company has improved its running business under Hill, it has hit road bumps. At the Boston Marathon, one of the most famous running events in the world, Nike removed an ad declaring “Runners Welcome. Walkers Tolerated” after it was viewed by some as shaming people who needed breaks or had disabilities. Nike said it “missed the mark” with the ad — though inside the company, some people felt that taking it down was a reversal of the once irreverent marketing the Swoosh stood for. At the London Marathon, Adidas captured the sport’s coveted sub-two-hour race. Two runners wearing the company’s new $500 shoe succeeded in the feat. In the women’s race, the winner was also wearing Adidas. The achievement carried particular sting for Nike, which had spent years trying to own the pursuit of the sub-two-hour barrier — a feat requiring runners to average roughly a 4-minute, 34-second mile for 26.2 miles.

After Nike spent years building up its lifestyle shoes, Hill has sought to bring the company’s focus back to its sports roots, prioritizing getting its running and North America business back on track. But interviews with more than a dozen people close to the company show that many of those efforts have been slow to take hold, given its relationships with wholesalers had fractured and its innovation pipeline had thinned. That’s led to a broader question: If Hill can’t turn around the company, who can? Mary Remuzzi, a Nike spokesperson, said the company is “in the middle of a deliberate reset” that takes time before producing meaningful results. She described its turnaround as unfolding in phases, beginning with what it calls a stabilization effort and progressing to a broader “Sport Offense” operating model. “Nike is not a company you fix by pulling one lever,” she said. “Product, brand, marketplace, culture, athletes, consumers and partners move together. When all these pieces are connected, it creates the Nike multiplier that fuels growth and market share.” She declined to comment on the performance of the company’s stock, citing a “quiet period” before the company’s earnings release. In recent weeks, posters have popped up around the Beaverton headquarters, urging employees to adopt an “athlete mindset” on how they will push the company forward, noting “we are a brand built on victory, but victory must be earned.” In the Founder’s Week memo, Hill implored workers to “fight for every inch.” “It will take all of us — everything we have,” he said. “Moments like this ask us to move decisively, not perfectly. Not individually, but as teams. And not “someday” but “now.”” *Celebrated Return* Hill, who spent more than three decades at Nike, rejoined the company in October 2024 to replace John Donahoe, whose four-year tenure was marked by a deep push into lifestyle shoes and severed relationships with retailers such as Amazon and Macy’s. Ultimately, that left space for other brands to get in front of shoppers. The news of the CEO switch was greeted with unabashed enthusiasm. Employees popped bottles of prosecco, while someone even made a version of the Barack Obama “Hope” poster with Hill’s face. Nike’s stock jumped almost 7% the following day. One of Hill’s symbolic acts upon arrival was turning back on a dormant fountain outside Nike’s Sebastian Coe building. “It signals that the water’s running, that we’re back in our flow,” he said. He also has rehired former Nike executives after a talent exodus during Donahoe’s reign. “I was very optimistic when Elliott was chosen to replace John,” said Kevin McCarthy, senior research analyst at Neuberger Berman, which owns Nike shares. “In hindsight we all probably underestimated the magnitude of damage that was done.” Hill has tried to move Nike away from the Air Force 1s and Dunks that Donahoe pumped into the market, betting that going all in on athletic performance will help win back customers. He restructured internal teams around sports — including basketball, global football and running — instead of men’s, women’s and kids divisions. Hill has tried to restore some of Nike’s verve. He planks to playlists of “straight bangers” at employee workout classes, attends WNBA games and texts New York Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu. Nike has publicly dubbed him the “CEO of Sport.” But building relationships with retailers that Nike deprioritized under Donahoe has taken time, while newer competitors have continued gaining momentum. And just a few months into Hill’s tenure, US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs rocked global supply chains. McCarthy compared Nike to a tanker that isn’t nimble. “We probably, and I include myself in this, had the wrong starting point in terms of expectations for how difficult a product by product, channel by channel, geo by geo turnaround would be,” he said. “You’ve got a rapidly evolving very dynamic China situation, you had tariffs and you had obviously On and Hoka.”

