As more people pick up a racquet, tennis' culture is changing fast. But on the court, the brand landscape has remained the same for years. Is now the right time for a culturally fluent brand that can bridge both performance and lifestyle over the longer term?
106 million people now play tennis worldwide, a 25.6% increase in five years from 2019 to 2024, and around 44 million more than golf (ITF, R&A). In the US, the sport is growing particularly fast: participation has increased by approximately 33% over the past four years, driven by new players from diverse backgrounds, according to the USTA.
At the professional level, dynamic young players like Ben Shelton, Coco Gauff, and Carlos Alcaraz have made the game exciting to watch again, while pop culture moments like the film Challengers (2024), the Netflix TV series Break Point and the rise of tennis 'Wags' have paved the way for aesthetic trends like "tennis-core," bringing the sport to new audiences.
The result is a new energy around the sport. In London during Wimbledon, upstart lifestyle brands Palmes and Spence hosted pop-ups at Selfridges and Tracksmith. Indie publications like Bagel and Racquet seem aimed more at readers of The Face than at French Open spectators. And in LA and New York, carrying a Babolat in your tote bag has become a status symbol.
On the surface, tennis has never looked readier for innovation. But unlike other sports like running and golf that have seen performance-led challenger brands emerge alongside new subcultures around the sport, tennis has been unable to innovate. Today it's still dominated by brands like Lacoste, Adidas, Nike and Yonex, which have been around for decades.
In this piece, we analyse the lifestyle versus performance split in the tennis brand landscape, the challenges a new independent brand faces, and explore case studies on On Running and emerging racquet brands. We also spoke to experts Daniel Yaw-Miller, founder of SportsVerse, and Amanda Greeley, founder of challenger brand Spence Racquet Sports, to understand where the new opportunity lies.
It’s clear that while tennis culture is primed for brand disruption, starting a brand from scratch is only one solution. Existing stakeholders have the power to also change the sport, and should think beyond short-term collaborations to create products that deliver on the new tennis customer’s needs and drive culture forward.
"The 'cool' versions of tennis are still quite performative. Everyone’s leaning into this fake country club aesthetic and they all end up looking the same. When you go to a real court, no one’s dressed like that." — Amanda Greeley, Founder, Spence
The Tennis Brand Landscape
Brands in tennis are stuck between the fashion lifestyle category and performance technical gear, with the middle ground reserved for short-term collaborations.
On the lifestyle side, brands like Sporty&Rich, Settinn and Palmes have each brought their own unique spin on tennis, bridging the gap between the sport and a younger, more style-conscious consumer. But because their lifestyle products fail to translate into functionality on the professional court, they lack a sense of authority and, at the pro level, endorsement power. Tennis-inspired lifestyle labels tend to remain entrenched in the fashion bucket, treating tennis as an aesthetic to play off, rather than a sport.
Take Alo Yoga. Despite not sponsoring any female professional players, the brand's lifestyle-first ‘Match Point Tennis Skirt’ is the top-grossing ‘tennis’ product on Particl this year, generating $7.1M in just 90 days.
This diluted tennis aesthetic is quickly getting tired. As Amanda Greeley, Founder of upstart tennis label Spence explains, “The 'cool' versions of tennis are still quite performative. Everyone’s leaning into this fake country club aesthetic and they all end up looking the same. When you go to a real court, no one’s dressed like that. There’s a disconnect between what tennis culture actually is and how it’s presented." The opportunity, then, is creating something "that feels cool and future-looking, not trapped in that old world.”
On the performance side, the same group of brands have dominated for decades. With little incentive to take stylistic risks, the likes of Adidas, Nike, Yonex, and Lacoste continue to prioritise function over fashion. Kits tend to feel safe and boring, carbon copies from player to player. “There was a time when tennis lacked interesting characters, but now we’ve got them again. This new generation of pros is super captivating, but that's not being reflected in the players' personal style on court. All the women at Wimbledon wore the same dress,” says Greeley.
