Men’s tennis is ready to take fashion seriously.
The NBA and the NFL have turned pre-game tunnel walks into runway shows and have collaborated with buzzy brands ranging from Louis Vuitton to Skims, increasing revenue and strengthening players’ brands in the process. Now, the ATP Tour wants in.
In the lead up to the US Open, the men’s tennis tour set up styling suites with stylist Mobolaji Dawodu and photoshoots for five of its top players (Frances Tiafoe, Flavio Cobolli, Alex de Minaur, Andrey Rublev and Holger Rune), providing them with content for their social platforms and fashion-forward outfits to wear to the myriad pre-tournament events on their schedules. Rather than wearing their sponsors head-to-toe as is customary, the players were styled in looks from luxury brands like Ralph Lauren, Ferragamo and Issey Miyake, plus cool contemporary brands like Amiri, Officine Générale and Stone Island.
To draw the attention of new audiences and extend the life of such content, influential Instagram accounts in both the tennis and fashion space — including @HauteLeMode (516,000 followers) and @OvertimeTennis (30,100 followers) — have been asked by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) to review featured outfits over the next two weeks.
Also last week, the ATP Tour debuted its first fashion collaboration in years with contemporary Copenhagen brand Palmes — featuring T-shirts, polo tops, tennis shorts, caps and a tote bag. The tie-up was celebrated with a party of chic, tennis-adjacent influencers and press at New York’s Gem Home.
All of this is part of a larger fashion initiative that the ATP Tour plans to roll out more forcefully next year, according to Andrew Walker, the tour’s SVP of marketing. “There’s a clear intersection in interests between tennis and fashion for our fans, and we see this as an opportunity to bring fans who might be following the sport more casually deeper into the fold,” he says.
It’s also a way to support the personal brands of individual athletes. “Many players have a genuine interest in fashion, and they understand that fashion can be an incredibly powerful vehicle to grow and enhance their [personal] brands as they think about their off-court businesses and attracting more sponsors and fans,” explains Walker. This only helps to raise the sport’s profile more broadly. “Our athlete marketing division is specifically set up to support our athletes, so this was a natural way to do that.”
The relationship between tennis and fashion has reached new heights over the last few years, with global stars like Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz drawing renewed attention to the sport and partnering with luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton in the process. But this is the first time the men’s tour itself will be investing in a dedicated fashion marketing strategy.
The ATP Tour declined to comment on the investment involved in this initial fashion rollout but said that its budget for fashion initiatives is expected to quadruple in 2026. That will go towards stylists, photography, videography and marketing across various media channels, including influencer partnerships.
“Compared to the cost of staging an event or buying media, [the investment] would be relatively modest,” says Paul Whitehead, founder and CEO of Adored Sports Entertainment, a sports marketing consultancy. “The return isn’t measured in impressions — it’s measured in cultural relevance. If the content travels through players’ social platforms and into fashion and lifestyle media, the impact is disproportionately large. The key is to treat it not as a photoshoot, but as part of a new cultural playbook, where growth comes from freedom, experimentation and athletes driving the story.”
As for next year, the ATP’s fashion plans are threefold.
First, they’ll take the learnings from this initial pilot to run a more consistent programme of styling suites and photoshoots before multiple tournaments. The response from players and their agents has been hugely positive, says Walker.
“Tennis is very traditional, but style lets me show a different side of my personality and connect with people who might not even watch tennis,” says world number 17 Flavio Cobolli.
“It’s a way to reach out beyond tennis and show who I am as a person, not just as a player,” adds world number 11 Holger Rune.
Next, the ATP wants to put its own spin on the tunnel walk. “That has become a very popular showcase for athletes in other sports, and we think there’s a real opportunity to do the same for our players,” Walker says. While tennis stadiums do technically have tunnels, players use them to walk straight onto the court for a match where they’re obligated to wear their kit sponsors, making fashion statements a little tricky without a luxury collaborator. However, players are also filmed arriving at tournament sites for roughly 11 months of the year, presenting the ATP Tour with a different type of runway that will be utilised for fashion moments next year.
Finally, the ATP Tour is hoping to work with fashion brands more directly, particularly in the luxury space, whether that’s via a larger partnership akin to the NBA’s multi-year deal with Louis Vuitton, or on a player-by-player basis, connecting brands and players who would be a good fit while still respecting their competitive apparel sponsors like Nike and Adidas. “Those brands are endemic to our sport and naturally bring eyeballs to it, but I think bringing in more of these high-end fashion brands could have a multiplier effect in terms of how we’re marketing the sport,” says ATP’s Walker.
While tennis organisations have been slower to take advantage of fashion’s marketing power than other sports, its current boom in popularity has made this a prime time to do so.
“It’s a smart move, and we’ve already seen the playbook succeed elsewhere,” says Whitehead. “What ties all of this together is player power: fans follow athletes first, and fashion has become one of the most natural gateways into sport as players express more of their full selves. For the ATP, the payoff is positioning tennis players as cultural figures — making the sport part of a wider cultural conversation and opening it up to new audiences and new commercial categories.”
Fashion investments like these also help to boost athletes’ recognition and power regardless of their results, says stylist Dawodu. “With social media, we know of athletes today before they’re even winning big titles,” he says. “Fashion can help a person be legendary before they’re actually a legend on-court.”
For Walker and his team, this is just the beginning.
“I’m super excited about what we’ve done here,” he says, “but we have our eyes on a much bigger prize.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
Has fashion reached peak sport?
