Opening day optimism is here once again. There’s nothing quite like the return of the football season and the excitement on opening day of going to watch your team play. International tournaments are great and other sports help pass the time during the summer break, but there’s something about domestic football being back that brings a different sort of feeling. That hole in your life is filled. Routines and rituals return. At the start of the season, no matter who you support and how realistic your team’s prospects are, there’s an excitement of what’s to come and at this stage, when everyone starts at zero, anything can happen and any scenario can be dreamt up. That’s the beauty of opening day optimism.

Opening day optimism is a unifying feeling shared by football fans up and down the land whether you support a team that’s expected to contend for trophies, tick along in the middle of the road or even those who might be in for tough times. When all that separates teams in the league before opening day is the alphabet, anything is possible. This could be our year, we'll say to ourselves. Some of that opening day optimism will be greater for some than others, as opening day optimism comes with a dose of realism. But until that opening whistle blows, before the real business of October three game weeks, injury lists and misfiring strikers kicks in, hope in its many guises is here in the form of opening day optimism.

Opening day optimism begins somewhere around late June when the season’s fixtures are announced. You’ll pick out the highlights, look for certain important dates, circle the away days that offer weekender potential and memorise the derby days. But there’s always one team at the forefront, whoever is up first now acting as a marker and countdown to the season, where we’ll reach peak opening day optimism.

Opening day optimism as a concept is a strange one as once the football begins, it’s over. You can’t get it back till the following season when the process repeats within different circumstances. Throughout the year it evolves into a different set of emotions as you ride the wave of the peaks and troughs of the football season. If your opening day optimism is matched by what happens on the field and results continue to lean towards the more positive side it’s going to be a good year. If it doesn’t, then you’ll be wishing you could go back or forward in time, ready to embrace another dose of opening day optimism.

Opening day optimism for me is more of a comforting false dawn. When you support an average team like me, it can only be. My team Queens Park Rangers will kick off their 11th consecutive season in the Championship, the most along with two other teams out of twenty-four in the Championship and we play one of them on opening day in Preston. During those eleven seasons since we were relegated from the Premier League we seem to mostly finish around 16th. The one time we finished as high as 9th it was in the season no one could attend games. Cheers lads. We’re the football definition of mid. But will that stop me from dreaming of what can be? Nope. Will things finally change and we’ll be heading back to the promised land of the Premier League with all its TV riches and reward of weekly drubbings as a promoted side? Probably not. But that won’t stop me or the hundreds of thousands of fans up and down the country who are off to watch their team play this weekend wonder. That’s what it can do to you, that opening day optimism.

Opening day optimism is to feel a sense of romanticism about football and think about it in a simple way. You can put aside for a minute how much of a closed shop football is becoming now with sovereign wealth and hedge funds separating the haves and the have nots. Fans are increasingly seen as customers as clubs throw around language more befitting of a corporation than an emblem or fabric of community. Football clubs are now brands and want to attract as many new customers as possible, particularly if you’re making a once in a season or lifetime pilgrimage and willing to pay what it costs for every souvenir and memento going. The game is changing at a fast rate but one thing you can’t change whether you’re a regular or day tripper is the excitement of going to a game and the first sight of the stadium, especially after the summer break as even the most run-down stadium shines on a day full of opening day optimism.

Opening day optimism is also about re-acquainting yourself with the routines and rituals that make up a match day. A certain choice of outfit, club shirt or no shirt, new one or retro. If you’re at home first you’ll be surrounded with the familiar sounds and smells that make up the surrounding streets. For me it’s walking through Shepherd’s Bush Market and hearing the traders make their pitch and the incredible cooking from the melting pot of cultures this pocket of W12 brings. Near one end of the market you’ll find one of the best pints of Guinness in London at the Shepherd & Flock on Goldhawk Road. It won’t cost you more than a fiver nor will you run into some TikToker shouting into their phone. On the Uxbridge Road side of the market we’ll grab something hazy at the Defectors Weld. Then a walk down South Africa road and the first sight of the ground and sounds of programme sellers, burger van trade and Dave Thomas shouting “A Kick Up The R’s…brannneewisshhuuue” as he stands proudly as one of the few football fanzines still running. If that first game is away, a new adventure awaits or it’s another trip to a part of England you only see once a season, football providing a momentary glimpse into how another city or town thrives or survives. A tour of Austerity Britain sponsored by our broken train network and Sky Bet, who will give you good odds for your opening day optimism.

Opening day optimism, if only you could bottle that up and make it last all season. Because opening day optimism can be over in a flash. Sometimes you’re already one nil down at Watford before you’ve even got to your seat and it’s four nil by 3:42pm. By 4:15pm I was already back in the pub. Or after fifteen years waiting to get back to the Premier League we finally do it and the big opening day turns into a nightmare four nil drubbing, to a Bolton team who will end up getting relegated. Now I’m remembering the five nil defeat by Swansea after we’d spent a summer signing players from Real Madrid and Manchester United. I really should know better and keep my opening day optimism in check as QPR have a pretty appalling opening day record. But I keep coming back for more as sometimes it’s seeing you win five nil on opening day and laughing at Blackpool in their all black kit on the hottest day of the year and feeling like a promotion was coming. It did. Or the magic of Adel Taarabt toying with Barnsley in the first game of my most memorable season as a fan when we won the Championship. There was even a bizarre opening day when the heavens opened and defender Fitz Hall stepped up to take a penalty that could complete an unlikely hat-trick against Barnsley once. Why is it always Barnsley? He missed of course as that would just be too much opening day optimism.

Opening day optimism is something we give up control of the moment our teams take to the field. Oasis said we shouldn’t put our life in the hands of a rock’n’roll band, but every week we put our life in the hands of players who have the power to make or break our weekends. We shouldn’t care so much we tell ourselves. Opening day optimism will always be greater than the reality for most fans. But we keep coming back for the days and moments when it all clicks. That’s what drives opening day optimism.

Until 5 past 3 at least.

