Game, Set, Shelf: why tennis is becoming a significant travel retail opportunity

The world's biggest tennis tournaments are no longer just sporting events. They are spectacles, attracting the worlds of fashion, music, sport and luxury alike.

Look at the US Open currently taking place in New York. Between Naomi Osaka's on-court fashion attracting almost as much discourse as her game, celebrities flooding the stands and Vogue covering the tournament as closely as a fashion show, the US Open is filling internet timelines and attracting attention far beyond the sporting world.

People are clamouring to be seen there — and brands are clamouring to be seen with them.

Carlos Alcaraz debuted an unreleased Travis Scott x Nike tennis collaboration. Aryna Sabalenka has been wearing a custom Material Good necklace featuring 127 carats of gemstones, inspired by the energy of New York City. Ralph Lauren has provided uniforms for around 800 tournament staff. The US Open has become a place where brands can put products in front of a huge audience, wrapped in the cultural relevance of the tournament itself.

And that experience is no longer confined to Flushing Meadows.

This year, the US Open extended into Manhattan with a week-long takeover at Hudson Yards, combining playable tennis courts with Fortnite and Roblox, DJs, merchandise, brand sampling and the Grey Goose Honey Deuce.

Tennis has escaped the tennis court.

The numbers suggest this cultural momentum is being accompanied by significant growth in the sport itself. Almost 106 million people now play tennis globally, according to the International Tennis Federation — an increase of 25.6% from 84.4 million in 2019. In the US alone, participation reached a record 27.3 million people in 2025, up 54% since 2019.

Its audience is growing too. Nielsen found that global tennis fandom reached 33% in 2025, with an unusually balanced 54% male and 46% female split. Perhaps more importantly for brands, tennis fans are more receptive to sponsorship than the general population and are more likely to identify as trendsetters with interests spanning fashion, music, arts and innovative products.

The Grand Slams themselves are attracting enormous audiences. The 2025 US Open welcomed 1.14 million people across three weeks, up 9% year-on-year, while the 2026 Australian Open attracted a record 1.37 million.

This isn't simply a participation boom. Tennis is becoming a bigger cultural property.

And that's commercially important. Consumers don't have to play tennis to buy into tennis. They can wear it, drink it, attend it, share it and participate in the lifestyle surrounding it.

For brands, that turns tennis from a sporting sponsorship opportunity into something much bigger: a commercial platform.

From sporting event to commercial platform

The US Open provides a particularly good example of what that looks like.

Grey Goose is celebrating its 20th year as Official Vodka of the tournament in 2026. Over that period, its Honey Deuce cocktail has become part of the experience of attending the event. It is no longer simply a drink advertised alongside the tennis; it has become one of the tournament's recognisable rituals. And this year, it has travelled beyond Flushing Meadows into the US Open's Hudson Yards activation.

Maestro Dobel is pursuing a similar strategy. The tequila brand operates a dedicated Dobel Tequila Club at the tournament, allowing spectators to drink tequila cocktails while watching the tennis. Moët & Chandon has its own bar and exclusive US Open serves.

The significance isn't simply the number of sponsors involved. It's how they're behaving.

These brands aren't sitting alongside the sporting occasion anymore. They're helping to construct it.

Tennis is becoming something consumers can watch, wear, drink, photograph, share and shop.

And that creates an interesting opportunity for travel retail.

From centre court to the airport

The connection between tennis and travel retail is already unusually strong.

Think about the Grand Slam calendar: Melbourne, Paris, London and New York. Four global gateway cities attracting international visitors around tournaments increasingly surrounded by premium hospitality, fashion, drinks and retail.

But the relationship goes further than geography.

In Dubai, travel retail has put its name on the sporting property itself through the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships. In Doha, Qatar Duty Free has built partnerships around major tennis tournaments, using the sport to extend its visibility beyond the airport before bringing that association back into the travel environment.

That is an important point.

Travel retail does not need to wait for the traveller to reach the store to begin building awareness. Tennis gives retailers and brands the opportunity to reach consumers at the event, associate themselves with a globally recognised sporting and lifestyle property, and then continue that conversation when those same consumers travel.

Brands are already doing exactly that.

Champagne Lanson's longstanding Wimbledon partnership expanded into airport activations with Avolta across Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and London City in 2025. Its limited-edition Wimbledon pouches reportedly sold out across the participating Avolta estate within a week.

Grey Goose has connected its Australian Open partnership with Melbourne Airport, Lotte Duty Free, Emirates lounges and inflight experiences.

And for the 2025 US Open, Maestro Dobel took its partnership into travel retail spaces across every JFK terminal. Tastings, gifts with purchase and interactive tennis games brought the tournament into the airport, while a corresponding Heathrow T5 activation targeted passengers travelling from London to New York.

Proximo later said the campaign sampled more than 10,000 travellers.

The airport wasn't simply advertising the sponsorship. It was becoming another venue for it.

The open question: does it move the shelf?

Sampling generates trial. Limited editions create urgency. An interactive tennis court draws travellers into a store. All of that is real, and all of it is visible in the moment.

But visibility during a tournament is not the same as a permanent change in shelf position. The real test is what's left once the court is packed away: does the brand end up with more facings, better placement, or an additional SKU that sticks — or does the store simply revert once the campaign ends?

That's a harder question than any activation photo can answer, and it's the one that actually matters. A limited edition selling out in a week is a marketing win. A brand holding a stronger shelf position months after the final is a commercial one. Right now, most of what tennis has delivered for travel retail sits in the first category. The opportunity — and the open question — is whether any of it can be converted into the second.

Can tennis convert cultural relevance into shelf relevance?

Right now, the US Open shows just how far tennis has travelled beyond the baseline.

Consumers can watch it, wear it, drink it, photograph it, share it and shop it. Travel retail has an opportunity to insert itself into almost every stage of that relationship — from tournament sponsorship and destination marketing to airport activations, exclusive products and ultimately the shelf itself.

The next step is proving what lasts. As more tennis-linked activations arrive in airports, the brands worth watching won't necessarily be those creating the biggest spectacle.

They'll be the ones that can turn a fortnight of cultural relevance into 52 weeks of stronger shelf execution.