Have you heard? 2024 was a big year for fashion and sport. From the Olympics to the Euros, tennis to Formula One, fashion brands have invested more than ever this year, via athlete ambassadorships, sportswear collaborations and sporting events. Meanwhile, the sportswear market has been in flux, with shaky performances from heavyweights like Nike and Adidas, comeback kids New Balance and Puma hot on their heels, and burgeoning challenger brands from Hoka to On clawing market share.
The fashion-sports surge has been a long time coming. With the Paris Olympics, the growth of the NFL, football’s continued resonance with almost half of the world’s population, and growing engagement with running and functional fitness, sports fandom and participation is arguably at its apotheosis right now. And amid the luxury slowdown, it’s crucial for brands to build cultural relevance and emotional connection with consumers to maintain or gain market share. For luxury labels, sportswear collaborations are more accessible to the priced-out aspirational shopper. And for sportswear labels and luxury brands alike, collaborations allow them to align with consumers’ desires for versatile, fashion-forward athleisure dressing, straddling performance and style.
Here, Vogue Business breaks down the year in sportswear.
Olympics fever
The Olympics arrived in Paris this summer, and as soon as LVMH was announced as the event’s main sponsor (for a cool $150 million, according to reports) we knew fashion would be a main character of the games.
The Olympic torches were transported and displayed in Louis Vuitton trunks as they travelled across France, the medals were designed by LVMH-owned jeweller Chaumet, while Berluti created around 1,500 outfits for the French delegates to wear. LVMH also signed seven Team France ambassadors: fencer Enzo Lefort, paralympic sprinter Timothée Adolphe, rugby player Antoine Dupont and swimmer Léon Marchand were each signed by Louis Vuitton. While Dior tapped gymnast Mélanie de Jesus dos Santos, wheelchair tennis champion Pauline Déroulède and para-cyclist Marie Patouillet.
Elsewhere, Vogue took Vogue World to the French capital just before the Olympics, with a sports-inspired celebration of fashion through the decades. The show featured runway cameos from scores of athletes, including tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams, Taylor Fritz and Casper Ruud; snowsports stars Eileen Gu and Chloe Kim; members of the French national football and cycling teams, plus Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid (on horseback).
The games also gave rise to a new generation of sporting talent, as younger, digitally native athletes took to social media to document their experiences in Paris, for many of them their first “real” games (after a closed-door Tokyo 2021).
Women’s rugby soared on social media, thanks in part to Team USA women’s rugby player Ilona Maher, who won bronze with her team. Maher began posting on TikTok during the postponed Tokyo Olympics, giving audiences insight into the audience-free pandemic games and the Olympic Village. But during Paris 2024, the athlete went viral, gaining millions of followers across Instagram (currently at 4.7 million) and TikTok (3.4 million). She’s since appeared on Dancing with the Stars. From Korean pistol shooter Kim Yeji to BMX star Keiran Reilly, this Olympics saw a new cohort of niche sports stars going viral, many of whom have already piqued the interest of fashion brands and publications.
Sportswear brands themselves also invested heavily in the Olympics and the Euros. Nike staged the aforementioned event and sponsored hundreds of athletes, including Team USA, opening the Nike Olympic house close to the athlete village. Adidas sponsored almost 1,000 athletes and opened a multi-storey Adidas house in the centre of the city.
Luxury serves up new tennis tie-ins
Call it the Challengers effect, but fashion brands played some serious tennis in 2024. After Loewe designer Jonathan Anderson designed outfits for the Challengers film and press tour, releasing the iconic “I Told Ya” T-shirt from the film to buy, it kicked off a grand-slam season full of fashion moments and cemented tennis as one of luxury’s favourite sports.
In late June, Gucci unveiled a major campaign with ambassador Jannik Sinner, who was made world number one ahead of Wimbledon this year. In the first two days, the campaign generated $1 million in media impact value (the monetary value of posts, article mentions and social media interactions)MIV), per Launchmetrics.
Hugo Boss continued to invest heavily in sport this year. The brand held its annual grand slam, the Boss Open (formerly the Stuttgart Open), in June. Tennis players (and brand ambassadors) Matteo Berrettini and Taylor Fritz walked the Spring/Summer 2025 runway. The brand released a product collaboration with Berrettini in January, including tennis whites and accessories.
Wimbledon established itself as the most fashion-forward grand slam with celebrities like Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Nicole Scherzinger, Kaya Scodelario, Shygirl and Brittany Mahomes, wife of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, sporting all-white, tennis-inspired looks and preppy co-ords from brands including Ralph Lauren and Gucci. Meanwhile, clothing sales at the tournament, including its long-term collaboration with Ralph Lauren, doubled this year compared with 2023, according to Wimbledon organisers.
Incumbent reckoning
After years of challenges, major changes among sportswear incumbents took hold this year.