This could be a reality in the next few years and will shake up the existing European basketball structure. I think we could see some interesting partners enter the sport and I’d be watching some of Europe’s elite football teams to get involved.

Basketball is massive in Europe. It might not scale the heights of football but the EuroLeague is full of fanatics and ultra’s with a decent standard of competition. Three of the best players in the NBA are European with Nikola Jokić and Giannis Antetokounmpo winning 5 of the last 7 league MVPs. Luka Dončić will likely win at least one in his career. Beyond the MVP level, European players make an impact on their teams and 14% of rosters last season had one on them.

Europe offers the NBA a chance to grow the game further and ultimately, their power and revenue. For years the talk has been of expansion coming from potential teams in either Las Vegas, Mexico City or fixing previous wrongs with Seattle coming back. To do so means current teams have to give up a slice of the pie when it comes to the league’s commercial revenue. Despite each existing team receiving a portion of any expansion fee a new team has to pay for entry, this isn’t satisfying owners who have to split revenue with more teams at a time when the NBA has just signed its newest record breaking TV deal, worth a total of $75 billion over the next 11 years with Disney, Amazon and NBC.

In recent months talk has cooled on North American expansion and conversations with potential partners in Europe to get a league going have picked up momentum, causing all sorts of rumours and potential scenarios for what an already fragmented landscape could look like in Europe.

The Game in Europe

FIBA governs the sport of basketball worldwide and runs their own competition called the Basketball Champions League, but that doesn’t include the calibre of teams you see in the privately owned EuroLeague’s tier 1 and tier 2 competitions where they can count on European heavyweights like Real Madrid, Olympiacos and Fenerbahçe. The EuroLeague stands to lose more if their marquee teams defect to NBA Europe.

In May, an openness to working together was declared after talks between all three parties, brokered by NBA legend Tony Parker, now owner of ASVEL, a French basketball club in the EuroLeague who would be a shoe-in for this new venture. Naturally the EuroLeague wants to keep its power, but there’s little incentive for Silver and the NBA to make all this noise, just to lend some support. They want control and don’t feel as if the current stakeholders in the European game are doing enough.

“We think that the commercial opportunity has not kept pace with the growth of the game” on the continent, and his goal was “to create a larger commercial opportunity, and not just because commercial opportunity suggests you can grow revenue but because we believe that with markets, if you can create proper incentives, you can get significant additional investment, and ultimately, that’s the way to grow the game at all levels.” Silver told The Athletic.

Basketball x Football

One of the potential partners who the NBA met with last week was Real Madrid, EuroLeague’s biggest club. If they sign up to this new NBA Europe League, the floodgates will open.

They fall under the same umbrella as the football team and the power of the Real Madrid brand means the basketball team has one of the biggest budgets. Other basketball teams like Barcelona, Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, Fenerbahçe and Bayern Munich are all part of the same umbrella as their equivalent football teams and would all be expected to join any NBA Europe League.

Other existing basketball teams will follow, while I’ll be watching closely how these multi-sport clubs could be the model and key to where some of the newer teams come from. Particularly with football having so many American and Middle East investors who also have involvement with basketball.

Red Bird Capital owns AC Milan and while there is a Milan basketball team, Olympic Milano, the American investment firm were one of the groups the NBA cohort met last week and would indicate a potential AC Milan basketball team. Basketball is big in Milan and it’s the only city in Europe that has a Jordan World of Flight store. The Jordan brand made waves with its first of a kind partnership with Paris St. Germain, so it would be a no-brainer for an eventual basketball team to be formed under the French team’s umbrella with Silver having already met with their owners, Qatar Sports Investments. In June this year, Kevin Durant increased his stake in PSG and would consult on future basketball plans.

Silver is keen for London and Manchester to be involved and NBA Europe was a key topic of discussion when he met Starmer and Khan. There are already existing teams in each city, but this doesn’t mean the London Lions or Manchester Giants would necessarily take those spots.

You can’t escape American investment in the Premier League and the majority owners of Arsenal (Kroenke Sports & Entertainment) and Chelsea (Todd Boehly) are both involved with a number of US sports franchises including NBA teams. The former with the 2023 NBA Champions Denver Nuggets and the latter with the LA Lakers.

Liverpool’s owners the Fenway Sports Group own the Boston Red Sox in baseball, but don’t appear to be interested in basketball given they weren’t an expected bidder when the Celtic’s were recently up for sale. But, they do have Lebron James involved in their Liverpool ownership. Along the M62 in Manchester, the owners of the blue side of the City are involved with basketball in Abu Dhabi and want to get more involved globally.

An Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool or Manchester City basketball team might seem too far fetched for more traditional fans, I can almost hear the talkSPORT rage now. We’ve never had the multi-sport club structure like a lot of European clubs have had for decades. However, as football continues its growth as a cultural lifestyle entity and continues to make links with the original cultural lifestyle sport basketball, don’t be surprised if interests start merging.

Basketball is the second most popular participation team sport in England with more than 1.5 million people playing at least twice a month, but the domestic game can often be found in a state of turmoil through investment issues and politics at the top. One can only imagine how the power of the NBA brand could help elevate the domestic game into the wider consciousness in the UK.

What the NBA brings

With the power and influence of the NBA behind the league, you can expect bigger TV deals and commercial opportunities. Existing NBA teams in North America will have more opportunities for growing fanbases in Europe beyond the odd regular season visit, with games or tournaments between the respective league’s champions or top teams.

This new NBA Europe league is said to offer teams ownership of the league and could be where the more entrepreneurial players like Lebron James and Kevin Durant become involved. Could a marque name like that play in the league to really help launch it? That might be a stretch given the stage of their careers and the progress needed to be made to make this league a reality.

I would expect bigger salaries available than what the existing European league’s offer and attract a better calibre of NBA players than they do currently. Real Madrid just signed Chuma Okeke as their marquee signing, a player that was out of the regular NBA playing rotation. If the NBA Europe league was here this summer, I think current free agents like Russell Westbrook, Ben Simmons and Cam Thomas would all be considering offers and some players will start looking at multi-year deals in Europe, over a one year minimum in North America.

