NFL’s strategy: turning licensing into marquee partnerships

From team-branded fashion shows to tunnel-walk capsules and luxury watch deals, sport and fashion are converging at speed. The NFL has rolled smaller licensing tie-ups into marquee partnerships, while the WNBA is emerging as a fertile ground for inventive brand-player collaborations. But alongside the growth is bloat: logo-slap collections, clearance-rack remnants and fuzzy KPIs.

Senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young and executive editor Brian Baskin are joined by BoF sports correspondent Mike Sykes to map the deals that resonate and the ones that miss — and how success of these partnerships are being measured beyond the momentary halo.

Key Insights: 

• The WNBA is a collaboration engine because players are the drivers, not passengers. “I think the WNBA right now is a breeding ground for some of these deals in part because the players are eager to find these other opportunities to spread their portfolio,” Sykes says. That unlocks new formats: partnerships “not just between teams and brands or the league and brands, but players themselves and the brands [that] manifest in really cool and unique ways.”

• Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) has supercharged women’s sports, and fashion is part of the bargaining. Sheena points out the 2021 shift when “college athletes could not monetise their name, image, or likeness” and then stars like “Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark were becoming brands in their own right.” That changes how teams and leagues engage players: “fashion deals can be a bargaining chip on both sides of that equation.”

• As sports and fashion collaborations become more ubiquitous, authentic propositions are needed to cut through the noise. As Butler-Young puts it, the best examples “take the collections seriously. They treat it like a real fashion product. ‘Anything will do’ – people see through that.” Sykes agrees: “To work with players, you have to work with teams that really want to do things the right way.” It has to make sense for the consumer, and when it doesn’t, the audience calls it out. “The Chelsea and OVO collection was kind of a logo-slap.  Even the fans were like, ‘This isn’t it.’”  

• For some brands and athletes involved in these collaborations, partnerships are judged on reach and relevance rather than immediate revenue as the key marker of success. Sykes points to the NFL x Veronica Beard blazers: “There’s still some of that product left and it’s 75 to 80 per cent discounted … you have to look at that as a failure.” Yet the league “takes a holistic view,” he says: even if one capsule doesn’t sell through, lessons on “what you produce, how much, where you produce it, who your core audiences are” feed the next partnership.

Additional Resources:

• Sports and Fashion Are Tighter Than Ever. But Who’s Really Winning? 
• Has Fashion’s Convergence With Sports Gone Too Far?  
• How WNBA Players Are Using Merch to Underscore Their Value  

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