Player and celebrity partnerships boost tennis wear challengers

Eight years ago, brothers Thomas and Philip Beahon were hoping to join forces with an elite athlete to accelerate the growth of their fledgling premium sportswear brand Castore.

“We weren’t big enough to partner with teams, so we thought about individual sports,” says Thomas, who set up the British label in 2016, with his brother. The company is now valued at £950mn.

Tennis prevailed over golf as their first sport of choice. If you sponsored a tennis player and they had a big match, the thinking went, they would get more airtime and eyeballs on the branding than in golf “where there are lots of different players”.

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So, in 2019, Castore became the official kit partner to British tennis champion Andy Murray, who is also a shareholder in the company, and sales took off after he first wore Castore, at the Australian Open, that year.

Building on that success, last year, the brand launched a tennis clothing line, whose white skirts sell for £48.75 and men’s aeromesh T-shirts cost £42.

Other challenger brands, such as upmarket Swiss label On Running, which was founded in 2010, are now also seeking to tap into the growing popularity of tennis apparel in a market dominated by well-known sports brands. In 2022, the category generated $1.9bn-worth of sales, according to website RunRepeat, with women’s sales accounting for 43.9 per cent. That figure is expected to grow to $2.1bn, in 2028.

In 2019, On announced that Swiss tennis star Roger Federer had invested an undisclosed amount in its business, and now describes him as a “co-entrepreneur”.

Alex Griffin, chief marketing officer at On, says there is a “massive opportunity to capture a new generation of fans through tennis, a sport with an estimated 1bn [following] worldwide”.

Brand sponsorship deals or tie-ups with athletes are well established, often instigated and negotiated for by their agents. But sports stars becoming shareholders — such as Murray in Castore and Federer in On — is still relatively new.

“You want the athlete to have skin in the game, and you want them to be genuinely aligned, rather than just doing sponsored Instagram posts,” explains Beahon. “You want them to really care about it. So, for us, that partnership has been genuinely transformational.”

Federer has had input into the design, technical specifications and testing of On products, says Griffin. After two years of research, the brand launched its first performance tennis shoe in 2021, called the Roger Pro and priced at £190 a pair, which Griffin describes as “a sensation”. On has since developed nine different lifestyle and performance models under Federer’s footwear collection.

Allyson Stewart-Allen, chief executive of International Marketing Partners, and an adviser to brands including Burberry and Chanel, says the fact that both tennis players chose to work with “up and coming” brands was probably not coincidental. “They can shape the brand because it’s new, whereas legacy brands — like Nike, like Wilson, like Head and others — they’ve been around a while, and [it is] hard to change perceptions.

“If it’s a new brand, and you happen to be affiliated with it, that will skim off custom from the older, more traditional brands. It implies innovation as well and, frankly, it’s probably really profitable for the likes of Federer and Murray.”

Nevertheless, a large percentage of the 75 Women’s Tennis Association-ranked players are still sponsored by incumbent brands such as Nike, Adidas and Lotto.

Stewart-Allen says tennis wear, for women in particular, has become “much more mainstream over the last 15 to 20 years, as something you would generally wear, even if you’re not a tennis player”.

The market for athletic skirts and dresses grew a combined 24 per cent in 2023, compared with the prior year, and sales have more than doubled since 2019, according to research company Circana.

“The likes of Tory Burch have made tennis wear fashionable . . . because it’s a sporty look that is more tailored,” points out Stewart-Allen. “There’s some cachet about tennis gear and wear, a bit like cricket — cricket jumpers have been popular for many years.”

You want the athlete to have skin in the game, and you want them to be genuinely aligned

Castore’s Beahon adds that long-standing collaborations between established sportswear brands and fashion designers, such as Adidas and Stella McCartney, have led to increasing fashion interest in tennis clothes.

“Traditionally, you just wore a white T-shirt or dress, and that was it. Now . . . amateur players want elevated product designs [and] elevated product performance.”

It was also the likes of René Lacoste, the Grand Slam-winning French tennis player, who first pushed the boundaries of early tennis apparel. He invented a lightweight alternative polo shirt made from “petit piqué” cotton to replace the rigid uniform historically worn on court and allow for greater movement.

Even so, on-court fashion choices for major tournaments are still dictated by dress codes. After US tennis champion Serena Williams wore a black catsuit at the French Open in 2018, the president of the French Tennis Federation suggested it would not be accepted in future. At Wimbledon in the UK, players must wear “almost entirely white” and “white does not include off white or cream”.

But the new brands continue to innovate. In another move to utilise celebrity status to boost its brand, On this year announced partnerships with actor Zendaya, who recently featured in a tennis-related film Challengers, and with singer FKA Twigs.

Rapidly growing sports such as padel, which is played by doubles teams on an enclosed court, and pickleball, a fast-paced tennis-badminton hybrid played close to the net, are expected to buoy tennis apparel, says Stewart-Allen.

Meanwhile, Castore has been experimenting with fabrics such as merino wool, to make its kits more enticing to new customers.

“The consumer for tennis now is far more global and younger than it’s ever been,” says Beahon. “[They] don’t want the same things that the traditional tennis consumer wanted 20 years ago.”