The bright lights and heavyweight status of the NBA is going to have real powers of persuasion with the existing elite European basketball teams and potential partners. In the last few weeks it’s become clear this is the flight of direction for any NBA expansion and the pace will soon pick up if they want to get something started in the next few years. Once the NBA decides they want to do something, there is no stopping them and while purists might not want the game in Europe touched, there’s no doubt in my mind that their involvement is only going to grow the game from participation to the general sports fan’s interest.

As part of the Drive to Survive impact on F1’s growth and broadening of the audience I’ve been interested in how fashion has capitalised on this as well as played its part in making the sport popular and driven its cultural credibility.

LVMH recently announced they’ll enter a ten year partnership agreement worth an estimated $1 billion beginning in 2025, the sports 75th year. Chanel released an F1-inspired T-shirt that went viral and earlier this year A$AP Rocky’s first collection as Creative Director for PUMA’s F1 partnership sold out. Streetwear brands Awake NY, Palm Angels and The Sunday Collective have all released motorsport related drops and it’s now not uncommon for Hypebeast, Complex, Vogue and GQ to regularly report on the sports growing fashion and culture credentials.

Lewis Hamilton Changes the Game

The beginning of F1’s fashion flex springing to life starts with one man, Lewis Hamilton.

On the track, Hamilton made an instant impact with an almost debut Championship winning season and as he moves closer to two decades in the sport, he’s seen and played a part in the growth and popularity of the sport. His seven world championships in 18 seasons is matched only by Michael Schumacher and off the track, year by year he’s pushed against the preconceptions of how a racing driver should look and present themselves.

Despite the sport’s glamour and drivers that looked like they’d walked off a GQ photoshoot like David Coulthard or Jenson Button, the sport always felt more classic and refined than youthful and energetic. Hamilton brought a new wave of self-expression and style.

Over the years we’ve seen the Dior ambassador’s style evolve and brands worn from LV to Prada, Rick Owens to classic British Burberry and the new generation of Wales Bonner and Martine Rose. You’ll see him at the British Fashion Awards and Met Gala, where he’s been chosen as one of the 2025 co-hosts.

Between 2018 and 2020 he moved from wearer to designer, as he designed five collections for Tommy Hilfiger, who Hamilton is a brand ambassador of and they’re a brand heavily involved in F1 for decades, as well as a sponsor of Hamilton’s Mercedes team.

In 2021, Hamilton launched his own clothing brand called +44, where he’s released three collections, including working with most Takashi Murakami. There’s still racing left in his career, but these moves in fashion show what his post-race career will involve.

In an interview with GQ in April he said “Honestly, one of my dreams is I have thought about creating my own diverse LVMH,” he says. “Like, I don’t know if we live in a time where that’s really possible. But that’s something that I’m conceptualising.”

While LVMH are now about to take a wider role with this deal, could Lewis be involved with the next incarnation of luxury house to be involved with the sport. If I was Bernard Arnault, I’d be making Hamilton one of my people to meet with.

The Luxury Set

F1 has always attracted a luxury consumer with the glamour of an F1 weekend more akin to a mini-festival for the high-net-worth set. The combination of high-octane sport, risk and threat of danger as well as a place to climb the social ladder attracts the entrepreneurs and social climbers wanting to be seen and make deals happen. Brands like Rolex, Hugo Boss, Johnny Walker and Rolex have all spent millions down the years looking to attract these people and associate with the sports glamour.

In the Michael Schumacher, David Coulthard and Jenson Button era they would all regularly promote these brands and it was very much selling high end luxury and aspiration to people, through these debonair drivers.

Now the Hamilton generation and Drive to Survive effect has broken down some of the walls and made the sport feel more accessible and inclusive. There’s still a long way to go but there is certainly a more energetic, youthful and diverse feel about the sport in the last few years than the previous generations with the average driver and fan age trending younger.

F1’s fast growth has made it an attractive proposition for high fashion brands as they look to drive relevance and we see a shift to partner with more sport stars in ambassador roles and feature in campaigns.

As we see a broader set of brands enter the sport and beyond the luxury fashion set, we’re seeing more streetwear brands enter. This would have been unthinkable in the 90s and as recent as the 2010s but in the streetwear-fication of everything era we’ve got a regular line of capsule collections and drops.

The Streetwear-fication of F1

Last year, Awake NY partnered with Tommy to create a capsule collection, modelled by Mercedes drivers George Russell and Hamilton, as well as featuring their numbers in a release mixing archive race looks with streetwear staples. The uptown and Americana world of Tommy, already ingrained in the 90s street aesthetic and Hip-Hop culture meeting the downtown coolness of Awake NY’s streetwear credentials would be an interesting collab at the best of times, but throw in the mix of motorsports as well and it’s one of the more eye raising and interesting collabs out there in the saturated world of collabs that we’re in now.

Palm Angels have worked with Team Haas and really immersed themselves in the sport since joining in 2022, with founder Francesco Ragazzi being a big fan of F1 since childhood. Targeting key races in Miami and Las Vegas to launch a number of collections, they’ve included tees dedicated to the most iconic races of the Formula 1 Championship as well as the usual assortment of race jackets, sweatshirts and even trainers.

Other notables that have caught the eye include team Alpine’s Kappa x Palace collection, launched at a Las Vegas Grand Prix pop up. Fusing sport and street style it had the usual array of tees and hoodies logo cross pollination but also some nice race jackets.

Streetwear has been a natural bedfellow for skate and basketball culture with a recent rise across football. These are all sports that naturally come from, or have elements of street culture within them. It’s harder to make that link with F1 as even at a grassroots level it’s not an easy sport to move into. But maybe streetwear’s role in the cultural credibility of the sport and helping its awareness reach a broader set of people, it can help diversify the people who want to enter the sport.

