The NFL’s $1,000 branded designer jackets are the latest sign of fashion’s newfound love affair with sports

• New York low-key women’s fashion brand Veronica Beard just launched a collaboration with the NFL.
• The collab features 32 separate $1,000 jackets emblazoned with each NFL team’s logo and colours.
• Sport is a new frontier for luxury and designer brands wanting to leverage growth amid a downturn.

The lines between sports and fashion are blurring.

On Sunday, the NFL announced a partnership with Veronica Beard, a low-key luxury fashion brand in New York founded in 2010 by sisters-in-law Veronica Miele Beard and Veronica Swanson Beard.

The collaboration comprises 32 NFL-team branded blazers, retailing at $998 each, in the preppy style of Veronica Beards’ signature Dickey Jackets.

“Partnering with women-centric brand Veronica Beard has allowed the NFL to create a sophisticated and contemporary touchpoint for female fans at the intersection of sports and luxury fashion,” Renie Anderson, executive vice president of partnerships at the NFL, said in a press release shared with Business Insider.

“Women’s sports and female sports fans are having an undeniable moment in the cultural zeitgeist, yet few luxury brands cater to this incredibly discerning and loyal audience,” Veronica Beard said in a statement to BI.

While the collaboration comes amid the surge in NFL female viewership, thanks in part to Taylor Swift, two luxury experts told BI it’s just one example of how the fashion world, particularly the luxury sector, is looking to capitalize on sports as a largely untapped resource.

“The public has always been excited about sports, but sports have traditionally been seen as a workman’s pastime, not a refined pastime,” Thomai Serdari, a luxury marketing and branding professor from NYU’s Stern School, told Business Insider.

But that has changed, Serdari added. When tickets to games or races set you back thousands, and audiences include society tastemakers like Swift, sports have become an elevated arena — and fashion brands are taking note.

Sports are the new fashion frontier

After a pandemic era boom, there are signs of struggle in the luxury world.

LVMH, the heavyweight champion of the luxury conglomerates, announced its third-quarter earnings last week, and the results were significantly below expectations.

Earlier in October, LVMH announced a new 10-year deal with Formula 1. A few weeks later, Bloomberg reported that LVMH boss Bernard Arnault’s family is taking another step into sports by investing in the Paris FC football club alongside Red Bull.

In the summer, the Paris Olympics were also seen as a major opportunity for luxury and aspirational brands, including Lululemon and Skims.

LVMH spent a reported 150 million euros ($163 million) on its own Olympic and Paralympic Game collaboration, which included designing the medals and presenting them in Louis Vuitton-branded boxes and creating the French team’s uniforms. The move was widely lauded, with one luxury expert telling Business Insider it was a “masterclass” in brand engagement.

Amid the luxury downturn, Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, told BI that it’s logical for some luxury and aspirational brands to attempt to cross-pollinate fanbases with sports teams and athletes as a means to stay relevant.

“It’s an elevation and sort of a convergence of sports and fashion into making something bigger than the individual sum of the part,” Pedraza said.

For Serdari, it’s a sign the fashion industry, particularly the luxury sector, is trying to engage with younger consumers — Gen Zers and millennials — who are redefining luxury and placing greater value on experiences.

“They will think really twice about expensive items, but they’re still spending money on experiences and events,” she said of younger consumers.

With the NFL and Veronica Beard, for example, merging the two is a “great opportunity of bringing a brand in front of that younger consumer who may now be tempted because now here is this brand who embraces their favorite NFL team,” Serdari added.

The luxury fashion industry can’t rely on sports to be its saving grace long-term

However, Pedraza said, not all collaborations reap big rewards.

“Hail Mary passes are called Hail Mary passes for a reason,” he said. “These are not make or break for the brands, but they’re good experiments in the middle of the game of growth.”

While sports collaborations are exciting and a surefire way to create buzz for fashion brands amid the turbulence within the industry at large, Pedraza said it is unlikely to be the “long-term growth engine” luxury is in need of.

“There’s a bit of a lack of innovation on the part of some luxury brands,” he said. “These days, the belief is that getting attention is everything.”

Sports is a growth area, but, as Pedraza said, “there are limits to growth.”

“It’s a phase,” Serdari said. The strategy, she added, is always, “How can I make more money? Where can I look to make more money?”

Right now, that answer is seemingly sports.