Before the pandemic, Nike was an unmatched force in sportswear. And while it’s still by far the biggest player in terms of revenue (the company reported earnings of $51.36 billion for fiscal 2024), Nike has had a difficult year. Nike’s bet on direct-to-consumer channels — which saw it pulling back on wholesale in favour of its Snkrs app and monobrand stores — didn’t quite pay off post-pandemic.
Critics, meanwhile, bemoaned a lack of innovation across Nike and other major sneaker brands, who relied too heavily on key silhouettes like the Air Force 1 and Jordans, flooding the market and diluting demand. Likely in response to criticisms around innovation, Nike held a huge ‘Reinventing Air’ event ahead of the Olympics in June, flying in 400 editors, talent and stakeholders to see an exhibition focused on Nike’s past, present and future footwear innovation, including a Pegasus Premium shoe launching in 2025. But its woes continued — and CEO John Donahoe exited in September, after several quarters of sales declines.
Nike appointed returning executive Elliott Hill, former president of consumer and marketplace, who retired in 2020 after 32 years at the company. And finally, there may be brighter times on the horizon: analysts are already positive about Hill’s leadership, as he intends to focus heavily on reinstating wholesale and product innovation.
Adidas, like Nike, met serious headwinds post-pandemic, largely due to its closure of successful sub-brand Yeezy, following founder Kanye West’s anti-semitic comments in 2022. The business posted its first losses in 30 years (€58 million) for fiscal 2023, following the scandal. But for 2024, the brand is bouncing back. Adidas revenue grew 7 per cent to $6.4 billion for Q3 2024 on a euro basis, beating analyst expectations based largely on the sales success of viral sneakers the Samba and the Gazelle. Adidas continued to sell off Yeezy inventory up until this year, but finally ended the saga last month, as Ye and Adidas reached a settlement (Adidas says Yeezy will not contribute any further profit to the business). The company increased its full-year guidance to reflect the better-than-expected performance during the third quarter and the “current brand momentum”, it stated. Adidas now expects currency-neutral revenues to increase at a rate of around 10 per cent in 2024, when the company announces earnings in March 2025.
Puma has also turned the tide in 2024. The brand relaunched retro sneaker the Speedcat with press and talent throughout the year, culminating in a major commercial launch in Milan this month, attended by ambassador Dua Lipa (British Vogue has already dubbed the shoe “the next big thing” and it was announced as the third hottest product of Q3 2024, per Lyst). After posting a sales decline in the final quarter of 2023, Puma returned to growth this year. Despite missing sales expectations for Q3 2024, the company expects single-digit growth for fiscal 2024, based on the Speedcat as well as growth in its wholesale network, said CEO Arne Freundt.
New Balance also had a big year, following a 23 per cent revenue spike in 2023. Like Adidas and Puma, the brand has benefitted from retro sneaker styles, in high demand post-pandemic. CEO Joe Preston told Fortune New Balance will be a $10 billion company “within a few years”.
Challenger brands rising
As Nike and Adidas met headwinds, challenger brands like Hoka and On gained some ground this year. Both were born out of the running community, and met with mainstream success as local running clubs boomed across Europe and the US (a symptom of Gen Z s desire to socialise in new ways that don’t involve drinking).
On had a big year. Amid the buzz around Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers in June, the brand signed the film’s lead, megastar Zendaya, for a multi-year creative partnership, in collections, campaigns and content. It was a departure for the sportswear brand that had previously only worked with athletes like tennis legend Roger Federer or track and field star Dominic Lokinyomo Lobalu. And a departure for Zendaya, whose previous partnerships include Louis Vuitton (current) and Valentino (2020-2023). In July, On unveiled its spray-on shoe, the Cloudboom Strike LS, using what the brand calls LightSpray technology, whereby an automated robotic arm sprays an ultralight one-piece shoe upper in a single sweep, made from a recyclable thermoplastic. For now, these are specialist styles made in small runs (athlete Hellen Obiri won bronze wearing a pair during the Paris Olympics marathon), but the brand hopes that in years to come they will be produced at scale. In October, On released the latest version of its sell-out Loewe capsule.
There’s also smaller brands capturing the female consumer in particular. US-based athleisure label Vuori was valued at $4 billion this year, and is in the process of opening 100 new stores by 2026, per Forbes. British athleisure label Adanola, based in Manchester, specialising in casualwear and activewear for the pilates and brunch customer, is already an eight-figure business and is set to double revenues this year as customers flock to its leggings and sweatsuits. Neighbouring label Represent 247 (also based near Manchester) has become the fastest-growing part of the £80 million revenue business (2024), while Tala, Grace Beverley’s solutions-based premium performancewear, rooted in athleisure and gym to office dressing, secured £5 million in funding in July.
From the mainstream to the niche, there’s scores of other sports that have raised their fashion game this year, from the NFL and Formula One to sailing. With the Rugby World Cup next year, a continued fascination with new racquet sports like padel and pickleball, and the continued rise of fitness tournaments like Hyrox, it’s all to play for in 2025.
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