We’re already seeing a shift in the fanbase and the brands, but also who is making moves in the sport. None bigger than the appointment of A$AP Rocky to be Creative Director of their PUMA F1 partnership.

Puma has a long heritage in F1 and also a great track record of partnering with talent in the world of sport and fashion and this appointment of the Harlem rapper and cultural icon could be a masterstroke for them. Tapping into his fashion, style, cultural and of course music credentials will help broaden the sports appeal further.

The appointment isn’t one of those random Creative Director titles in name only, with hands-on input from the Harlem star so far. The releases from the partnership have been impressive and saw the return of the PUMA Inhale OG sneaker, originally launched in the 2000s, which Rocky personally chose from the archive. As well as the OG, the race jackets, tees, balaclavas and race gloves have all blended performance materials with function and fashion, making it a collection made for everyday wear.

Spectacle or Sport?

For the purist, the concern that F1 is becoming more spectacle than sport has only intensified as part of the sports trajectory with brands and celebrities using the sports appeal to promote their agenda. The more people getting into the sport can only be a great thing, even if their way in was via a celebrity sharing grid walk pictures on social or a brand collaboration.

The watch out though for Liberty Media is ensuring the purists and passionate fans who have been watching long before Netflix got involved, don’t suddenly feel alienated.

For the fashion brands increasing their presence and activity in F1, or new brands joining the party, they can’t just see this as a badging exercise. That may have worked in the previous eras of the sport but now more has to be brought to the table. What value can you bring to the whole spectrum of fans?

It can be very easy for collabs to turn into formulaic brand x brand + racing jackets and tees = generic product that gains PR coverage in Hypebeast one day, but forgotten the next.

With Max Verstappen’s dominance looking to continue into next season, we might not see changes to who takes the title until new regulations are brought into the sport in 2026, where race cars will be lighter and need to be more sustainable. Doubling down on the spectacle off the track in absence of unpredictability on it might grow the sport at the surface level, but what happens to the deeper levels of sport if more brands join to use F1 for their own means?

At the luxury end, sport is increasingly becoming part of fashion brands strategies to reach younger and passionate audiences so more brands are going to want in on F1, the challenge for these brands is going beyond formulaic lines, drops and campaigns and finding ways to bring value and engage the whole spectrum of the sport.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s UR Cristiano launched the 21st August and broke YouTube records for the fastest channel to reach a million subscribers, doing so in less time than a football match takes to play. As of today he’s at 65 million subscribers, more than Taylor Swift and just outside the top 30 most popular channels in the world.

Less than a week later, Travis and Jason Kelce’s popular and award winning podcast New Heights was bought by Amazon’s Wondery Network for a reported $100 million. One of the largest podcast deals in history.

Both moments feel significant in the current state of not just the role of media in sport but also when it comes to athletes crafting their brand, creating content and owning their narrative.

As Ronaldo’s career reaches its tail end he aims to allow fans to learn more about him, his family and views on different subjects. For a footballer so popular to the point he’s the most followed person combining various social media platforms, he’s previously never been very forthcoming or revealing in the media or on his socials, bar the odd family photo and that strange Piers Morgan interview. UR Cristiano far provides the sort of minutia into his life that some would find mundane but will have super fans locked in.

When Travis and Jason Kelce became the first brothers to play against each other in the Super Bowl in 2023 their award winning New Heights podcast had fans and traditional media hanging onto every word as they remarked on the frenzy going on outside of their family. The money might seem crazy but Wondery is buying into a thriving show with a large and engaged audience and is reflective of companies buying up athlete podcasts or launching them with talent.

The era of athletes as brands is something we’re long into starting from the Michael Jordan days through to David Beckham and now the likes of Ronaldo, Stephen Curry and Patrick Mahomes. As part of the evolution we’re seeing athletes become creators and media moguls.

We’ve moved beyond an athlete just posting tweets and Instagram stories to full blown content with production teams around them. Podcasts are getting acquired and players are making documentaries. Athletes are founding companies and selling content to streamers and traditional media. Their content can generate news and set the agenda.

This shift is disrupting traditional media platforms and owners who are having to evolve to figure out where they play in this new landscape, as athletes grow large and engaged audiences.

Humanize the Athlete

Players can now build deeper connections to fans as previously there used to be a barrier between the players and athletes of sport as communication was controlled and drip fed through official channels like the teams, organisations and media associated with it.

With the democratisation of channels and platforms, it’s never been easier for athletes to create different types of content and athletes across all sports are seeing the benefit of owning their IP.

A week doesn’t pass by it seems without a new player podcast or YouTube channel being launched and the quality does vary widely. We’re arguably at peak player content, but the general direction is helping change how we see all sides of an athlete and how they’re wrestling back control of the narrative from traditional and social media.

The Key Shifts

Social media made it easier for any athlete to share their voice, but player led media has become its own category within the sports media landscape thanks to three key moments happening in the 2010’s.

The first actually took place on traditional media and caused a lot of controversy at the time but when we look back now at Lebron James revealing his free agency choice live on national TV, ‘The Decision’ was arguably the biggest player empowerment moment of the decade. If it was to happen today, Lebron would no doubt be hosting ‘The Decision’ under his SpringHill Entertainment Company or Uninterrupted platform, which was founded in 2014.

That same year New York Yankees legend Derek Jeter launched the Players Tribune three days after he announced his retirement from baseball. It has received multiple rounds of investment and become a space for athletes to tell their side of the story. It’s where Kevin Durant revealed his free-agency decision to sign for the Golden State Warriors in 2016 and Kobe Bryant announced his retirement. Players have opened up to reveal sides we don’t often see or raise issues that have changed the conversation, from Kevin Love and Larry Sanders on mental health, Natasha Cloud on racism and social justice and Breanna Stewart on child sexual abuse.

