“Île-de-foot 24”: this is what Adidas has named the ball that will be passed from foot to foot during the Paris 2024 Games. In the colours of the French flag, it was produced on the model of the Euro 2024 ball. Adidas dominates the two major football events of the summer. But it shares the football market with other manufacturers, such as Nike, Puma and Kipsta. Owned by Decathlon, this brand has been producing the official ball of Ligue 1 football in France for two years.
From animal bladder to plastics
Round balls were not always as colourful and bright as they are today. In the Middle Ages, inflated animal bladders were often used in ball games. When modern football developed in Britain during the 19th century, these bladders were covered in leather for added strength. In 1872, the English Football League first regulated the characteristics of balls used in official matches: they had to be spherical and covered in leather, with a circumference of 68 centimetres and a weight of between 396 and 453 grams.
A century later, Adidas supplied the World Cup in Mexico with the “Telstar”. A ball made up of 12 black pentagons and 20 white hexagons that broke away from its brown predecessors. It was more visible than them on television, which was a real advantage for the first World Cup broadcast in color.
In the years that followed, colours replaced black and white on round balls, as they did on television screens. Leather was also abandoned in favour of plastic materials. For example, thermo-bonded polyurethane panels cover the inner tube of the ball produced by Kipsta for Ligue 1 since 2022.
A production mainly Indian, Pakistani and Chinese
As football developed in Britain in the 19th century, ball manufacturing was established in the heart of an English colony: Punjab, located between present-day Pakistan and India. Two centuries later, China entered the market, but the Punjab region remains a leader in the production of round balls. It is concentrated in the thousand factories of the city of Sialkot, in Pakistan.
Here, 60,000 of the 700,000 inhabitants work in the football industry. They produce 70% of the 60 million round balls manufactured each year in the world. Those of the Ligue 1 supplied by Kipsta are part of it: they come out of Pakistani factories, after having been designed and tested in the North of France.
Founded in 2020, the French company Vista was intended to produce customizable balloons in France. But its founder Jean-Baptiste de Tourris says he gave up on manufacturing them, “due to lack of commercial outlets” and because of the cost of labor, which is much higher in France than in Asia. This situation prompted another young French manufacturer, Rebond, to partner with an Indian subcontractor to launch its production of bio-sourced and circular balloons. But the company, founded in 2023, has also partnered with the Bourgeois workshop, located in the Nantes basin, in order to be able to manufacture certain balloons in France.
Source: www.usinenouvelle.com
