Wimbledon is a cultural stage as much as a tennis tournament. In 2026, the brands that won on earned media weren’t always the ones with a sponsorship deal.
Published On: July 15, 2026
With Jannik Sinner retaining his title and Linda Noskova taking her first Grand Slam, the off-court cast was as starry as ever.
Wimbledon has become a cultural engine as much as a sporting one. For two weeks each summer it turns SW19 into a stage where heritage, fashion and celebrity collide, and brands compete for attention almost as hard as the players compete for the trophy.
Ralph Lauren dominated the fashion rankings as official outfitter, and it was not close. But the two brands that generated the next-biggest numbers, Chanel and Gucci, have no relationship with the tournament at all. They out-earned almost every official partner who paid for the privilege. Here is what actually turned a fortnight of tennis into earned media value.
Of all the brands that ranked, only Ralph Lauren has a partnership with Wimbledon itself. The sportswear names are there through individual players they sponsor, while the luxury houses, Chanel and Gucci among them, are driving EMV purely through dressing VIPs in attendance.
The player kit deals had their own big moments. Naomi Osaka’s custom kimono-inspired look, by Tokyo-based designer Yaga Hani, followed her to a first-ever Wimbledon quarterfinal, having stunned world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka to get there. Coco Gauff’s New Balance x Miu Miu collaboration featured through her run to a maiden Wimbledon semifinal. Neither brand needed to build an activation. The players did the work simply by winning.
Ralph Lauren’s $20.6M is not just first, it is roughly eight times the rest of the fashion field combined. This was the 20th year of the partnership, renewed in June with a multi-year extension that keeps the brand as the only designer in Wimbledon’s 149-year history to hold the Official Outfitter title, and it leaned on the anniversary at every point.
Ralph Lauren debuted the Polo Bar at Centre Court, a first for the tournament, and ran a suite that became the fortnight’s most-photographed room. The 4 July lunch it co-hosted with British Vogue and GQ, overseen by Anna Wintour, drew Tom Hiddleston, Emma Corrin, Michaela Coel, Monica Barbaro and Andrew Garfield, and Jennifer Lopez arrived head to toe in Ralph Lauren for the men’s final. Twenty years in, this is a brand still maximising every inch of their partnership.
@wimbledon A rollercoaster of emotions on Centre Court ✨ @Ralph Lauren ♬ original sound – wimbledon
Gucci bookended the tournament around Jannik Sinner, its brand ambassador. It hosted a private dinner for him before play began, then dressed him in a custom tuxedo for the Champions’ Dinner after he retained the title. Roughly 80% of Gucci’s EMV came from the dinner alone, and most of that from one guest: Salma Hayek’s own carousel drove $519K, more than the rest of the guest list combined. Sinner himself generated around $20K across his posts.
Chanel took the opposite route to a near-identical number, with no single activation of its own. It was simply the label credited in almost every style round-up of the fortnight, from Daisy Edgar-Jones wearing a recent Chanel Resort 2027 look to the flap bags, belts and shoes tagged across the best-dressed lists. Its biggest single driver was Vogue’s “stars we spotted” round-up, which credited a number of celebrities at once.
“Our data shows that the most impactful brands are those who understand how to embed themselves meaningfully into cultural conversations, not just sponsor them.”
Among the brands that did pay, longevity wasn’t the advantage you’d expect. Rolex has sponsored Wimbledon since 1978; Emirates joined in 2024, and still came out ahead.
The top sponsors won by building experiences, not just branding. Evian’s “200 Years Young” campaign put limited-edition bottle bags into creators’ hands, with Daisy Birchall’s unboxing alone driving over $260K. Emirates hosted a celebrity suite that drew Kesha and Lily Collins, whose own posts carried the brand out to their millions of followers. Rolex, by contrast, landed almost its entire number from a single Priyanka Chopra Jonas post from the Royal Box.
Other sponsors like Range Rover and Lavazza play a different game: in-grounds activations and supplier partnerships built around physical touchpoints rather than celebrity or social moments. That approach is not designed to generate earned media in the same way, but it still puts the brand front and centre for the people in the grounds.
Barclays’ “Game.Scent.Match” was the smartest activation of the tournament. It built an AI-led perfume-making experience in the grounds, then let creators bring their audience into it. Zak Heath filmed himself building a strawberries-and-cream inspired scent from scratch, tagging the brand along the way, and turned a functional banking sponsorship into content people actually wanted to watch.
@zakheath If AI could make your fragrance what would you want it to smell like? I love a gourmand fragrance but many of them are too sweet so I made a strawberries and cream inspired scent which had more depth and musk 🍓🧁 Thank you Barclays for the Game.Scent.Match experience which you can also go to at Wimbledon! #wimbledon #fragrancetok #tennis #gifted ♬ hate that i made you love me instrumental – Kylito🫧🩷
Ralph Lauren shows what a fully-worked official partnership delivers: twenty years of it, a new bar at Centre Court and the most-photographed suite of the fortnight. Chanel and Gucci show the opposite is also true. You can skip the deal entirely and still out-earn almost every brand that paid to be there, as long as you dress the right names and give them a reason to post. For any brand watching without a Wimbledon badge, that second route is worth studying.
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