In 2016 renowned NBA shooter JJ Redick became the first current playing and regular publisher of a podcast with The Vertical in 2016, originally on Yahoo but has seen Uninterrupted and The Ringer play host until he set up ‘The Old Man & The Three’ podcast and ThreeFourTwo Productions with Tommy Alter. Redick was once a divisive college player at Duke but that reputation began to change as his podcast grew and is one of the best, most insightful and arguably influential given the number of players podcasts that followed. It was no surprise he rose quickly on ESPN after his retirement to become an NBA Finals analyst or why he was appointed LA Lakers Head Coach this summer, with his basketball IQ and acumen all there to hear and see on his podcasts. These qualities were particularly on display during the ‘Mind The Game’ series launched earlier this year as he meticulously broke down the game with a player he’ll now coach, Lebron James.

The Second Act

These three moments all played their part in a shift to players taking more control and being more open to telling their stories on their terms. To begin with it was mostly players at the tail end of their careers or newly retired who would dabble in creating podcasts or vlogs as they began to figure out their second act.

In basketball, the Knuckleheads (Darius Miles & Quentin Richardson), Road Trippin (Richard Jefferson & Channing Frye), Queens of the Court (Sheryl Swoopes) and All The Smoke (Matt Barnes & Stephen Jackson) didn’t just tell unfiltered stories of their playing days, they have also led to analyst work and media deals.

AJ Hawk, at the time a linebacker with the Green Bay Packers could argue he actually launched the first player podcast when the ‘Hawkcast’ in 2014 but was very sporadic with it as his career drew to a close.

In football, Peter Crouch’s everyman personality grew with his popular podcast, while Ben Foster’s Cycling GK YouTube vlog showed us his love of two wheels and took us into his games with his cameras in the goal to give fans a different access to the game. Jill Scott’s Coffee Club spoke to her old Lioness team mates and Hollywood stars. Jon Parkin’s and Chris Brown’s Under The Cosh shed light on players who, like them, mostly made a career outside of the Premier League where life on and off the pitch is very different.

Last year Serena Williams launched her YouTube channel to document her post tennis career as an entrepreneur.

Redick’s Influence

Now we’re seeing more active players following JJ Redick’s lead and getting shows off the ground while still playing to take us into the current state of the changing room and day to day life.

Paul George is one of the more popular NBA players and his Podcast P show goes out regularly during the season and has revealed him to be one of the better interviewers out there, including those who do it for their profession. Duncan Robinson, Austin Reeves, Josh Hart & Jalen Brunson have all added to the mix. Draymond Green broke new ground by podcasting just hours after each NBA Finals game in 2022 as the Golden State Warriors returned to NBA title winning ways.

Carmelo Anthony was the most prominent on YouTube throughout his playing days. During the NBA Bubble, when the 2020 season finished at Disney Wide World of Sports in Orlando, Philadelphia 76ers rookie Matisse Thybulle vlogged from inside. The player summer workout vlogs are beginning to become their own genre. Serge Ibaka’s cooking show is just weird. Aerial Powers of the Atlanta Dream and Isabelle Harrison of the Chicago Sky produce great day in the life content.

Back to football and Jude Bellingham launched his YouTube channel around the time Ronaldo did and while not quite on the subscriber scale given the early stage of his career, the intention is clear with his documentary series Out of the Floodlights going behind the scenes of a successful debut season at Real Madrid but also brand Bellingham.

Bussin with the Boys Will Compton and Taylor Lewan is one of the most popular NFL podcasts that was started when both were active in the league and picked up by Barstool Sports where their deals are in the seven figures. As well as Bussin With The Boys, Barstool Sports has pods with Arian Foster, Pat Beverley Ryan Whitney and Paul Bissonnette while The Ringer has or had shows with JJ Redick, Steve Kerr C. C. Sabathia, Ian Wright, Raja Bell, Ben Foster and Austin Rivers. In 2022, The Ringer was acquired by Spotify for around $200 million.

It makes sense for digitally born publications like Barstool and The Ringer to work with active and retired athletes as part of their vast podcast networks but what about the legacy players like ESPN, Sky Sports and the BBC? They’ve got involved to varying degrees from the BBC launching Peter Crouch’s podcast to Sky Sports influence on The Overlap but it’s at ESPN where a blurring of lines is happening and could indicate where the traditional players could move.

Pat McAfee launched his self named show after his NFL career ended and has become one of the most popular figures in the player media era as it grew and moved through digital platforms and publishers like Barstool and SiriusXM before eventually landing at ESPN. The show isn’t just going out across where you get your podcasts or YouTube, it’s on the main ESPN channel. ESPN was already paying McAfee as a full-time analyst for college football but to bring his popular show under their umbrella they had to front up an eight figure deal to licence the content. They don’t even get to own it as McAfee retains control. Why would ESPN do this?

The leading US sports network is already increasing its spend to hold onto various live rights across the main American sports leagues, but when Sports Center doesn’t hold as much influence on news or highlights anymore as that can be found on social media, they need to keep people watching outside of games. I’d expect more deals to be made with players in the future and form part of their daily programming but this does seem to come at the cost of the expertise they’re losing when journalists like Zach Lowe and countless others have lost their jobs due to budget cutting.

The Mogul Era

Some athletes are thinking bigger than creating or selling one show and looking at building networks, platforms and companies.

Uninterrupted is now a decade old, a partnership between Lebron James and his school friend and business partner Maverick Carter. That’s spun off shows like The Shop and branded content like Kneading Dough with Chase and sits under their SpringHill Entertainment. NFL legend Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions joined forces with Uninterrupted and Higher Ground Productions, the studio run by former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama to create Netflix’s newly launched Starting Five, a season in the life of Lebron and four other NBA players.

Other notable companies and publishers include Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Boardroom, Stephen Curry’s Unanimous Media, Carmelo Anthony’s Creative 7, Rio Ferdinand’s 5 Media, Tom Brady’s 199 Productions as well as Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson’s All The Smoke Productions. The media and commerce company Togethxr, from Sue Bird, Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim, and Simone Manuel is designed to elevate women’s voices, around but not exclusively within sports.

The Player Led Documentary

With all this player led content and ownership, we’re getting to see many sides of the athlete and access we previously didn’t have in generations before which should be applauded and appreciated.

