A Look Into Designing New Balls: Fifa, Adidas VS. NBA, Spalding

The world's most popular event is among us: Fifa's World Cup 2010 in South Africa (Shout out to Dean!!). Taking place every four years, sponsoring companies rush at the opportunity to create new products. Come this summer, Adidas will be celebrating 40 years of doing just that. Since 1970 Adidas has tweaked the design of the modern day soccerball to deliver a new match ball.

Starting off with the traditional pentagon/hexagon panel ball in Telstar (Mexico, 1970), Adidas has now evolved to a revolutionary design that uses only 8 "3D Panels" in its Jabulani (South Africa, 2010). This new design was inspired by the design change made in the last official World Cup ball, the Teamgeist (Germany, 2006). This new technology allowed Adidas to develop a ball that is truly round due to the reduced number of seams which, consequently, resulted in a tremendous boost in quality and performance. By building off of this idea, Adidas has now created an even "more round" ball by reducing the panels from 14 to 8. Fewer panels means fewer seams which means "rounder" ball. This design has 2 different panels, the "3D Tripod Panel" and the "3D Triangle Panel". Four of each are molded together to create a perfectly round half-sphere. The other half is created the exact same way and then added together to complete the full sphere. Check out the full evolution of Adidas' products and actual manufacturing process here:

http://www.soccerballworld.com/Jabulani_2010.htm

According to this soccerballworld.com article, Adidas partnered with several professional soccer clubs in order to perform user testing. As of now, and like the reviews of the previous official match balls, players have reviewed the product quite positively.

Now let us shift to the world of our National Basketball Association. In the Summer of 2006, NBA Commissioner David Stern and official basketball supplier, Spalding, eagerly introduced a new and improved basketball. As shown on the right, the new design flaunted a new interlocking panel system that allowed 1/3 more material to be exposed. Additionally, the ball was developed using Spalding’s Cross Traxxion, a microfiber material with moisture control that allowed for a better grip. The NBA was also enthusiastic of this design because it eliminated the need of the "break in" period required by the traditional leather ball.

However, unlike Fifa and Adidas, the development of this product was never run by its professional users. Even though it was taken through laboratory and on court testing, NBA teams were given the new product only after it had been designed. So come summer training, David Stern and Spalding began to receive numerous complaints from players around the league. Gilbert Arenas, Shaquille O'Neal, and Steve Nash were among the players to voice their complaints. Among them were claims that the ball bounced in an unpredictable fashion and became slippery when wet (so much for that moisture control).

An interesting fact was highlighted by a 2006 article in the Washington Post. Apparently, "The players' union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board on Dec. 1 because it was upset that the league switched to the new ball without consulting players." It's silly to think that millions of dollars were invested in making a new product that is supposedly designed to improve player's skills without consulting the players themselves!