Tennis Is ‘Having a Moment.’ Where Are the Legacy Brands?
Many racket sports labels are opting to stay in their lane, focussing on performance gear and equipment rather than chasing new audiences with fashion collections and community events.
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Racket sports are “having a moment,” depending on who you listen to.
I usually roll my eyes when I hear people talk like this, but this time I may be inclined to agree.
In tennis, there’s a crop of young and exciting players coming through on both the men’s and the women’s tours, while new entrant brands like On and Lululemon are disrupting the sport with interesting athlete signings, buzzy activations around major tournaments and compelling apparel and sneaker designs. There are exciting fashion-adjacent print publications increasingly dedicated to the sport, like Racquet and Bagel.
The business of padel, as we know already, is booming. Just this week, the US-based Pro Padel League raised $10 million in seed funding ahead of its second full season this year, as excitement around the sport and amateur participation continues to soar in North America, Europe and the Middle East. Big Pickleball™ still claims it’s the world’s fastest growing sport, and for the purposes of this newsletter and this newsletter only, we won’t question it. Even squash has seen an uptick in adoption from new players.
But despite all-time high demand for and participation in tennis and other racket sports across the board, the legacy brands which have been involved in performance racket sports for decades — in some cases, centuries — don’t seem to be interested in taking up the opportunity to get in front of these new audiences.
By way of comparison, since football (s*ccer) became a big thing in the fashion world over the past few years, countless legacy sportswear brands — from big dogs like Nike and Adidas to indie favourites like Kappa, Umbro and Hummel — all rushed to create compelling fashion-forward apparel offerings designed to appeal to the new eyeballs suddenly on the sport from an entirely new demographic of consumers.
In tennis and other racket sports, this simply hasn’t happened. Yet there are countless iconic performance brands with rich history, IP and iconic athlete partners which are perfectly positioned to do the same thing. Babolat, K-Swiss, Yonex, Wilson, Head, Prince, all have played their part in shaping the aesthetic of tennis over the years.
But none of them seem to have successfully devised a strategy to allow themselves to benefit from the new era of interest in the look and feel racket sports both from the fashion industry and consumers in general. (I’m not including Lacoste in here, to focus on performance sportswear labels, but I think the brand has actually done a really good job at realigning its identity with tennis under creative director Pelagia Kolotouros.)
Tennis’ legacy brands should take a cautionary tale from the running world. Established sportswear brands sat back as the popularity of running (and running culture) exploded at the onset of the pandemic. They failed to pay attention to the young, fast-growing start-ups like On and Hoka experiencing hyper-growth by working with local running groups, hosting fun pop-ups, working with running influencers and launching fashion-forward collaborations with streetwear brands.
All of a sudden, the running community became accustomed to going to these smaller labels that they felt were better attuned to the needs of the modern-day runner, which in turn incubated demand for even more niche running brands to thrive, such as Satisfy, Soar, Bandit, Tracksmith, District Vision and others. Today, Nike and Adidas are still playing catch up to the sport they once dominated, simply because they took their eye off the ball at the wrong time.
While this phenomenon hasn’t occurred in racket sports yet — likely because of how much higher the barriers to entry and adoption are compared to running — it’s only a matter of time before new performance apparel, footwear and even equipment brands begin springing up. In padel, for example, start-up brands like UK-based Pulco Studios are seeing rapid adoption from consumers and interest from high-end retailers for their sleek, fashion-forward take on performance-wear for a sport that very few brands have considered how to effectively market themselves in.
Mixed Efforts
In many cases, a lot of performance racket-sports brands simply aren’t in a position or even willing to branch out of their core focus, for various reasons. Racket-maker Babolat, for example, is a private company and has been a family-run business since 1875. It makes good strings, it makes good rackets, some basic footwear and apparel — and likely has no interest in investing its hard-earned cash pursuing fashion-forward consumers by creating lifestyle collections, collaborations and fashion-style pop-ups. That’s fair enough.
Several other of tennis’ iconic performance brands have fallen on hard times and have been passed around by different holding companies and licensing groups. Prince — whose rackets were once used by countless greats like Andre Agassi and Maria Sharapova — for example, is owned by Authentic Brands Group (where once iconic brands go to die), which acquired it in 2012 after it had filed for bankruptcy. Similarly, K-Swiss has had several comeback attempts of its own under different ownership and still provides footwear for several players on tour, including Frances Tiafoe.
Wilson is probably the legacy brand which has pushed the hardest to align itself with the newfound cultural and fashion appeal of racket sports. Over the years it has opened flagship retail stores designed to house both its multi-sports performance gear but also its tennis-inspired fashion collections.
It has released collaborations with household fashion-hitmaker names like this preppy tennis-inspired capsule with Ronnie Fieg and Kith. It has also signed influencers like Morgan Riddle (the partner of American tennis player Taylor Fritz), who has done great work in using her platform to boost tennis’ cultural cachet and fashionable aesthetic among younger audiences across the world. Yet still, the brand has come up short when it comes to truly connecting to modern tennis culture, and showing up in a big way at community-focused events or big tournaments.
Collectively, these brands are leaving millions of dollars on the table by failing to build out community-first strategies to capitalise on the cultural boom occurring in racket sports.
Right now is the time to start figuring that out, before young and disruptive brands come to take their lunch money, or worse — the cultural hype around racket sports fades away.
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Until next time!
DYM
It feels odd, especially with the current momentum of old-school aesthetics and vintage clothing — they could reinterpret performance wear while also helping shape street style
I definitely think these legacy brands need to become more aggressive in their strategy because not only will a new brand come along but fashion brands are leaning into tennis core and fully taking share of market. Free People now has a tennis collection and ON just recently dedicated an entire collection to tennis. One brand I would also say is doing good work like Wilson is Yonex who also recently open retail stores with really cool vibey retail experience. As always, excellent article!