How Art of Football Is Bringing Fashion to Sports Merch

The UK design house met with SportsVerse to reflect on a breakout year with record sales and discussed its expansion plans ahead of the 2026 World Cup. Plus, what I'm watching in sports culture.

Jan 23, 2025

Hi friends, and welcome back to SportsVerse. As a journalist in this sports-fashion-culture-business niche, I’ve been fortunate to profile countless great minds pushing this space forward, from sportswear giant CEOs to independent designers to all-star athletes and their stylists. Shining a light on the people and businesses you all should know about is something I decided I would prioritise on SportsVerse, alongside my usual industry analysis.

To kick off this series of profiles, I sat down with Luke Cuthbert and Kelvyn Quagraine, co-founder and head of brand, respectively, at Art of Football (AoF), a UK-based design house which over the last decade has quietly transformed the way football fans around of the world view and interact with merch honouring their favourite teams and players.

In a wide-ranging interview, Cuthbert and Quagraine shared the story of AoF’s rise from humble beginnings to collaborating with some of the largest footballing and corporate organisations in the world, how 2024 was a breakout year for the brand with record sales thanks to a little help from Guinness, and their expansion plans with an eye on the 2026 World Cup in North America.

Stick around, it’s going to be a good one.

But first, here are three things I’m watching in sports culture this week.

Guillermo Andrade was always going to go big for his comeback 424 show at Paris Fashion Week, but he really spoiled us. Arsenal alum Robert Pires and Mathieu Flamini and Tottenham’s Destiny Udogie walked the show, which also teased a Nike collaboration and a Balotelli-inspired jacket.
Speaking of athletes at fashion week, they don’t just appear there by magic. David Bellion and Danny Williams—former pro footballers themselves—help their athlete clients (like Leroy Sané and Ryan Babel) navigate show appearances, fittings and showroom appointments through their Paris-based agency, Ultra Organisation.
Adidas is still killing it. The brand reported sales of €23.7 billion ($24.7 billion) in 2024, up 12 percent from the year before. It also added more than €1 billion in operating profit last year. That post-Yeezy comeback is looking good.

Also, please don’t forget to refer your friends to SportsVerse for insights and good times they can’t get anywhere else.

More Than Just “Merch”

The idea of sports merch and fanwear can often carry negative connotations of cheaply-made, mass-produced printed T-shirts and accessories that break down after the first wash. Art of Football was born out of a desire to offer football fans something which celebrated their passions on a deeper, more meaningful level.

“We spotted this gap in the market for presenting clothing that captured those true moments of art that football can throw up, the split-second moments that made you fall in love with sport,” said Luke Cuthbert.

Luke and Gabe Cuthbert—the youngest of five brothers from a Nottingham Forest-supporting family—set about going through all 20 Premier League teams to create a design for each which centred around the pivotal moments in their history. The designs were far more than your usual screen-printed T-shirts. They included Gabe’s hand-drawn artwork, layered with other elements like renderings of newspaper cutouts.

In 2014, they produced a small run of those initial designs for each team and opened an online store. Things were ticking along slowly until the perfect moment presented itself: a last-minute goal from Bobby Zamora in the 2014 Championship play-off final sent QPR into the Premier League against all odds. Gabe quickly got to work on a reactive design to commemorate the moment, which went on sale the next day. After making only a small handful of sales each day since opening their website, the QPR T-shirts went viral, and they sold 400 units within two days. Art of Football was born.

In the years following, the brand added more artists to the design team alongside Gabe and began converting football fans around the UK with quick-turnaround, artistic tributes to their favourite teams in the form of clothing.

Fashion and Sports Collide

It wasn’t all smooth sailing. For years, AoF had no official ties to the teams whose fanbases it was designing clothing for.

“We learned over the years from a few cease and desists what we could and couldn't do from an IP perspective. But we felt like we were reaching a ceiling of how big we could take things if we couldn’t officially work with the teams, or use their crests on our designs,” Luke told SportsVerse. (Today, Luke and Gabe operate the company as managing director and chief executive, respectively).

AoF’s first team partnership in 2022 was a full-circle moment, signed with the Cuthberts’ local team, Nottingham Forest, fresh off the back of their promotion to the Premier League. The reaction from the team’s fanbase caught them off guard, with Nottingham Forest-related merch selling out within 24 hours on AoF’s website. But it was the perfect proof of concept. Instead of creating designs from the outside, AoF suddenly had access to shoot the products on players at the team’s facilities.

“It gave us this instant credibility,” said Luke.

AoF’s head of brand, Kelvyn Quagraine had joined the company that summer, and along with the co-founders, led an ambitious 18-month project to sign licensing deals with as many influential teams across European football as possible. Today, Art of Football is partnered with over half the teams in the Premier League and a handful of others across Europe. Another factor in the growing recognition of its products was big-ticket collaborative partnerships with global brands like Pepsi (a tie-up with Vinicius Jr) and Puma (a limited edition collection fronted by France legend Thierry Henry).

These moves coincided with the ever-growing convergence of sports and fashion, as sports fans around the world grew more appreciative of fashion-forward takes on their team's clothing, leading to well-placed brands like AoF gaining unprecedented attention—and sales.

“There was definitely this growing appreciation for the work we’re doing and our mission to redefine what people see as sports merch,” Quagraine said.

Other companies in the category are also feeling the love. Last May, the Chernin Group invested $38.5 million in Classic Football Shirts, a UK-based company that sells football team jerseys—whose popularity soared as soccer jerseys became a must-have item for fashion consumers and a fixation of luxury designers—and recently opened the doors to its first US brick-and-mortar store.

AoF experienced its own boom in sales, with revenue for November and December 2024 up 80 per cent compared to the same period the year before, boosted in part by a popular collaboration with Guinness that sold thousands of units across two sold-out drops on either side of the New Year. 2025 is off to a flying start too: January sales are up 122 percent year-over-year, Cuthbert said.

Going Global

AoF is plotting the next phase of its international expansion, boosted by its recent growth streak and unprecedented attention from clubs and other interested collaborators.

The US is already AoF’s second largest market, without the company having any stores or distribution facilities in North America, Cuthbert said. In the lead-up to the 2026 World Cup, set to be one of the biggest football-culture showcases in history, the plan is to begin formalising the brand’s presence in the market and connection to fan groups across North America, with community pop-ups in key cities and a dedicated e-commerce store among the plans being considered by leadership.

“The goal is to take what we’ve learned working with teams and fans in the UK and Europe over to the US, bringing the way we approach merch to football fans over there, but also potentially identifying other sports we could expand into down the line,” Quagraine said. “Be it rugby, Formula 1, the NFL or the NBA, these are all sports we feel we can bring our expertise to with the right partners when the time is right.”

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