There’s a subtle shift happening in brand culture. One that’s been unfolding steadily, but with unmistakable clarity for anyone paying attention. It’s not centred around traditional performance sports or headline-grabbing sponsorship deals. Instead, the new arena for brand storytelling is something altogether more refined: tennis courts, ski resorts, golf clubs, pit lanes. Not the brash, commercial side of sport, but the curated, atmospheric kind. The kind you feel as much as you watch.
What unites these sports is not their competitiveness, but their codes. Their uniformity. Their sense of occasion. They’re built on restraint, etiquette, repetition, and taste and that makes them irresistible for brands that understand the power of context.
The Original Blueprint
The use of sport as a brand amplifier isn’t a new idea. In fact, some brands have been refining this model for decades. Ralph Lauren’s long-standing partnership with Wimbledon remains one of the most sophisticated examples of what happens when a brand doesn’t just sponsor a sport but becomes part of its identity.
You don’t think of Wimbledon without thinking of Ralph Lauren’s cable knits and navy blazers. The ball kids, the umpires, even the printed materials. It’s branding by immersion. A timeless alignment of setting product, and energy. The kind of placement that doesn’t date because it was never designed to feel new in the first place.
Tennis has become a prime lens for modern brand expression, but the way it’s being approached has evolved. It’s less about outfitting players and more about using tennis as a symbol of taste and nostalgia.
Kith’s Tennis Classics capsule is a case in point. Rather than reinventing the game they distilled it. Something that felt more East Coast than ATP. Their visual language felt like something more than just sport. Gucci and Adidas, meanwhile, took a more flamboyant route, creating maximalist tennis-wear with runway finishes and bold retro references, all without losing the core DNA of the sport.
The tennis court is now a curated space that frames brands in a neutral, familiar, and elegant way where they can express both modern ways and tradition with equal impact.
Ski culture presents a different kind of opportunity. It’s more cinematic, and rich in its aesthetic structure. Brands working in this space often trade in atmosphere over action, framing product within a sense of stillness and elevation.
Moncler continues to perfect this approach, presenting skiwear not as technical necessity but as sculptural form. Their campaigns, often shot in hushed forests or snow-covered expanses, speak to a kind of poetic performance, each look more installation than outfit.
Jil Sander’s collaboration with Arc’teryx took a more minimal direction, stripping away colour and noise to create something meditative, precise, and almost architectural. Even Dior’s alpine collections lean into this.
The slope becomes a canvas. The snow, a neutraliser.
Of all the sports seeing a resurgence in creative energy, golf might be the most unexpected. For years it was trapped in a dadcore loop, stuck somewhere between corporate casual and country club uniform. But today, golf is having a moment and not a gimmicky one.
Much of this shift can be credited to brands like Malbon Golf, who’ve managed to recode golf from the inside out. Their drops blend streetwear edge with course-appropriate tailoring. Attitude is key here in how golf feels in the hands of a younger, looser, more design-conscious generation. Their recent collaboration with TAG Heuer brought the precision of watchmaking into the golf narrative, creating a shared language of performance and style.
The likes of Metalwood Studio and Students Golf meanwhile are playing the nostalgia card. Their references feel like mid-90s tournaments remembered through disposable cameras and retro cuts that are less ironic.
But the most elegant contribution to golf’s new wave might come from Aimé Leon Dore (sorry, we appreciate it may be predictable). Their vision of sport is always romantic. Their campaigns never explicitly say ’golf,’ but you can feel it.
Formula 1 has always offered brands an opportunity. The scale, the glamour, the speed. But where it was once used for loud sponsorships and surface-level logos, it’s now being treated as a space for more curated, creative partnerships.
Palm Angels partnering with the Haas F1 team felt unlikely at first, but it worked. The crossover made sense because both brands understood each other’s pace. Tommy Hilfiger’s long-standing work with Mercedes, along with BOSS, AMIRI, and even streetwear’s quiet nods to racing, prove that F1 isn’t just a sport anymore, it’s an aesthetic.
The pit lane has become a platform. Trackside events now mirror fashion week parties. The car liveries, the race suits, even the headphones, it’s all considered. All part of the image. It’s high-octane branding slowed down to editorial speed.
The Creative Opportunity
So why are brands leaning into these kinds of sports? Why now?
Because they offer structure, visual and cultural. There’s clarity in the rituals. More importantly, these sports come with built-in taste. They offer settings where the product doesn’t have to carry the full weight of the story – the backdrop does half the work.
In a marketplace saturated with fast content and flash trends, there’s something magnetic about a campaign that feels measured. That’s what these sports offer. Not spectacle, but rhythm. A reason to pause. A reason to look twice.
From Our Perspective
At Open All Hours, we’re fascinated by these shifts. Because we work with brands every day, we see how hard it is to find the right cultural placement. The right tone. The right pace.
Middle-class sports, when framed correctly, offer a canvas for quiet confidence. For brands that know who they are. For creative teams that trust in atmosphere over noise.
It’s not about dressing up in a uniform. It’s about finding a world that your product can live in. And for brands looking to build something that lasts - that world might just have a clubhouse, a clay court, or a stretch of alpine silence.
We’re not saying every brand should head for the hills. But we are saying… look closer. Because this space is getting interesting.
And for those who care about tone, taste, and storytelling, it might just be the next great playground.
Shot of the good stuff.