The middle ground: When attempts are made to bridge the gap, it often happens in the form of a temporary collaboration. Fashion brands like A.P.C, Palace, Miu Miu, Off-White and KITH have all collaborated with equipment companies on tennis apparel, with some even worn by pro players on tour. But when the player is knocked out of the tournament and the week ends, culture inevitably moves on. Beyond the ‘as worn by’ posts and the excitement amongst a small group of fashion-aware tennis players, their impact is fleeting.
That's where smaller labels like Spence come in. Promising something more impactful than a temporary collaboration, the brand is vouching to disrupt tennis apparel through collections that look as good as they perform, with Greeley citing the likes of Bandit Running as a key inspiration. For now, though, they're waiting for culture to catch up. Spence is still small, aimed at a niche subset of tennis customers.
Whether it's performance, style, or scale, current tennis brands all face a problem. It's clear there's never been more space for a challenger to bridge the gap, but it still doesn’t exist. Why?
01. Big Brand Dominance
Both Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz wore Nike for the Wimbledon final last Sunday. When it comes to brands worn on court, tennis continues to be a “closed shop,” with “the same tight roster of equipment and sportswear brands dominating the space for years,” says Daniel Yaw-Miller, Writer of SportsVerse.
This is made harder for upstart brands by how young these sponsorships start: “A lot of top athletes have been with the same brands since they were in academies, sometimes from as young as six or seven, so the pathways are highly restricted.”
The top five sports brands sponsor 57% of the top 50 men’s and women’s Players, with Nike and Adidas taking 22% and 20% of the total share respectively.
02. Cultural Stagnation
It's easy to ask where the brands are now that participation is booming, but historically the tennis category has been tiny compared to the likes of soccer, and running. Even for legacy players, this challenges the incentive to innovate. "Tennis is one of those sports that’s never really needed to reinvent itself culturally. It’s always had a captive audience and enough purists who love the game, so there hasn’t been much pressure to change," says Yaw-Miller.
But today, that's changing. The sport is in a "sweet spot," says Yaw-Miller: “It still has that old-school prestige, but it’s actively opening up by embracing new voices and tapping into adjacent cultures like fashion, music, and art.”
With that comes a demand for new ideas, and new brands: searches on Google for 'tennis apparel' have risen by 70% in the past year, a sharper rise than the previous year.
03. Barriers to Entry
Building a technical apparel brand is time and capital intensive. Where bigger brands are able to leverage economies of scale, adapting products from other sports to develop tennis lines to enter the category, it's much harder for upstarts to break through.
Even for legacy brands like Wilson, launching apparel has proven far more complex than a simple add-on. The brand only introduced tennis apparel as a category in May 2022, before signing pro Marta Kostyuk as their first head-to-toe apparel deal in January 2023.
The Opportunity: Claiming Tennis Culture
As tennis culture develops, startups and existing sportswear brands are seizing the opportunity, launching more fashion-forward lines and fusing the sport with creative energy.
Case Study: On Running
Unlike its competitors, On is a larger brand that has managed to successfully generate energy around the sport. On entered the tennis market in 2019 through a collaborative shoe with investor Roger Federer. Since then, the Swiss running brand has become increasingly prevalent on court through the sponsorship of Ben Shelton, Flavio Cobolli, João Fonseca, and Wimbledon ladies champion Iga Swiatek.
Off the court, the brand has recognised the potential in doing something other brands fail to do: connecting tennis to subculture and embracing the amateur enthusiast.
The brand's Clubhouse Nights events have become highly anticipated in the tennis calendar, mixing performance, entertainment, star power and tennis. Previous events include performances from Yaeji and Burna Boy, pro player features from Shelton and Cobolli, and attendees like model Mia Regan and fashion writer Sam Hine.
On also regularly collaborates with niche players in the space, like Stretch Armstrong's Ace Club in Paris. By leaning into personalities around the sport rather than just elite performance, On has built a tennis brand with the technical credentials of Nike, and a lifestyle element more akin to a streetwear brand.
