Adidas Football Climbs 48 Places to Claim Second Spot in UK Instagram Fashion League

Adidas Football has emerged as one of the most striking performers in the UK’s social media fashion landscape, climbing 48 places to secure second position in the latest Instagram rankings for Q4 2025. The result confirms a growing shift in how influence works online, where relevance, community and cultural alignment increasingly outperform scale alone.

The rankings, compiled by Kolsquare, place Adidas Football just behind Zara, but the contrast in strategy between the two brands is stark. While Zara generated slightly higher Earned Media Value through sheer volume, Adidas Football delivered comparable impact with a fraction of the output and significantly stronger engagement.

Across the quarter, Adidas Football generated approximately £27.8 million in Earned Media Value from just 442 posts created by 191 influencers. This lean approach delivered a standout engagement rate of 5.9 percent, underscoring the effectiveness of a tightly curated influencer strategy rooted in football culture rather than mass visibility.

By comparison, Zara claimed the top spot with an estimated £28.2 million in Earned Media Value, driven by more than 10,700 posts from over 3,200 influencers. Despite the scale, the brand recorded a lower engagement rate of 3.8 percent, highlighting a growing imbalance between reach and resonance.

At the heart of Adidas Football’s performance is a strategy that blends cultural icons with grassroots credibility. High profile collaborations with Stormzy and Jude Bellingham through The Original Icon campaign helped anchor the brand within contemporary football culture, while a broader network of football creators and fan communities amplified authenticity. Matchday rituals, freestyle skills and everyday football moments became as central to the narrative as polished campaign imagery.

Quentin Bordage, CEO and founder of Kolsquare, points to this balance as the defining factor behind the brand’s success. Adidas Football’s rise, he says, demonstrates that brands no longer need thousands of creators to dominate attention. Relevance, cultural fluency and genuine community engagement are now the primary drivers of performance.

The wider rankings reinforce this shift. Engagement driven brands consistently outperformed those relying on volume alone. Victoria’s Secret, for example, delivered an engagement rate of 8.9 percent across fewer than 800 posts, more than double that of Zara, despite generating lower overall Earned Media Value. The numbers signal a growing appetite for content that feels personal, intentional and culturally aligned.

Elsewhere, London based sustainable label In Print We Trust delivered one of the most dramatic performances across Europe, rising over 1,200 places in continental rankings with just 38 influencers. Its extraordinary engagement rate of more than 40 percent highlights the power of niche communities when activated with clarity and purpose.

On TikTok, the pattern continued. While Primark dominated through scale, brands such as Aspinal of London and Adidas Football demonstrated that smaller creator networks can still deliver exceptional impact when engagement is prioritised over volume.

For Adidas Football, the result is more than a strong quarter. It is a clear signal that football culture, when treated as a living community rather than a marketing vertical, can outperform traditional fashion influence strategies. As brands continue to navigate an increasingly saturated social landscape, the lesson is clear. Attention is no longer bought through volume. It is earned through relevance.