Our story
LEGENDARY SINCE 1947
SELECT Sport was founded in 1947 by Eigil Nielsen, goalkeeper for the Danish national soccer team, who devoted his life to create the perfect ball. The name of the company was given because of the exclusive leather that was specially selected for the ball production. By producing many of the ball industry's groundbreaking creations such as the first laceless soccer ball, the first ball with 32 panels and balls made of synthetic leather, SELECT naturally became a trendsetter.
SELECT is known as the ball specialist. We sell over 3 million balls every year, and we are the largest supplier of handballs.
SELECT is also an official ball supplier to many of the best soccer leagues in Europe, including the German Bundesliga, making SELECT the largest league partner.
Our large selection of balls, sportswear and sports accessories can be found in more than 50 countries.
SELECT’s hand-stitched soccer balls, futsal balls and handballs retain their perfect balance, touch, bounce and flight for thousands of hours, even with severe pitch and weather conditions.
Our quality standards are the highest in the industry, even higher than those of FIFA when it comes to the best match balls.
Everything from stitching, surface, sphericity, circumference, weight to airtightness and printing inks is inspected before we deliver our products.
We have been developing balls for 75 years, and the passion for innovative craftmanship still lives on in our daily work.
Soccer, futsal and handball matches around the world are played with balls built on Eigil Nielsen's original principle of 32 panels, just as most balls produced worldwide are based on SELECT's inventions.
Learn more about the 32-panel construction method here.
SELECT is known as the ball specialist. We sell over 3 million balls every year, and we are the largest supplier of handballs.
SELECT is also an official ball supplier to many of the best soccer leagues in Europe, including the German Bundesliga, making SELECT the largest league partner.
Our large selection of balls, sportswear and sports accessories can be found in more than 50 countries.
SELECT’s hand-stitched soccer balls, futsal balls and handballs retain their perfect balance, touch, bounce and flight for thousands of hours, even with severe pitch and weather conditions.
Our quality standards are the highest in the industry, even higher than those of FIFA when it comes to the best match balls.
Everything from stitching, surface, sphericity, circumference, weight to airtightness and printing inks is inspected before we deliver our products.
We have been developing balls for 75 years, and the passion for innovative craftmanship still lives on in our daily work.
Soccer, futsal and handball matches around the world are played with balls built on Eigil Nielsen's original principle of 32 panels, just as most balls produced worldwide are based on SELECT's inventions.
Learn more about the 32-panel construction method here.
As SELECT footballs have a perfect and stable flight, the trajectory of the ball is easier to estimate correctly – the player´s skills determine where the ball goes – not the ball’s unpredictable flight.
1947
SELECT is born
Eigil Nielsen develops his first football
Eigil Nielsen was the Danish national team’s first-choice goalkeeper and played in 28 national matches from 1940 to 1951 and along with his team he won the bronze medal at the Olympic Games in London in 1948.
In Eigil Nielsen’s time, elite football players could not live solely on football, so he studied to become a sports psychologist while working in the footwear and leather industry. During this time he created the first SELECT football.
The first step in creating the perfect football.
1951
Expert on a mission
The world's first laceless football is a reality
In 1951 Eigil Nielsen and SELECT became the official ball suplier for the Danish national football team. A collaboration that still exists today.
The same year he created a football with a built-in valve and no external string. This meant that the ball could better retain its round shape and that there was no string to interfere with kicks and especially headers. These improvements to the football were epoch-making.
1962
SELECT introduces
The 32-panel football changes football forever
1962 became the year SELECT introduced one of the greatest inventions in football history – the 32-panel ball.
With the 32 panels - 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons - SELECT succeeded in creating the roundest ball ever seen. Later, a group of American scientists won the Nobel Prize for discovering that the molecules of carbon with a special irradiation organize themselves as a complete round ball - something Eigil Nielsen had already discovered and realized in his football with 32 panels, why the reinvention was named “the football molecule”.
1974
A new material
The hand-sewn PU football is born
In 1974, SELECT ceased using cow leather and produced the first hand-stitched synthetic leather ball. Synthetic leather quickly became the preferred choice of players, and today almost all balls are made of synthetic leather, regardless of the manufacturer.
2012
SELECT IBall
Introducing the world's first intelligent football
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The perfect ball
A ball with optimal roundness is fundamental to achieving reliable aerodynamics, which results in a straight flight and a controlled bounce.
Learn how Eigil Nielsen created the perfect ball.
Learn more
Quality, respect & commitment
Select values the importance in providing better opportunites for workers, those in need and the world.
Sustainability
We strive to achieve a production of the highest quality, lasting
for many years, and with the lowest possible environmental impact.
CSR
Like other companies, SELECT pays the market price for the stitching of their balls in Pakistan. But it is our conviction that our responsibility goes further than this. For those people who stitch SELECT balls in Pakistan, it is our aim to meet their basic needs. These needs include medical assistance and medication for the whole family. All children are given the opportunity to have an education. Education is the key to improving living standards for future generations. This objective also includes abolishing child labour, something which SELECT and AKI do not wish to make use of.
Charity
SELECT yearly donates more than 5.000 different balls mainly to charity projects for children in African countries via acknowledged organizations and
private projects. Also schools in Greenland and hardly challenged groups of people around the world have received balls from us in different occations.
Finally, we support and have produced special footballs to a project called "Red Card to Racism" through the Danish Players Union.
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