As Greeley puts it, “Everyone still wants the Nike deal, but the top-down 'Be Like Mike' model feels outdated. The most exciting sports brands today are speaking to competitive amateurs. People who played growing up and are getting back into it, like teaching pros or creative professionals who love tennis."
“A lot of tennis brands present the sport as if the player is only obsessed with tennis. But most people are dynamic and interested in broader culture too. Connecting tennis to music, art, and design makes a brand more interesting.”
Case Study: Next-Gen Racquet Brands
It's not just apparel. "On the equipment side, there are brands that are beginning to break into tennis culture, which we’ll hopefully see being used by professionals soon," says Yaw-Miller.
Racquet companies like Furi Sport are now challenging legacy players like Babolat, founded in 1875. Launched by ex-professional Erick Mathelier in Brooklyn in 2021, the brand takes inspiration from the street courts of New York City over conventional country clubs. The result is an authentic cultural connection with a new generation of city-dwelling players.
Other racquet brands are embracing collaborations to cut through. LA-based company Solinco recently collaborated with streetwear label Brain Dead on a version of its Whiteout V2 racquet, quickly selling out.
Though racquets have a far higher barrier to entry than apparel, they face an equally outdated competitor set. These brands embrace newfound energy around the sport to offer consumers a similar level of technical performance to the likes of Head and Yonex, but with a sense of newness and cultural edge.
How Brands Can Win In Tennis
The brands that prioritise the following factors will be the ones that define tennis culture going forward:
01. Seek Personality
Legacy brands sacrifice expression for reliability. Partnerships like Coco Gauff x New Balance x Miu Miu work because they bring a player's individual style into the collaborative mix. Finding the right people to express the brand's message translates authenticity through the product, moving it beyond aesthetic cosplay.
Brands who don't have the same access to professional sponsorships should invest in key personalities, community leaders, niche taste-makers and next-gen talent to act as key figures.
02. Remix Over Rejection
Tennis remains aspirational, but it’s also becoming more open. The brands that can toe the line between access and exclusivity, heritage and youth culture will resonate the most. The opportunity here is to re-interpret not reject. How can your brand use exclusive tournaments as a springboard for creativity and community rather than reinforcing a closed door?
03. Invest in Product
Tennis is, foremost, a sport. Brands in the space need to serve a function: to support performance on the court. In running, brands like SATISFY and Bandit have shown that it's not enough to coat mediocre products with a subcultural facade. An effective challenger will invest in product first, creating highly functional products that maintain their technical credibility in their bid to be 'fashion-forward'.
04. Play the Long Game
It takes more than a flash in the pan collaboration like Yonex x Supreme to define tennis culture. A true tennis breakthrough will come from a brand that commits to the sport across players, product, culture, and storytelling over many years. “A brand deeply rooted in racquet sports trying to shift culture long-term is a completely different thing from a luxury brand staging a one-off ‘tennis club’ activation,” explains Greeley.
On Running didn’t just create a tennis line, they built a brand ecosystem around tennis that matures with their players, community and products, season after season. An effective challenger brand will understand this, building a brand through patience and perseverance over drops and hype.
“We’re beginning to see what ‘new’ can actually look like in this space. Even without a clear start-from-scratch brand, there’s clear momentum toward a more modern, next-gen expression of tennis culture.” — Daniel Yaw-Miller, Writer, SportVerse
Final Thoughts
Tennis is evolving, slowly opening up to embrace pop culture and subcultures like music, fashion, and art. Like running and golf, how you look is becoming as important as how you play; and, as more players pick up a racquet, the court is opening up, becoming a hotspot for new ideas and brands.
But tennis needs more than another collaboration or lifestyle brand.
It needs a brand that can thread the needle between technical credibility, cultural fluency, and long-term vision. Because, as other sports have shown, when the right brand shows up at the right time, it can shift culture.