Do we get to see all the sides and are those stories told impartially? The fact an NBA player can now respond to criticism from Stephen A. Smith on their own channel and providing their view is certainly beneficial both to the player and the fan. For too long the narratives of players were distorted by the media. My worry is when things become too polished to the point we lack the impartiality and where that could happen the most is the rise of the player led documentaries.

I grew up in a generation of 30 for 30 documentaries like the Fab Five or fly on the wall docs you can’t believe were approved like An Impossible Job. Now these player led docs feel more like auto-biographries or infomercials. David Beckham’s, Stephen Curry’s Underrated and Tom Brady’s Man in the Arena are both produced by the athletes production companies so are we really getting everything we could?

I appreciate I’m being picky here as some players will never let a documentary crew in unless under their own production company, so at least we get something even if they’re leading. I just hope we still get more of the Andy Murray ‘Resurfacing’ or Roger Federer ‘Twelve Final Days’ where they’re not involved in the direction or production side and it feels rawer, unpolished and all the better for it.

The Future

In previous generations if an athlete didn’t move into coaching, they would try to stay in the game with a lucrative move into the media as a columnist, pundit or analyst and while this continues today, players are now just as likely to become the media and do it their own way.

The dynamic has now shifted and player led media is finding more engagement and relevance with fans and it’s not just content about playing days or locker room life anymore. Player led media has the influence to attract politicians, musicians and on screen stars to the point an appearance on player’s podcasts is part of a PR plan to promote their latest output.

As traditional sports media continues to figure out how to keep subscribers while costs for live rights continues to rise and streamers also battle for subscriptions, working with athletes by licensing their content or providing the infrastructure to make it their way feels like a mutual win for reach and relevance as long as the relationship is balanced.

Player led media will continue to grow as athletes are creating content earlier in their careers as they see how older generations have led the way to craft their brands. In the age of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) this will be happening long before someone turns to the pros.

Players creating podcasts, YouTube’s, documentaries and companies isn’t just an evolution of the sports media landscape, it’s a seismic shift to sports becoming more inclusive, more diverse and more authentic as players lead the narrative.

Today I wanted to kick things off with a look at football kits and the levels of creativity and cultural influence that is helping kits go beyond badges of honour to fashion staples, how the kit launch is being used as a chance to show up in culture and why staying true to a club or city is crucial to kit marketing.

Every summer football fans thoughts turn to hope and improvement, new players coming in and out and also one of my favourite things each summer with the new kit reveal and first sighting of it during pre-season.

As a kid I was fortunate that my parents always got me and my brother the latest QPR kits home and away more or less the day they were released each season and we’d have them on constantly at home, down the rec, at the supermarket and some far-flung UK outpost pre-season game.

I used to cut out my favourite kits from an array of football magazines. A classic Italy kit by Diadora, Kappa’s mid to late 90s Juventus and Barcelona numbers. I loved when football shirts appeared in music videos or by my favourite artists. The Gallagher brother’s attitude shown in their Manchester City kits, or the England third kit from Italia 90 forever known as the New Order shirt after the ‘World In Motion’ video.

In recent years I find myself back to being that excited 10 year old waiting for the new QPR kits to drop each season but also looking out for new kit releases in general on a variety of places like Soccerbile and Mundial. News around kit culture from leaks to who is making them is treated with the same excitement as transfer gossip as a world grows around kit culture.

You’ve got people appreciating the look and design of the kits even if it’s a team you don’t support. You’ve got people wanting to show their deep knowledge and taste by wearing a rare shirt or cult team. You’ve got people getting into the weeds of who is designing the kit. You’ve got people who may not have deep knowledge of the team but just like the way it looks.

The football shirt is a way for fans to express their support for the team on the pitch in the stands and off it, but now the appeal has broadened. They’re also badges of honour to signal your tastes, knowledge or style.

The whole football fashion moment has played a part but also the general growth of the sport as a wider range of people take interest in it, all expressing different levels of fandom compared to the more tribal traditional season ticket holder or match goer.

There are different layers to football fashion as it goes further back than any recent trend. You go back to late 1970’s and early 80s when the football casual subculture existed through to the more recent decade of the adidas Spezial range, influenced by the terraces and has just launched Spezial FC.

These are way more authentic to the culture than blokecore. When it comes to the latter, like any niche or cultural moment related to fashion, there will always be some people quickly dipping in and out until the next thing catches their eye or TikTok tells them what’s hot. The football shirt is having its Nirvana and Ramones t-shirt moment where a certain type of fashion conscious buyer wants to buy into something even if it means they don’t know all the ins and outs.

The Cultural Influence

Why are we seeing kits everywhere now?

Culture is having more influence on football where no longer is football, fashion, music and art kept separate as players, clubs and fans all become much more closely connected to culture by letting those influences in to create this melting pot of creativity.

Players themselves are now not afraid to express or show their cultural interests and influences as we see from the likes of Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Chloe Kelly, Jackson Irvine, Rafael Leão and Trinity Rodman to name a few.

I’m old enough to remember Les Ferdinand and John Salako modelling for Topman and of course David Beckham’s sense of style brought in the big fashion brands but only recently have the luxury fashion brands really emphasised football. We don’t feel surprised when Burberry work with Ebere Eze or Phil Foden, Raheem Sterling and Trent Alexander-Arnold feature in Bottega Veneta campaigns or Jack Grealish and Leah Williamson become Gucci Ambassadors.

Football kits show up off the field in more cultural ways than ever before, similar to how basketball jerseys both current and Mitchell & Ness retro were seen in most Hip-Hop videos in the 90s and early noughties. It’s now common to see football shirts in videos by Central Cee, Dave, AJ Tracey, 21 Savage and Stormzy to name a few. An early moment here was the Dave and AJ Tracey track ‘Thiago Silva’, with both emcees wearing the PSG shirts and shot around Paris and in particular the Parc Des Princes.