*Nike’s Savior CEO Is Grappling With a 45% Stock Slump* Elliott Hill came out of retirement to revive the brand. Twenty months later, investors are realizing that the turnaround will likely take years. By Lily Meier, Bloomberg June 11, 2026 at 5:49 AM GMT+8 Nike Inc. gathered employees at its Beaverton, Oregon, headquarters last month for “Founder’s Week,” a new tradition aimed at rallying staff and honoring the company’s roots. Workers packed events featuring appearances from Serena Williams and top executives. The company offered free drinks for a “Thirst Thursdays” gathering. Even Phil Knight, the retailer’s 88-year-old co-founder, made a rare visit to campus. But against the celebratory backdrop was a sense of urgency. “Nike has seen and done a lot in more than 50 years,” Chief Executive Officer Elliott Hill, 62, wrote in a memo to employees that touted the renaming of the headquarters to the Philip H. Knight Campus. “But let’s be clear: we are operating in a different market, with new competitors, new expectations and a faster pace than at any time in our history.” For Hill, who came out of retirement 20 months ago to engineer a turnaround, the warning carries unusual weight. Investors and employees had hoped the beloved Nike veteran could revive the swagger and athletic focus that made the company the biggest sports brand in the world. Instead, sales and market share have slipped further. The stock has tumbled more than 45% since his arrival – erasing $57 billion in market value – and is trading near its lowest level in more than a decade. Now, Nike risks falling further behind in the sports culture it once dictated, complicating its ability to innovate new products and command the status that made it dominant for decades. This month’s World Cup, the first in North America in a generation, offers the opportunity for the US giant to have a defining moment. But it got off to a rocky start. The debut of Nike’s branded players’ jerseys drew criticism about puckering on the shoulders, while production delays had led to some tournament-related inventory not reaching retailers on the company’s expected timeline, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified to discuss confidential information. In another stumble this year, Nike had to pull a Boston Marathon ad after a backlash. Those missteps added to a broader challenge that has been building for years: a loss of market share to competitors that have grown more popular after sliding into the shelf space the company once abandoned. The Nike brand, which held almost a quarter of the global sports footwear market in 2016, now holds about 19%, according to data from Euromonitor International. Rivals such as Skechers, New Balance, On and Hoka have gained ground. Nike’s revenue in its most recently reported quarter was roughly flat from a year earlier and down almost 10% from two years before, hurt by headwinds in Greater China and Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Analysts expect further declines when it reports fiscal fourth-quarter earnings June 30. Rival Adidas AG — about half the size of Nike by sales — saw revenue jump more than 20% in that time, buoyed by the popularity of retro models like the Samba. The German company is outfitting 14 World Cup teams, compared with 12 for the American brand. “The impression is that Nike is still a business that’s somewhat on the back foot and is still trying to catch up,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, a retail research firm. “We should be seeing some signs of momentum, and we’re not. It’s a tough time in general for consumer companies as inflation, high gas prices and tariffs hit Americans’ budgets. And Nike remains, by far, the most popular sports brand. A recent survey by Bloomberg Intelligence shows its shoes were the top planned sneaker purchase for customers across income levels, which suggests the company’s challenges reflect execution issues more than brand loyalty, according to analysts Abigail Gilmartin and Poonam Goyal.

