At Wimbledon, Luxury Brands Get Tennis FOMO
But female players are being left behind.
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Lorenzo Musetti didn’t last long at Wimbledon this year. In fact, his tournament started and ended in the first round. People had high hopes for the up-and-coming Italian, given that he reached the semi-finals at last year’s tournament and at the French Open in June.
Luckily, this is SportsVerse, and we don’t care about all that. What we care about is that world no.7 Musetti, in his fleeting visit to south-west London, delivered what will be one of the most discussed off-court moments of this year’s tournament.
When Musetti walked on court for his first-round match earlier this week, he did so wearing a Bottega jacket. It was confirmation of his new role as an ambassador of the Italian luxury house, which was first indicated when the brand’s creative director, Louise Trotter, was spotted in his player’s box during the French Open last month.
The walk-on moment (tennis’ equivalent to the NBA/WNBA tunnel walk) is increasingly being used as a stage to showcase these moments and announce new partnerships, as a new wave of luxury brands encroaches on the sport. It was this same moment at Wimbledon last year that Gucci used to announce its deal with Italian star Jannik Sinner, when he walked on court carrying a bag designed by the brand, which under normal circumstances would have violated the tournament’s stringent dress code.
Luxury brands are flooding into tennis — that goes without saying.
The same thing is happening to tennis that happened in Formula 1 and football (soccer) in recent years. All of these sports have long retained ties to high-end luxury watch and apparel brands due to the upper-class/exclusive nature of their fanbases and stakeholders. The difference is, these sports are all now reaching major audiences who appreciate the aesthetics and culture of the sports as much as they do what happens on the court, track or field. Brands now sense the opportunity to divert those new eyeballs to their shiny products. Tennis’ time is next up.
Wimbledon, a Fashion Mecca
It makes sense why brands are increasingly using Wimbledon as a launchpad for such announcements. In a strict environment which favours uniformity and compliance above all — a rarity in the modern sports world dominated by ads and commercial activations — any deviation from this will stand out tenfold.
Just as Sinner’s Gucci walk-on moment was the talk of the town at last year’s tournament, Musetti’s Bottega entrance (and swift exit) will dominate the conversation from here on out.
Sadly for Bottega, the brand will miss out on the opportunity to celebrate its new partnership while still fresh, as Musetti will play no further part in the tournament. But as a brand, those are the risks you must balance with the potential rewards when you decide to work with professional athletes — the narrative is simply out of your control.
I’ve been getting a lot of calls lately from other writers looking to find out more about the uniqueness of Wimbledon and why it makes for such an alluring spectacle for brands to engage with. I’ve told them all the same thing: tennis has always been exciting, tennis has always been a fertile ground for luxury brand partnerships — but now the industry’s biggest companies are diving in, everyone else is getting FOMO.
After Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner were snapped up last year by Louis Vuitton and Gucci, respectively, marketing departments at other luxury brands were scrambling to work out how they could get in on the act too. It seems the strategy they all settled on was simple: pick a handsome player from their home country.
Burberry announced British no.1 Jack Draper as its latest ambassador ahead of Wimbledon.
Bottega Veneta picked fellow Italian Musetti (Sinner, no doubt a preferable choice) was already taken by Gucci).
Canali, another Italian luxury label, broke ranks on Monday by signing an ambassador from another country, selecting the incredibly handsome Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece.
APC launched an on-court and off-court tennis collection with Asics earlier this summer, which has been worn by Asics athletes such as Alex de Minaur and Mr. Musetti himself.
“How do these brands actually use these ambassadors?” I hear you ask. It’s a good question. Most of the time their job is to get paid a nice fee to sit there and look pretty, wearing the brands’ clothing to red carpet events, for pre-game walk-ons and in ad campaigns.
Some brands use it as a way to flex their proximity and access to sports’ greatest stars — a smart marketing tool. Gucci, for example, hosted a VIP dinner in London with Sinner ahead of Wimbledon last week. Burberry hosted influencers and models for the evening session on Tuesday.
A Missed Opportunity
Notably, this influx of partnerships between brands and players has almost exclusively been aimed at the men’s tour.
For female tennis pros, the luxury brand deals are few and far between. Naomi Osaka was a Louis Vuitton ambassador back in 2021 and it’s unclear whether that relationship still exists (unlikely). Dior signed Chinese tennis star Qinwen Zheng as a global ambassador in January 2025. And that is pretty much the extent of it.
Of course, Miu Miu is working with Coco Gauff and doing a great job of it, too, though that relationship is via New Balance (i.e. on a smaller scale to a full-blown ambassador deal between player and brand).
It seems a major missed opportunity on the part of fashion brands to overlook the women’s tour. Tennis is one of the few global sports where in flagship tournaments (Wimbledon, French Open, Australian Open, US Open), men and women are paid equally. Female tennis stars would make for ideal luxury brand ambassadors, helping brands speak to their (majority female) audiences in fresh ways. I expect we will see more and more relationships between female tennis players and brands in the coming years, but progress has been slow.
I’m excited to see what storylines come from the rest of the action at Wimbledon over the next week and a half.
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride. And to all my American readers, happy holidays!
See you next time,
DYM
Iga Swiatek signed with Lancôme and Dior last year, btw
Radacanu also signed with Dior after she won the US Open, not sure if she’s still an ambassador but 100% agree it’s a currently a missed opportunity for brands in the women’s tour with athletes like Badosa, Sabalenka etc.