Kit makers Nike and adidas have looked outside of the core football product function to create kits and apparel through their lifestyle & talent partners or even other sports. Think PSG and Jordan brand, Stella McCartney and Arsenal, Palace and Juventus. Last year adidas had Grace Wales Bonner designing the Jamaica jersey and launching it in her Paris Fashion Week show, while they had Nigo of BAPE design a Japan World Cup kit.

Streetwear has had an influence on how clubs treat kit roll-outs with clubs releasing multiple special editions, pre-match & leisurewear that all has a story behind it like Arsenal’s Carnival inspired pre-game shirt, that celebrates their Jamaican fan base. And just like streetwear created grails and a resale scene with players like Stock X and GOAT, we have something similar going on with kit resale as a clamour for nostalgia and the 90s helps retro kits become grail worthy items. The rarer or more storied the shirt the better. Retailers like Cult Kits and Classic Football Shirts are thriving with the latter recently taking on investment from The Chernin Group to the tune of $38.5 million.

Kit designs are like works of art and culture historian, kit expert and Lovers FC founder Neal Heard has written the book A Lover’s Guide to Football Shirts as well as curated an exhibition of the same name.

Inevitably the football shirt has now become a marketing tactic for brands who want a piece of the cultural relevance they offer. Even food and drink has got in on the act with local pizza spots and cafes all collabing with local designers or clothing brands to create their own football shirts.

There are some good ones out there like the recent Jameson x Mitre x Percival kits and Pompeii brand with Kappa spring to mind, but we’re reaching the point where a football shirt has become a go to marketing tactic in a toolkit of brand goods like branded pens and umbrellas. We’ll start to see a clutter of branded kits with varying degrees of quality and authenticity to why they’re making them.

When it comes to marketing the kits by the actual football clubs themselves, we’ve come a long way since the days of the club catalogue photoshoots.

The Ted Philipakos Impact

Football kit launch convention was grabbing a couple of players after training for some snaps in the new kit with poses ranging from the classic hands on hips to the points to badge pose. Ok, you still see those poses but now you’ll also see shoots that have taken on a much more fashion aesthetic with new kit imagery more akin to a fashion brand lookbook than your back in the day club catalogue.

It was a club that’s been bankrupt multiple times that ripped up the rulebook when it came to football kit marketing and has now influenced many a kit launch shoot. Venezia FC have changed how kits are designed and marketed. Esquire dubbed them the world’s most trendiest football team back in 2022.

Waiting for the new kit releases from Venezia FC suddenly became a thing, thanks to brand director Ted Philipakos, who worked closely with revered Munich design studio Bureau Borsche and Nowhere FC to rip-up the rule book. With each new kit release creating hype as if it were the latest Supreme or Nike sneakers drop through cut through designs with Kappa and lookbook styling not out of place in a GQ fashion shoot.

After turning heads with his work at Venezia FC, Ted Philipakos moved onto Athens Kallithea with his brother and has rolled out a similar approach with Kappa once again creating some of the better kits out there. They really hit it out the park this summer with a launch film for the new season kits called ‘Hold Me Close to you’ which looks nothing like any kit launch you’ve seen before and is a short film that looks more like a romantic escapade around Athens then a kit launch.

Does this ruffle feathers with the purists? Yes. But isn’t this more interesting than the paint numbers approach clubs tend to take? Absolutely.

The Opportunity for Clubs

For the clubs, the kit is a big revenue stream each season outside of TV, sponsorship and ticket money so stands to reason the way they promote them has increasingly taken on more importance with social channels to fill and anticipation to fuel.

How football clubs launch the kits offers a chance to tell a story of the club, the fabric of the club’s ethos, heritage and fan base. With clubs looking for more opportunities to expand their reach we’re seeing the creativity pushed and teams moving away from sports catalogue convention.

Kappa and adidas are at different ends of the scale in terms of budgets and teams they work with but both have won the summer as far as I’m concerned with their approach to launching kits and telling either a story with substance.

While Nike have seemingly softened the importance of football to the brand based on recent effort and output, adidas have in the last few years reinforced their credentials as the brand on and off the terraces with the scale of the Samba and Gazelle success as well as continued credibility of the Spezial range led by Gary Aspden.

On the pitch they’re also reinforcing their credentials as technical partners having released the best kits for the World Cup in 22 and Euros in 24 and some classics on the club front in recent years.

This summer the three stripes have reached another level with designs generating praise beyond a club’s own fans. They’ve also hit it out the park with some great launch films that truly showcase the fabric of what makes the clubs heritage and fanbase special. High praise here for their launch films for Newcastle returning to the three stripes, Manchester United’s third with Barry Keoghan and Aston Villa with Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler.

All feature elements that make up the club, the fan base or the city whether it’s who stars in it or the sound track, to the local symbols and signifiers featured.

Now adidas have the budget others other brands don’t have with clubs that have global reach, but that doesn’t mean creativity can’t be managed on a smaller budget and Kappa have absolutely led the way in this light.

Maybe it’s the Ted Philipakos impact rubbing off on the brand but Kappa have carved out a lane of their own with fashionable aesthetics and localised storytelling in their kit launches for their roster.

I already mentioned the Athens Kallithea short film, while another smaller team punching beyond their weight with creative output in the Kappa roster is Red Star FC in Paris. Ex-pro player David Bellion is one of the few Creative Director’s in the sport and for this season’s kit launch they celebrated the connection between the team and the local community in Saint-Ouen, the area that surrounds their home of the Stade Bauer by featuring the people and places that made up the local arrondissement.

Genoa have always had a classic kit that keeps it simple to shine and Kappa have honoured that with this season’s design and launch campaign. Titled “Beauty of Genoa”, it focuses on the Portofino neighbourhood and celebrates the everyday life of the people in the beautiful Italian Riviera location.