Dow drops more than 900 points as chip sell-off worsens, Trump threatens more Iran attacks https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/09/stock-market-today-live-updates.html?__source=androidappshare

On the last night, off the Wealth Walkway on South Beach, a DJ handed off to a band led by Mark McGrath, the funky frontman for the ‘90s rockers Sugar Ray (popular singles: “Every Morning,” “Someday.”) McGrath was having a hard time stoking up the crowd at first. “If you love AI, show me your hands!” he cried. A smattering of hands went up. _— With assistance from Isabelle Lee, Claire Ballentine, and Casey He_ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-06-05/ai-is-upending-traditional-financial-advisor-jobs

Or it could be a slow death. The number of Americans who have financial planners skews older. Perhaps younger people, already comfortable with trading stocks via apps and investing with robo-advisers, will form attachments with AI bots and forgo financial planners altogether, even as their wealth grows. The vast majority of heirs of high-net-worth individuals say they don’t plan on sticking with their parents’ financial advisers, a survey from Capgemini found. “I think we’ll be extremely disruptive to human-based advice,” said Jason Wenk, the CEO of Altruist, perched at a high-top table at his vendor booth at Future Proof. The buzzy startup valued at nearly $2 billion has Vanguard Group as an investor and former Vanguard CEO William McNabb on its board. Its market-rattling announcement in February was just the first in a series of rollouts targeting the financial advising world in the pipeline, Wenk said. “AI will be able to replicate the 99th percentile of human capabilities across things like financial planning, tax planning, estate planning,” he said. But that’s a tomorrow problem. On the beach, the mood among the Future Proof crowd is largely upbeat. “AI will help us,” one adviser said. “I’m not worried about it taking out jobs. AI will never replace the relationships that we do have with our clients.” Another said: “I don’t think AI replaces the adviser, per se. It augments.” Generally, that’s the attitude: The bots will make the job better, easier, faster. Word on the Playground is that AI could be particularly useful to industry newbies, the grunts who spend long days cold calling prospects (roughly 70% of wannabe advisers leave the industry within five years). Vendors on Miami Beach are pitching AI-powered tools to scrape databases, match advisers and leads and, just maybe, give young advisers a leg up. When pressed on what, exactly, they offer that AI doesn’t, advisers say they can help out during life’s most extreme moments, things like when a spouse dies or during crises when people need to access resources quickly. At Cresset Capital, which works with ultra-high-net-worth clients, the firm evacuated clients from Israel and Ukraine during recent conflicts there. “We aim to have our advisers be the first person a client calls when they need help and don’t know what to do, and these are often situations AI could not help with,” said Kelly Wagman, who leads AI strategy for Cresset. Another benefit of humans, advisers say, is trust. AI sounds like it knows what it’s talking about, but an analysis of financial advice found that about a third of the time it made things up. One Intuit Credit Karma survey found that half of people who acted on financial advice from AI said it led to a poor financial decision or mistake. “When you move to judgment, which is what our advisers do, it just really isn't that good,” said Ron Kruszewski, the CEO of Stifel Financial Corp., on a call with investors. “I'm not really comfortable thinking that we're going to serve our clients with some consensus-building mathematical AI, to be honest with you.” Jessica Camilleri-Shelton, a content creator and copywriter in Norfolk, UK, experienced the pitfalls of outsourcing judgment to a robot. Earlier this year, she invested in a fund that uses an AI bot to make foreign-exchange trades. At first, it was offering 30% returns, which she knew was “ridiculously high.” A few months later, it dropped 10% and she lost $800. The group stepped in and turned down the risk level. Camilleri-Shelton said she has more than recovered her loss since then. The experience hasn’t turned her off AI. In fact, the 36-year-old also uses Claude to manage a portfolio of around $20,000. “People who are going to do best in the next decade are not trusting AI or rejecting AI blindly,” she said. If the AI Playground is any indication, advisers are doing neither.

