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On Sunday, Taylor Swift was spotted donning a red and white Kansas City Chiefs jacket at the team’s Arrowhead Stadium game, cheering on rumoured boyfriend and tight end Travis Kelce. That same day, influencer Alix Earle was captured hugging Miami Dolphins wide receiver Braxton Berrios — or, as she calls him, “NFL man” — on the field of Hard Rock Stadium.
The two pop culture mainstays are the latest in a line of WAGs (wives and girlfriends of high-profile sportsmen and women) to draw widespread attention to the sports industry, typically relegated to the feeds of ESPN and Bleacher Report followers. Now, the NFL is crowding the TikTok For You pages of fashion fans and Swifties across the internet.
Kelce left the stadium on Sunday, Swift in tow, donning a KidSuper denim set. Formerly named the Bedroom Painting Denim jacket and trousers, designer Colm Dillane tacked on a “1989” to the items’ online product pages as attention built, a not-so-subtle nod to Swift’s fifth studio album title. The jacket is now sold out, and the jeans close to.
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It signals the value for brands to weigh in at the right time. Some have already partnered with the NFL. Ahead of this season, which began earlier this month, Boss, Vera Bradley, Born x Raised and Kith dropped NFL collaborations. Earlier this year, Opening Ceremony co-founder Humberto Leon collaborated with the league on a Pride collection. And, on Tuesday, just two days after Swift and Earle’s appearances, menswear brand Perry Ellis announced a multi-year ambassador and product programme with Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
Despite a slew of brand collabs, to date, American football has had less visibility in fashion than tennis, basketball and football (or soccer) — and fewer luxury players have tapped in. Thom Browne is the notable exception in his embrace of the game’s aesthetic. Browne also hosts an annual ‘TB football game’ in Central Park, tied to a capsule collection. But for the most part, fashion and the NFL have never been a natural fit. Could American football’s current pop culture moment — thanks to Swift and Earle — be the turning point for fashion’s relationship with and capitalisation on the national game?
“Luxury brands have historically had a more natural connection to tennis and Formula 1, which have a European old-world, old-money sort of appeal,” says Sophie Roche Conti, founder of brand and culture communications agency Conti Communications. But, she flags, there’s opportunity for brands to tap into the values that American football encompasses. Conti highlights Netflix’s Quarterback, which premiered last month. Not only did it educate the masses who had no prior interest in the game, but highlighted the “truly American qualities” the sport encompasses: discipline, excellence, family values, camaraderie and team spirit — “values that brands, I imagine, such as Thom Browne or Ralph Lauren, would be interested in aligning with”, she says.
WAGs to influencers, influencers to WAGs
TikToker Alexandra Nikolajev, who makes videos on the intersection of sports and culture, argues that it’s WAG-cum-influencers that help to pull sports into more consumers’ consciousness. By opening pastimes typically relegated to sport-invested viewers up to wider audiences, it creates an interesting opportunity for brands. “It pulls sports conversations into the mainstream because influencers and the internet are mainstream,” Nikolajev says.
“What’s interesting is that there are influencers becoming WAGs, and WAGs who are becoming influencers,” she continues, offering tennis as an example. “Morgan [Riddle] is an everyday girl that started dating a public figure and leaned into that to build her own brand,” Nikolajev says. Riddle is the girlfriend of American tennis player Taylor Fritz, and has established a public profile in her own right by making TikToks with BTS tennis content, and most recently hosted a Wimbledon style series, ‘Threads’.
Swift’s appearance, and the buzz she’s generated for American football over the past few days, encapsulates the WAG-influencer effect on steroids. The NFL, Nikolajev points out, has 28 million Instagram followers. Swift has 273 million. “She’s really boosting the NFL the way she boosted the American economy,” she says.
TikTok’s role in amplifying these influencers, and their sports content, only makes for a more compelling use case for brands. “The algorithm is so niche that, if you engage with one video around sports culture, you’re going to be served that left, right and centre,” Nikolajev says. “The likelihood of you seeing something over and over is really high, and that allows you to develop [interest] and deep dive, and the obsession kind of builds.” It’s this reach that luxury can tap into, Fiona Harkin, foresight editor at trends consultancy The Future Laboratory, says. “Luxury fiends use social media to be part of the conversation,” she says.
