The best football teams in Europe have their official drinks, official banking partners, official airlines and, increasingly, their official luxury fashion sponsors.
Moncler and Dior are among the brands that last year signed deals to design formal wear or sportswear for Europe’s top soccer clubs. Italian soccer club Napoli’s ongoing partnership with Giorgio Armani, comprising a variety of on-field apparel and special-edition pieces, began selling what became known as the most expensive soccer jersey in September, priced at retail. from €125 ($141). The link generated positive press; the british tabloid Sun he noted that opposition players would be lucky to get their hands on the Napoli designer kit after a match.
Dior’s association with the French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) sees the brand’s artistic director, Kim Jones, design a formal wear collection for the men’s team. It has already earned the brand several valuable product placement moments, including during the highest-profile player transfer in football history, when global superstar Lionel Messi was introduced to the world as a PSG player in August, in a photo wearing a Dior capsule suit. PSG’s Instagram post announcing the news attracted more than eight million likes.
The flurry of deals between luxury brands and football clubs represents the culmination of a decades-long change in attitude on both sides. Until the 1990s, many brands feared any association with football, then known as much for its rowdy fans as it was for the action on the pitch. Dr. Martens were once the footwear of choice for English football hooligans, so much so that in the 1970s, police required fans to remove their laces, or even their shoes, in stadiums. The Italian Stone Island label was known as the unofficial kit for the most violent fans known as ultras in European football.
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Since then, the commercialization of the football industry and the evolution of teams and footballers themselves towards global brands has forced the sport to clean up its act. Europe’s top clubs are now global entities, owned by billionaires or (in the case of Manchester City and PSG) Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds.
In the late 1990s, footballer David Beckham became the game’s first crossover superstar, attending fashion week shows, modeling in campaigns for Calvin Klein and benefiting from multiple brand endorsement touches. Today, it is common for brand campaigns and fashion editorials to feature soccer players; Liverpool FC’s Egyptian striker Mo Salah stars on the cover of the January issue of British GQ.
New global audiences
The importance of menswear to brands means that the male-dominated football audience is an audience primed for marketing efforts. July’s European Championship was watched by five billion people in 229 territories, according to UEFA, the tournament’s governing body.
Meanwhile, streetwear has become a key driver of luxury goods sales; Stone Island, now owned by Moncler, is a favorite of Drake, Spike Lee and British rappers Skepta and Dave, and the brand’s gritty past plays into its authenticity in the eyes of customers.
Soccer is particularly useful for global luxury brands that aspire to fully integrate into their customers’ lifestyles. The global reach of top European clubs – many have large fan bases and business operations in China – is another advantage. Moncler’s recent formalwear partnership with Chinese-owned Italian club Inter Milan was designed to “connect with new communities in meaningful and authentic ways,” the brand’s chief executive Remo Ruffini said by email.
“It wasn’t so much that fashion brands tried and got it wrong, it just wasn’t happening at all. Nobody was looking to infiltrate the world of football through the prism of fashion,” said Hamish Stephenson, co-founder of GAFFER and False 9, the London-based digital platform and marketing agency dedicated to “bridging the gap” between fashion and football. . Luxury brands are waking up to “the true commercial potential of soccer, in terms of exploring and amplifying the cultural currency of the game,” he said.
Footballers: powerful brand ambassadors
Last year, Jonathan Anderson tapped American soccer star Megan Rapinoe for a Loewe ad campaign, while English soccer players Raheem Sterling and Trent Alexander-Arnold appeared in campaigns for Bottega Veneta. Last week, Paris Saint-Germain defender Thilo Kehrer was recruited by Alexandre Mattiussi for French brand Ami’s Autumn/Winter 2022 campaign. Players also represent powerful marketing tools for brands, with engaged followings often equaling or exceeding those of the labels seeking to partner with them. On Instagram, Rapinoe and Sterling have two million and nine million followers respectively, while 23-year-old French footballer Kylian Mbappé, Dior’s global menswear ambassador, has more than 65 million followers, compared to 39 million. of the luxury house. A recent post by Mbappe, promoting sunglasses brand Oakley, garnered more than three million likes on Instagram. Soccer superstars Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are the first and third most followed people on the platform.
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“Social networks have given us [athletes] the ability to break out of the soccer bubble,” said Bellerín, who walked for Louis Vuitton at Paris menswear week in 2019 and now (along with his business partner Ehsen Shah) runs B-Engaged, an agency that negotiates associations between brands and your list. top-tier soccer talent.
An added bonus for brands is that modern footballers are increasingly comfortable publicly embracing social causes such as anti-racism, youth education and equal pay for women in sport. There have been notable campaigns run by the likes of Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford, Rapinoe and Héctor Bellerín, the Spanish footballer turned model, designer and environmentalist.
Brands now have the confidence to forge associations in football, knowing that the players who wear their garments have distinct personalities, opinions and cultural importance that extend far beyond the sport itself.
This has cultivated a more modern and socially conscious image of the sport, reflecting the efforts made by the fashion industry in recent years to address shortcomings related to inclusivity and sustainability.
“Brands now have the confidence to forge partnerships in football, knowing that the players who wear their apparel have distinct personalities, opinions and cultural significance that extend far beyond the sport itself,” said Bellerín.
The rise of footballers as cultural trendsetters has also created opportunities for new businesses as well as luxury brands. A spate of creative agencies like False 9, Super Vision Office and B-Engaged have positioned themselves at the center of the convergence of fashion and football, giving brands like Valentino, Burberry and Calvin Klein coveted access to commercial activations. with teams and players.
“The modern footballer, and the entire game, is now so diverse, so relevant and so authentic with so many [commercial] avenues to explore,” said Jordan Wise, co-founder of GAFFER and False 9.
For Bellerín, fashion and football have come a long way since “the days when there was only one player that brands could do something with: David Beckham”.
Source: www.businessoffashion.com