For now, mini-millionaires ($1 million to $5 million of liquid assets) and the very-high-net-worth crowd ($5 million to $30 million) still want humans to hold their hands. A 2025 Cerulli Associates survey found that among investors with $250,000 or more in investable assets, 86% said it was important to have access to human advisers, up from 81% in 2024. Ultra-high-net-worth individuals defined as those with $30 million or more, demand high-touch services that the merely affluent can only dream of — procuring a modest Magritte, say — which AI hasn’t mastered yet. That includes complex tax advice across generations of wealth. Individuals with complex planning needs and a history of white-glove treatment are not likely to find AI a suitable substitute, industry proponents say. For people with less money, AI has its appeal. For one, it doesn’t come with the usual 1% fee, or so, on total assets managed that many planners charge. It also pays attention to you — no matter your net worth. “It’s always on, it’s always expert, it’s always informed and it can totally tailor to whatever you’re looking for out of it,” said Stephen Kneubuehl, a 39-year-old based in Denver who uses AI to help manage his finances and support his business. Kneubuehl, the founder of FastNIE, a document services business, uses the AI agent OpenClaw to do research, stay on top of the market and screen stocks. Even his 76-year-old mom learned to love the bot. Together, using Anthropic’s Claude Opus, they opted to move money out of certain software stocks and double down on AI ones. In February, based on the bot’s recommendation, Cheryl bought into Broadcom Inc. It had netted them a more than 30% gain as of early June, Kneubuehl said. Unlike her son, Cheryl still pays a human to manage her finances. Indeed, Boomers like her, many of whom grew up with Main Street stalwarts like Mother Merrill, are sticking with old-school brokers and wealth managers, surveys have found. But millennials and members of Gen Z say they’d rather talk finances with ChatGPT or Claude than with a wealth manager giving dad vibes. (Roughly half of all financial advisers in the US are over 55, according to data from Broadridge Financial Solutions.) Eight out of 10 Gen Z-ers surveyed by Intuit Credit Karma last year said they were using AI for their personal finances. “This thing is not gonna judge you,” Sofia Ayala, a 32-year-old vice president at a bank based in Dallas, said of AI. A year ago, she turned to ChatGPT to help her stay on top of her budget and manage a $200,000 nest egg. She recently uploaded her brokerage account statements and asked ChatGPT for advice on liquidating a chunk of her portfolio. After some back and forth on her risk tolerance, the bot helped persuade her to sell a poor-performing mutual fund. About 25% to 30% of Americans have an ongoing relationship with a financial adviser, according to various surveys. It’s possible AI will just make advice more available to the masses, and not displace paid advisers. If the current K-shape of wealth growth in the US continues, demand for advisers will outpace supply to the tune of 100,000, according to a 2025 McKinsey & Co. report. Millennials already have 23% more wealth than Boomers and Gen X did at the same age and are approaching the life stage when people tend to want help with their finances. They’re also set to inherit some $46 trillion dollars in the next quarter century, according to Cerulli Associates. Bots could help by allowing advisers to handle more clients or giving some people planning advice without humans at all. A tool debuted by Citigroup Inc. in April, for example, offers “an always-on AI-powered member of the Citi Wealth team” to deliver timely, conversational insights and guidance to clients and, in the US, will eventually work alongside advisers in helping clients make financial decisions.