Brand perks
If NFL merch’s performance is anything to go by, it’s worth brands tapping in. Sales for Kelce’s merch jerseys were up 400 per cent after Swift attended the week three game, according to the NFL. Kelce was also one of the top five selling NFL players across the league on Sunday. This, in turn, is a good sign for brands — if a single Swift appearance will get pop culture fanatics buying football jerseys, one can only imagine how keen they’ll be to spend when it’s from a brand they already love.
It’s this logic that drives NFL fashion partnerships: “As our fan base grows and evolves, we want to meet them where they are and where their interests are,” Ryan Samuelson, VP of consumer products at the NFL, says. “Partnering with notable brands that create specialised products for their audiences helps us ensure we have merchandise that appeals to all fans.”
The appeal of sports for brands is twofold, Nikolajev argues. For one, sports fans are high-value consumers because they’re loyal. “They’re loyal to their team, which is its own brand,” she says. Second, thanks to the presence of WAGs and superstars, which people are attuned to via avenues like TikTok, brands have an expanded target consumer group to capture. “WAGs are essentially a co-pilot to the sports industry through which brands can reach new and different audiences that are adjacent to this world, influence their purchasing behaviours and ultimately drive sales.”
Brands who don’t have existing partnerships don’t have to wait for next season. They can capitalise on the current moment with a quick social post. “The biggest thing brands need to do is get involved in a snapshot of that cultural moment,” Nikolajev says. Jewellery brand Local Eclectic, for instance, posted a snap of Swift cheering from the box with the caption: “When you find out Local Eclectic is having a sample sale on 9/29”.
A new playing field for luxury
Larger luxury players may have engaged less with the sport to date, but they do already have an awareness of the game’s cultural relevance, The Future Laboratory’s Harkin flags, noting player-brand relationships including Louis Vuitton and Baltimore Ravens’s Odell Beckham Jnr; Aston Martin and ex-New England Patriots player Tom Brady; and Vinta luggage and Carolina Panthers’s Cam Newton. NFL stars have also begun to show face at fashion weeks. During Paris men’s in June, Efe Obada, of the Washington Commanders, attended Hermès, and Stefon Diggs, who plays for Buffalo Bills, appeared at Louis Vuitton, Loewe, Rick Owens and Kiko Kostadinov.
Experts say luxury is likely to delve deeper into this pool. “As luxury brands extend their reach into the sports arena and, more importantly, increasingly act as cultural compasses, we may well see more NFL stars fronting luxury campaigns,” Harkin says. As brands turn their sights to younger audiences, brands will need to tap their penchant for streetwear and archival pieces, she says.
American jewellery brand David Yurman, for one, has long tapped NFL stars to host in-store events and partner on social media content. In GQ’s October issue, it decked out USC Trojans quarterback Caleb Williams in its pieces. The plan is to double-down on this strategy. “We view athletes and sports teams as a powerful vehicle to influence male consumers on their style decisions, and we have exciting plans to expand on these partnerships — specifically in the NFL — in the coming year,” David Yurman CMO Carolyn Dawkins says.
These collabs are about tapping younger audiences in ways that resonate, Harkin says. “If we see more luxe-sport collabs, they’ll be smarter, tapping into those ambassadors who can successfully convey a savoir-faire — a cultural know-how that is valuable in itself — shifting the codes of luxury in favour of subtle status signifiers over more obvious, overt displays of wealth.”
There’s ample opportunity for luxury to capture more American consumers, Conti, of Conti Communications says. It’s a demographic worth doubling down on, given it already accounts for over a quarter of personal luxury retail sales globally in 2023, according to Insider Intelligence. The market research company estimates that personal luxury retail sales in the US will amount to approximately $115.6 billion — 27.8 per cent of the $415.45 billion worldwide figure. That said, the US has faced a more ambivalent consumer this year as shoppers, especially in the aspirational category, have pulled back luxury spending.
“Ultimately, the NFL is an obvious opportunity for brands to tap into a broader American audience,” Conti says.
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