It’s no longer just the courts that command attention at a tennis match. While superstars like Jannik Sinner, Frances Tiafoe, and Tommy Paul compete in the US Open this weekend, equal interest will be given to their respective wives and girlfriends (WAGs), who have transformed game-day appearances into high-profile branding opportunities.
Danish model and beauty entrepreneur Laila Hasanovic, who went public with Sinner in late 2025, is a regular fixture in VIP sections at major tennis tournaments worldwide, earning her the media moniker the “First Lady of Tennis.” Canadian former tennis player Ayan Broomfield, who began dating Tiafoe in 2018, has been using her growing influence to bring more Black women to the court. Dairy Boy, the cult clothing and lifestyle brand of American entrepreneur Paige Paul (née Lorenze), predated her relationship to Paul, who she married in July, but their alliance certainly hasn’t hurt its conversion into a longer-lasting sensation. By combining a distinctly nostalgic, countrycore aesthetic with smart product drops and high visibility sports partnerships, Dairy Boy went from a viral trend to a fast-scaling enterprise, with revenue that grew 160 percent from 2024 to 2025. (The Pauls started dating in 2022.)
But how did these sideline staples build enough power have leverage? As Vickie Segar, the global chief sports and entertainment officer at advertising giant Ogilvy, puts it, “Sports is culture. We fall in love with human stories, so when it comes to sports and athletes, that includes the participants in their lives.”
This WAG landscape is a far cry from the 2000s, when the term was popularized by the British tabloids, who packaged the women as passive, hyper-glamorous spectacles. Even when they weren’t courtside, WAGs were chronicled hitting designer boutiques or dancing drunk on tables—behavior believed to have resulted in their ban from attending the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. (This, of course, coincided with a moment when female celebrities writ large, including Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Jessica Simpson, faced severe, relentless, and intrusive scrutiny by the media.)
Stripped of individual agency, women like Victoria Beckham, Cheryl Cole, and Coleen Rooney were framed as superficial fashion accessories, blamed for team losses and treated as visual objects for public consumption. But, Beckham—already a household name as one-fifth of the Spice Girls when she met David in 1997—arguably introduced a new model for leveraging media fame for both members of a couple. The international and bonafide luxury fashion and beauty business she founded in 2008 pulled in an estimated $170 million in revenue last year.
Social media has now allowed even more access to sports couples’ personal lives, and offered a greater opportunity for them to control their own image. Today’s generation of WAGs has redefined the traditional role of passive supporter by striking brand deals that drive mainstream interest in the ATP, NBA, and WTA tours, among others. Their ability to serve as an entry point for fashion and other largely female-based consumer sectors in the world of sports has made them extremely attractive to companies. (Consider that last year, Taylor Swift singlehandedly brought in $1 billion in revenue to the NFL with her stadium appearances at husband Travis Kelce’s games. The star’s near unprecedented fame had broadcasters regularly turning their cameras from the field to the stands, to the ire of numerous, largely male, fans.)
A quick sketch of the WAG-brand industrial complex: athletic lifestyle label Alo has signed marketing deals with several wives and girlfriends of athletes, including Georgina Rodríguez, who married footballer Cristiano Ronaldo on Aug. 11; Winnie Harlow, model and fiancée of NBA player Kyle Kuzma; and Alexandra Leclerc, wife of Ferrari F1 driver Charles Leclerc. Leclerc has also partnered with L’Oreal Paris and Bvlgari, and Rodríguez with Chopard. Meanwhile, Burberry has been partnering with F1 WAGs like Francisca “Kika” Cerqueira Gomes, who is in a relationship with professional driver Pierre Gasly, and Carmen Montero Mundt, who this month became engaged to longtime partner George Russell. Elsewhere, Tiffany & Co. has partnered with Antonela Roccuzzo, wife of footballer Lionel Messi; Desiré Inglander, who in June married Olympian pole vaulter Armand Duplantis; and Kelly Piquet, who is dating F1 driver Max Verstappen.