*AI Is Upending One of Finance’s Cushiest Jobs* Wealth managers, who can make upwards of $500,000, are confronting a chatbot reckoning. By Suzanne Woolley and Vildana Hajric, Bloomberg June 5, 2026 at 6:15 PM GMT+8 Down the Wealth Walkway on South Beach, toward the Breakthru Pavilion, and along Fintech Alley lies the AI Playground. It’s mid-March, and thousands of wealth-management pros have descended on Miami Beach to see what artificial intelligence has in store for them. Sandy-toed and clad in beachy business casual, they’ve arrived at this 23,000-square-foot beachfront pop-up erected for a conference aptly — or optimistically — named Future Proof. Just about everyone everywhere is wondering where AI will take us. But few places capture the amalgam of dread, hope and hype in white-collar America today quite like this four-day journey into tomorrow. Old-school wealth managers look more vulnerable to AI disruption than perhaps any other professionals in financial services. For the more than 326,000 personal financial advisers in the US and many thousands more abroad, the headlines are grim. A growing share of people say they trust AI enough to provide financial advice — and many are even using it to make investment decisions. Meanwhile, each day seems to bring a new AI-powered tool from a big bank, fintech app or well-funded startup that promises to democratize wealth-building. The pitch from one of them: “Make Claude manage your money.” It’s the makings of an existential crisis for one of the cushiest white-collar jobs. Once they survive the industry’s early gauntlet — the cold calls, networking events, referral-chasing and years of trying to persuade strangers to hand over their savings — wealth advisers can earn upwards of $500,000 a year, or many times that for partners and firm founders. Clients may be hard to win, but they’re slow to leave and as their assets grow, so do the earnings off fees. The vast majority of advisers report on industry surveys being “highly fulfilled with their career.” Those inside the industry don’t doubt AI is coming for their field. But for the time being, AI is making their jobs easier: Picking up routine tasks, like summarizing research, analyzing portfolios, drafting emails, handling back-office work. That’s freeing up advisers to spend more time actually advising their clients. And virtually every one of them at the conference said they believe that humans will always want a human helping them manage their fortunes. “I’m neutral to bearish on the idea of widespread use of agents to give financial advice,” said Matthew Liebman, founding partner of Amplius Wealth Advisors. “There’s not a zero use case, but I don’t see it as an incredibly game-changing thing.” Fears of AI taking jobs or replacing lucrative services, like wealth management, have rattled markets multiple times this year. When Altruist, a rapidly growing fintech company, announced an AI-powered tax-planning tool, shares of Raymond James Financial Inc., LPL Financial Holdings Inc. and Charles Schwab Corp. were among stocks that sunk that day. That was followed by a think piece from Citrini Research outlining a potential “human intelligence displacement spiral” that shook the market. The reply from the AI Playground: take a breath. The first full day started with Peter Nolan, head of asset and wealth management for Anthropic, maker of Claude. Nolan joined Anthropic last year from Pontera, a platform for financial advisers. A few weeks before the conference, he announced the first wealth-management plug-ins for Claude. In shorts, a t-shirt and sunglasses from a stage facing the Atlantic Ocean, Nolan assured some 350 financial advisers filling rows of chairs perched atop the sand: “We’re not trying to replace you. We’re trying to work for you.”

*The Jensen Bump* That outsize influence must also come with some responsibilities. Deep in the midst of the AI infrastructure buildup, Huang is probably right that this technology will revolutionize the world, and that the current chip up-cycle is much larger in scale than previous ones. But has he studied valuations to make sure that retail investors have not gone wild with imagination? Until he does, the tech executive should probably stay away from giving stock tips. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-06-08/jensen-huang-is-talking-up-his-suppliers-it-s-worrying?srnd=homepage-asia

*Jensen Huang Is Talking Up His Suppliers. It’s Worrying* June 9, 2026 at 2:00 AM GMT+8 By Shuli Ren, Bloomberg _Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets. A former investment banker, she was a markets reporter for Barron’s. She is a CFA charterholder._ - Nvidia Corp.'s Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang has given investment advice that has sent the local equities market to record high and added fuel to a rising stock. - Huang's remarks have come across as careless and out-of-touch with market dynamics, where frenzied retail buying and increased leverage are occurring. - His comments have a significant impact on the market, and he should probably stay away from giving stock tips until he has studied valuations to ensure retail investors have not gone wild with imagination. A charismatic salesman, Nvidia Corp.’s Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang is visiting his suppliers in Taiwan and South Korea, hanging out at local eateries and drawing large crowds. He