adidas Predator Adverts

The Predator was sold as hard as it was built. For three decades adidas has used slogans, star casts and some very odd films to explain a boot with rubber on the front, and many of its adverts are remembered as fondly as the boots themselves.

This page is a guide to the best-known Predator commercials, in order. The biggest have their own pages below. Where adidas or another official channel has published a film, we embed it. Where it hasn’t, we describe it, and we don’t guess at credits we can’t confirm.

The Big Four

• 1994, 100% Legal, 0% Fair: the slogan the Predator launched with, and how adidas has kept bringing it back.
• 2002, Footballitis: adidas’s mock-medical World Cup film with Beckham, Zidane and Collina, set in the Predator Mania era.
• 2019, 25 Years of Predator: Beckham and Zidane judge who deserves their archive boots.
• 2026, It’s Time to Choose: Predator legends run a syndicate in adidas’s Predator vs F50 campaign.

The Rest, in Order

These summaries draw mainly on SoccerBible’s roundup of Predator commercials and on press coverage of each launch.

• 1996, Predator Touch: Paul Gascoigne starred in “The Magician”, a series of tricks. A second Touch film, led by Alessandro Del Piero, was the first Predator film with a big cast, and included David Beckham’s first appearance in one, with Edwin van der Sar in goal.
• 1998, Predator Accelerator: a black-and-white film with a large cast ahead of the World Cup in France, including Beckham, Del Piero, Zidane and Patrick Kluivert.
• 2006, Predator Absolute: a street-football film in which two kids invite World Cup players to a game, showing the Absolute and the F50.
• 2007, Predator PowerSwerve: Steven Gerrard and Xabi Alonso fire balls at clay pigeons at Liverpool’s Melwood training ground.
• 2009, Predator X: Gerrard strikes a ball hard enough to demolish a stadium.
• 2012, Predator LZ: Predator players tackle an obstacle course called the Deadly Challenges.
• 2017, Predator 18+: Paul Pogba and Mesut Özil front the boot’s return after its break.
• 2020, Predator Mutator: Pogba rescues a match in the last minute, leaning into the 100% legal, 0% fair line.
• 2023–24, Predator 24: Jude Bellingham steals the boots from a secret laboratory in a two-minute film.

For the boots behind them, see the full history of the Predator.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the first adidas Predator advert?

The original Predator launched in 1994 with the slogan “100% legal, 0% fair”. We haven’t found a reliable record of the cast or makers of the first films.

Who has appeared in adidas Predator adverts?

The list includes David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane, Alessandro Del Piero, Steven Gerrard, Paul Gascoigne, Paul Pogba and Jude Bellingham. Beckham and Zidane are the names most closely associated with them.

What is the most famous Predator advert?

Opinion differs, but “Footballitis” in 2002 and the 100% Legal, 0% Fair launch are among the best known.

Read more: The history of the Predator · Moments · Predator Mania