The influence of these deals is remarkable. From January to July 2026, Rodríguez generated $5.4 million in media impact value (or MIV, a measurement of the return on investment of marketing activations) for Alo, with another $519,000 generated from third-party mentions, such as media articles and fan support, according to the A.I.-powered brand analytics firm Launchmetrics. During the same time frame, Jordyn Woods, a TV personality and member of the Kardashian extended universe who recently married New York Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns, generated $668,000 in MIV for MAC Cosmetics, and another $170,000 in third-party mentions. (A $125 orange clutch that she wore during the championship, from her own brand, Woods by Jordyn, was also briefly put on display at the Guggenheim after the Knicks win, due to its good-luck charm popularity among fans.) Meanwhile, Gomes generated $318,000 in MIV for Calvin Klein, $337,000 in MIV for Burberry, and $483,000 in MIV for the online fashion retailer Revolve, all of which stemmed from her own posts.
Unlike some content creators, who may be younger or come from middle-class backgrounds, “these women have the disposable income to buy these products,” which for their audience adds “that extra layer of legitimacy,” says Alison Bringe, Launchmetrics’ chief marketing officer. They’re aspirational, but social media also makes them approachable. Take Rodríguez, who went from Gucci sales associate to Netflix reality TV star and luxury brand ambassador within her decade of being in a relationship with Ronaldo.
Experts are reluctant to comment on sponsorship rates for WAGs, noting that fees significantly vary depending on follower size, level of engagement, public image, and niche. “For one-off deals, they can run from tens of thousands of dollars all the way up to the hundreds [of thousands], while you can get seven-figure multi-service beauty deals,” offers Peter Knell, who previously worked for IMG and ITB Worldwide before founding Knell, a business development and partnerships agency specializing in high-profile talent and brand deals. Segar of Oglivy says the industry generally still prices on $10 CPM, meaning that an advertiser pays $10 for every 1,000 times an advertisement is displayed or viewed.
But, the shrewdest among the WAGs, like Paul, have pivoted to solo ventures entirely, building massive, independent, and long-term businesses in and out of the realms of fashion and beauty. See, for example, Kristin Juszczyk, wife of San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk, who went viral for creating custom, fashionable game-day apparel out of sports jerseys. In January 2025, she co-founded the clothing label Off Season with seasoned entrepreneur Emma Grede (of Good American and Skims). The brand has since collaborated extensively with major leagues including the NFL, NBA, MLB, and Formula 1, creating licensed fan apparel that has been worn by Taylor Swift and Simone Biles—both of whom now boast WAG status, as the wives of Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and Indianapolis Colts player Jonathan Owens, respectively.
Despite the staggering numbers, Maddy Sells, the founder and host of the social media series WAG Talk, still believes that the wealth of knowledge and experience of these women remains largely undervalued by their partner’s respective leagues themselves. In Sells’s now-viral posts, she quizzes partners courtside or near locker rooms. “I think there is a misconception that these women don’t know or don’t care about sports,” Sells says. “They are really invested.”
Much of the interest in WAGs, outside the sensationalism of their relationships or immaculate dressing, could be attributed to a widespread desire for more female voices in sports media. Women remain underrepresented in newsrooms and podcasting at large. In sports coverage, the average broadcast or podcast show devotes 65 percent of discussion to sports and 35 percent to life, according to 2025 research from the Los Angeles-based school USC Annenberg. “When women host, that balance shifts—with more authentic and nuanced storytelling. Episodes with women address women’s issues 4.5 times more than men’s shows, pulling neglected stories into the spotlight,” a report from the school claims.
So powerful are the communities some wives and girlfriends have built that it doesn’t matter if they are no longer in a relationship with an athlete. Case in point: Morgan Riddle, whose nearly six-year relationship with U.S. tennis star Taylor Fritz ended earlier this year. Despite the split, Riddle has shared in interviews that she will still attend the US Open; she already has brand deals and partnerships to create content and cover the tournament. Segar attributes Riddle’s resiliency to her relatable nature and genuine passion for tennis:“Her page is about experiencing her life. Being a WAG was only part of the story. Maybe now she has to rethink her content strategy, but people are just as interested in her, whether she’s dating an athlete or not.”
“We are still looking at WAGs too much as fashion and beauty influencers and are devaluing their sports knowledge,” says Segar, of the pigeonholing of the leagues’ most valuable new players. “They’re smart businesswomen who also understand and love the game. There’s been some old-school thinking that women aren’t as integrated or as serious as male sports fans… but women are multifaceted. We can watch sports and care about our outfit.”
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