Which WAGs Will Win the Summer of Sport?

Reported by Vogue.

Sport and fashion have been flirting for years, but this summer they're practically cohabitating — and the real action isn't always on the field. It's in the stands, the paddock, the courtside seats, and all over your Instagram feed. The wives and girlfriends of elite athletes have quietly become one of the most commercially potent forces in fashion, and brands that aren't paying attention are already behind.

The numbers make the case fast. WAGs across basketball, F1, and tennis have already generated $25.2 million in earned media value this summer alone, according to Vogue, citing data from influencer marketing platform Lefty — F1 partners driving $12 million of that, NBA WAGs close behind at $10.8 million. And the World Cup hadn't even fully started yet. When Jordyn Woods showed up to every Knicks Finals game with the same orange bag from her own label, Woods by Jordyn, her fiancé Karl-Anthony Towns called it "undefeated." The bag sold out on pre-order. That's not an accident — that's a media cycle running exactly as designed.

"WAGs connect so well to audiences because they sit in a sweet spot between relatable and aspirational for young generations," says Lea Mao, head of marketing at Lefty. Roughly 84% of their followers are between 18 and 34; 80% are women. Holly Gilbertson, managing partner at creative consultancy Pacer, puts it more bluntly: "People still care about who wins. But increasingly, a whole new audience also cares about who was there, what they wore, and what it all means culturally." Burberry's latest campaign, A Good Sport, leans directly into this shift — centering the fashion codes of spectatorship rather than athleticism itself.

The New WAG Playbook

The term "WAG" has shed most of its tabloid toxicity. Where early-2000s WAG culture was something that happened to women — pap shots, gossip columns, zero agency — today's version is one these women largely build themselves. Social media handed them the controls. The result is a new sport-adjacent creator class: some, like Kim Kardashian (dating Lewis Hamilton) or Coco Jones (dating Donovan Mitchell), arrived famous. Others, like Morgan Riddle — who parlayed a relationship with tennis player Taylor Fritz into co-founding sports marketing agency 100 Club — built genuine industry credibility from scratch. Of the 31 WAGs and 627 brands tracked by Lefty, Alo Yoga led with 14 social tags, followed by L'Oréal and Rhode. Meanwhile, Georgina Rodríguez has generated $4.5 million in media impact value for Alo this year; Alexandra Leclerc's Frame capsule collection drove $4.8 million for the denim brand alone.

World Cup search data is already signaling the next wave: searches for Erling Haaland's girlfriend Isabel Haugseng Johansen are up 119% year-on-year; Cody Gakpo's partner Noa van der Bij is up 477%; and Naima Corbin, who married Eberechi Eze last year, is up a staggering 3,100%. The smartest brands won't wait for peak season to make their move — because as Gilbertson notes, "the modern sports ecosystem never really goes off-season."

The sideline is officially a front row, and the brands that treat these women as long-term partners — not seasonal sponsorship slots — are the ones who'll own this cultural moment.

Read the original at Vogue.