In 2022, Adidas signed a 10-year contract with the FIFA (the world governing body of soccer) that granted an exclusive license to Adidas to manufacture, market and sell FIFA replica jerseys. Adidas sells the FIFA jerseys to retailers at a wholesale price of $24 per jersey and the average retail price equals $70 per jersey. Adidas outsources the jersey cutting, sewing and assembly operations to offshore contract manufacturers (CM). Also, for some orders, the CMs print the player's name and number on the jersey and ship the completely finished good, known as dressed jerseys, to Adidas's Distribution Center (DC) located in Munich, Germany. For other orders, the blank jerseys are shipped to Adidas's DC and then completed at an Adidas owned screen printing facility located on site in Munich. The average costs for a blank jersey and for a dressed jersey (delivered to Munich) are $9.50 and $10.90, respectively. It costs about $2.40 to decorate a blank jersey in Munich. Although the soccer season is played between September and January, most FIFA replica jersey sales occur in August and September as fans anticipate and prepare for the upcoming season. Because of the long production and shipment lead times, Adidas must decide in May how much inventory to hold at the DC in anticipation of retailers' orders for the coming season. Due to the inherent uncertainty of soccer games, forecasting demand is a challenge. For instance, Adidas developed the following demand forecasts for the Brazil team in 2022, assuming independent normal demand distributions.

Description Mean Standard Deviation Neymar, #10 30,000 14,000 Alisson, #1 10,000 5,000 Thiago Silva, #3 8,000 3,000 Gabriel Jesus, #18 7,000 4,000 Other Players 28,000 11,000