has also given some dangerously rosy investment advice. Speaking at Asia’s biggest AI tech show last week, Huang’s comments on Taiwan possessing the world’s best supply chain ecosystem sent the local equities market to record high. He begged South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc. to “please make more” memory chips, adding fuel to a stock that has risen as much as 200% this year. On Monday, remarking on a tech stock selloff that gathered steam in the US last Friday, he said that “you should be very happy because now you can buy at a discount. Known for his bold statements and playful banter, Huang’s latest remarks nonetheless came across as careless and out-of-touch with market dynamics, where we have begun to witness frenzied retail buying, increased leverage, and investors reimagining makers of everything, from cars to PCs, as AI trades. To avoid a repeat of the dot-com bubble bust, what we need from the tech titan is not outsized optimism, but concrete guidance. While both South Korea and Taiwan have benefited from a surge in semiconductor exports, their stock markets have started to look frothy. Taiwan’s benchmark index is now trading near par with the S&P 500 on a forward-earnings basis, even though it pales in comparison when you look at sector diversification or earnings visibility. Semiconductor and hard tech companies, which tend to be more cyclical, account for 78% of the Taiwan index. *Taiwan Is Getting Expensive* As for South Korea, where Samsung Electronics Co. and Hynix contribute to over half of the benchmark Kospi, the verdict is still out on whether the two companies can escape the volatile boom-and-bust commodity cycles that have long plagued the industry. Will they be able to sign enough long-term agreements with their customers to lock in future earnings? What do these contracts look like? Nvidia’s move to strike a multiyear partnership with Hynix, and Huang’s assurances that the world needs a lot of chips just won’t cut it. We need more details. *A Supercycle? Maybe* Until late May, when the first-quarter results were wrapped up, investors were able to lean into financial reports to fathom where we were in the AI chip rally. And one may argue the run-ups were largely justified because US hyperscalers raised their annual capital spending meaningfully and that chipmakers’ earnings largely surprised on the upside. But until the upcoming earnings season kicks off in late July, we no longer have that anchor to rely on. We’re essentially living in an information vacuum, and don’t know if the stock rally matches with increases in chip orders and corporate profits. This is why comments made by tech rockstars are so important right now. As it is, Huang is seen as someone who identifies and dictates AI trends; indeed, media reports of his meeting with LG Group’s chairman sent the conglomerate’s subsidiaries to record highs. In between earnings, global investors are parsing his words even more carefully to keep up with a fast-evolving industry. Huang’s every word is market-moving.

*Paramount’s $110 Billion Warner Takeover Investigated by UK* By Peter Chapman, Bloomberg June 9, 2026 at 6:04 PM GMT+8 Britain’s merger watchdog has opened a probe into Paramount Skydance Corp.’s $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. The Competition and Markets Authority set an initial deadline of August 7 to rule on the deal to unite two Hollywood studios behind films from Casablanca and Harry Potter to Mission: Impossible; two major news networks in CNN and CBS; the streaming powerhouse HBO and dozens of cable networks. While the move was expected, the London-based agency has come under pressure from public-interest groups, unions and film-industry groups to take a tough stance on the takeover. “The film and TV industries contribute billions to our economy, so it’s important we assess whether deals between studios may harm competition,” the CMA said. The UK’s scrutiny is one of the last hurdles Paramount Chief Executive Officer David Ellison must overcome after outmaneuvering rival suitor Netflix Inc. with multiple bids over more than five months, visits to Washington, meetings with shareholders and President Donald Trump and the personal backing of his billionaire father Larry Ellison. The deal, if approved by regulators, would give the Ellison family control of one of the most powerful media empires in the world. An initial investigation from the UK’s CMA gives the agency 40 days to decide whether a merger raises any competition concerns. After that, companies can offer remedies to allay those fears, if that’s not enough then an in-depth probe will begin lasting 24 weeks. The European Union’s antitrust authority has already set a July 7 deadline to rule on the tie-up, and Paramount is open to selling some children’s TV assets, if necessary, to clinch approval in the 27-nation bloc, people familiar with the deal said last week. Meanwhile, Paramount has submitted suggested terms to resolve an antitrust investigation by California and other states into the transaction, Bloomberg has reported. A Paramount spokesperson said the CMA move was expected and that the company will will continue to work constructively with the regulator. _— With assistance from Samuel Stolton and Upmanyu Trivedi_ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-09/paramount-s-110-billion-warner-takeover-probed-by-uk-watchdog?srnd=homepage-asia