Other notables include the launches by Macron for Crystal Palace, Slovakia & FC Basel with a late contender from Puma for Manchester City’s Oasis Definitely Maybe inspired third kit. There’s some nice videos for PSG and Liverpool kits from Nike but feel they could have pushed them further beyond studio shoots. Worth a watch is the effort from Barcelona which is more on the playful side and features a bunch of legends and a look into the Catalan city.

Staying Authentic

When it comes to launching football kits, the game has changed and while purists may roll their eyes at fashion lookbooks and short films, there’s no doubt they have contributed to the ever growing and evolving melting pot of football, creativity and culture. While also taking inspiration from culture and the creative talent adjacent to football.

With so many kits, pre-game and leisurewear released each season by clubs we can’t expect masterpieces every time. While some clubs are setting such high bars that it is going to be a challenge to find a new angle to launch a product that doesn’t change too much from one year to the next.

I’m here for the creativity though and we should embrace the clubs and suppliers that want to do something different and break with convention. By all means lean on the fashion lookbook aesthetics but not for the sake of it. If everyone starts following the fashion lookbook template then we fall back into convention again. So where else can you go? It doesn’t have to start and end with some visuals and a film. Back in 2022 the agency I worked for TBWA launched the adidas World Cup kits via ‘leaking’ the kits in cultural moments and spaces relevant to that nation rather than a traditional film and press release.

Kit launches are a chance to make revenue from fans and reach new ones, but they’re also an important chance to communicate all the great and good of your club and what it means to the people and places that make it.

It’s really important for anyone working on these launches to understand the cultural fabric that makes up a club, the city or town they’re in. Celebrate the importance of the fans who go to games, but also those in the community around the club that are the heartbeat of an area when a game isn’t on. Show us the intangibles and essence of the club, the city, the people and the community that makes the club stand out against the next like the earlier mentioned Red Star FC. I really like how the newly formed Brooklyn FC launched their kit by making what is essentially a love letter to the borough or the sense of place you get from the St.Louis City Confluence kit launch.

This has to be the starting point for any great kit launch in my book to keep it authentic and not just find a loosely connected reason to shoot in a more lifestyle setting with a fashion photographer. While football opens itself up to more creativity for the better, finding the balance between substance and throw-away algorithm chasing content will be the road test for future kit launches and creative output for clubs. I’m excited to see where this goes.

Tradition runs throughout sport whether you play or watch it. Certain conventions, rules and codes are followed in order to play, fit in and understand it.

But times are starting to change and it’s happening at the intersection of sport and culture.

As sport has opened the doors to wider cultural influence I think we’re starting to see a change for the better, where traditional codes and conventions are making way for new definitions of what sport means to help it become more diverse and accessible.

These shifts are coming from subcultural movements being recognised as Olympic Sports, traditional sports being remixed into new formats and even streetwear influencing the uniform of sport.

For a brand, these shifts below are opening up opportunities to reach new audiences, extend product categories or create new ones.

Rise of niche and new formats making sport easier to play and connect

Cultural interests have never been broader as pockets of interest and tribes form around niche interests that shape our identity and are easier to find in a global social world.

This is impacting people’s relationship with sport as they seek out the lesser known but now widely growing sports like Pickleball and Padel. These sports have less barriers to entry and are more focused on the social aspects, than hardcore competition (although you can find that here if you need).

The Gerard Piqué-backed Kings League may not appeal to the purists of football, but the fast-paced format is bringing a new angle to football and finding fans who have been brought up in a social media highlights world. It’s seen appearances from ex-professionals like Javier Saviola and last year caused headlines with people trying to guess the identity of ‘Enigma’ who was playing professionally in La Liga.

With new sports like Spikeball, Teqball and Slacklining all growing in the edges and taking influences from traditional sports, I’m curious to see what other new sports will be created in the next few years?

The Olympics are helping redefine what classes as a sport

Breakdancing made its debut at this year’s Paris Olympics four years after another subculture movement skateboarding arrived on the Olympic stage in Tokyo.

Both historically have been considered an art form and a lifestyle, but there’s no doubt with medals to compete for, the Olympics have solidified both as a sport.

There’s certainly cause for caution to ensure both still maintain their subcultural credibility but both have the potential to break down the usual sporting boundaries and unite people as the Olympics expose both to more people.

Having Crazy Legs of the pioneering Rock Steady Crew advise the Olympic committee on how to incorporate breaking was a great move to make sure the culture is respected.

The growth of Japanese skateboarding and the Olympics in Tokyo crossed paths at just the right time to change perceptions and help become part of everyday acceptance.

With more exposure across the globe for both it would be great to see councils and state departments look at more funding for spaces so people can explore both and continue to create more accessibility.

Streetwear codes are changing the look of traditional sports

We’re seeing streetwear make its influence felt in sports you wouldn’t necessarily first think of, like Golf, Tennis, F1 and Cycling. A blend of form and function from brands is bringing the looks from the street onto the courses, courts and tracks which attracts a younger and more diverse crowd to take interest and participate.

Golf brands like Malbon, Metalwood and Anti Country Club Tokyo are just some of the brands bringing streetwear codes to golf and changing what it looks like to be a golfer.

In F1, A$AP Rocky launched his first collection at the recent Miami Grand Prix as Puma’s new Creative Director. This follows Lewis Hamilton’s influence on the sport through his partnership with Tommy and their recent collab with Awake.

Furi Sport and Palmes are making similar moves in Tennis with Pas Normal are creating grail worthy clothing for those not wanting to follow the Rapha pack.

The opportunity

For brands there are plenty of opportunities across these shifts with new sports to create product for and new audiences to reach. But, as ever when it comes to brands becoming involved in sports, what are you bringing to the table?

Are you willing to look beyond commercial gain because there are new people to reach or new products to create have been unlocked?

Can you continue to help drive these positive shifts and make sport more accessible, to continue to open up doors?

The future of sport will no longer lie solely in the hands of traditional gatekeepers, but new players that will continue to rewrite the rules to truly make sport a continued dominant cultural force and continue to drive change.

You can download all the chapters of the Future of Sport series from TBWA Backslash and Dark Horses here.