Source: See hereEight 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".
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment