The Adidas Tennis Racket was a Miserable Failure

In 2009, Adidas came out with a surprise announcement: their very own line of tennis rackets targeted from professionals to beginners and everyone in between. Until that point, Adidas was well known in the tennis world for its high quality shoes and apparel, so manufacturing a tennis racket couldn't be too hard, right?
Well, the debut would go down as one of the most embarrassing and poorly thought-out tennis product launches to date, with any mention of the rackets being erased from the internet just one year later. How did Adidas screw this up so badly?

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[davidkonevky]

I just realized that I've never seen an adidas tennis racket in my life wow

[shinigamirealm]

I remember playing tennis competitively in my state and when my old racquet broke my coach brought five new racquets for me and my fellow players,

Wilson, babolat, head, prince and Adidas feather

We were surprised to see Adidas racquet even existed lol, we were asked to test each of these racquets and choose whichever suited our playstyle better.
Surprisingly I performed the best with Adidas racquet over those racquets and used it proudly.
I thought it was uncommon racquet cuz I've never heard of one. And whichever competition I went on to play everyone would give me this surprised look as if I brought some alien device in the court whenever they see my racquet and ask me to give them a try. Half of them liked it but found it difficult to play with

When I went on to play state level tournament that's when I realised just how rare this racquet was, cuz players from all over the state had never heard of such racquet. Truly felt special and I still own that racquet to this day. Don't use it as it's in kinda fragile condition and don't wanna break it. But yeah, for me atleast it was truly a special racquet

[Ianz]

The GOAT of tennis channels remembered his password, lets go

[juandiegoprado]

Your research level is god tier at this point

[wisemeistergeneral]

I remember seeing a large quantity of these on sale in an Adidas Outlet Store in the UK about 10 years ago, on clearance for £20 each. I recall there was a huge basket full, with some branded as "Barricade Tour" and others simply branded "Barricade". Despite being surprised to see Adidas branded racquets, I figured at the time that they must not have sold well enough at RRP hence ending up in an Outlet store. Kinda wish I'd bought one now for curiousity's sake!

[vishreshchawla]

Lesss gooo I was just having pizza and this makes everything better

[jaircabra]

Two guys at my small club owned one of these. I always thought it was weird to see someone with an Adidas racket, but had no idea they were that uncommon

[YJ-brug]

bruh why you gotta do donald young dirty like that 😂

[ketan]

He's the Lemmino of Tennis Youtubers. if you know the channel, you know this is a heck of a compliment.

[reggie]

Great video, I am also from product management background albeit another industry. You nailed it on the lacklustre marketing. they were not OEM equipment merely just using the brand name, therefore I suspect they had a lot of restriction in terms of licensing and endorsing players. I suspect Adidas had to commit to a huge loads of racquets to get minimum order quantities (MOQ) from the factory, yet limited research in racquet design and because adidas did not own the manufacture lines profit margins to another 3rd party vendor would be not of been great, Which I suspect led to downfall. They were too confident of the brand and not invested in proper product management.

[kartik]

So glad to see someone making in depth videos like this on Tennis. Keep up the phenomenal work!

[ttrnet]

Pretty amazing Babolat launched their tennis racquet frames in the nineties and look at where they are now. One of the premier manufacturers used by all the top players.

[Krischan]

In '09 I nearly bought a Barricade as my first adult racket because of me being a sucker for adidas products, here's what my coach had to say about that: "What the...no one plays with that, go with *this* instead." He sold me 2 Wilson nCode Six-One 95s, although he might've had his profit in my mind I think it was the right decision, probably one of the best rackets of all time.

[romaIsHim]

Ahh yes. The hapiness i feel when i see a cult tennis video is undescribable

[peterslater]

Good video. I'd never heard of the Adidas racquet until I watched this video. I'm an Adidas fan, I think all their gear especially Tennis Shoes are great. When my interest was tweaked post watching this video I found a Adidas Barricade Racquet on EBay & bought it. The Adidas Barricade specs are similar to my racquet of choice the Prince Tour 95. I strung it up with RPM Blast @ 50lbs (same as the Prince) and thought this might be an OK racquet. From the first strike of a FH, I realised this thing is the 'real deal', it is a very good racquet. Very similar to the Prince Tour 95, great plow through on Groundies and nice racquet to volley with. Might be a 12 year old racquet but its specs are contemporary with modern frames. No racquet manafacturer, other than Yonex, make racquets in thier own factories. All racquets are made predominantly in China to the specs set out by companies like Head, Wilson, Prince etc etc. I'd suggest the failure of the Adidas Barricade racquet to 'launch' was not a fault of the racquet being quality but more, as stated in the video, a lack of enthusiasm from Adidas Marketing at the time.

[spreadsheetgod]

I had a coach that owned one of these c. 2010! Played with it a few times, not by choice. Vividly remember it being an insanely stiff racket.

[filiphessle]

Looking forward to see how the Lacoste tennis racket turns out.

[jaredturnquest]

Wow. Very informative. Lesson learned: Just put a racquet in a pro's hand, pay them well and they will do the rest.

[mutton]

One of my coaches actually had the Barricade. Really didn't like how it felt. Tons of vibration if you happened to hit anywhere but the sweet spot.

[junkmail]

Actually Lendl’s racket line was based on Kneissl White Star Pro with Adidas GTX Pro paint job. Same molds, string pattern and specs. I owned and played with both. Lendl in his teen years played with Kneissl White Star Pro mold and never changed it until he and Adidas split.