Social Rocket
Beauty brands are discovering sport not just as an advertising space, but as a place to reach new customer groups and create lasting content. Sephora is equipping 2026 the F1 Academy with driver sponsorship and beauty experiences, Olay and Secret are entering the season with the WNBA, and Rimmel becomes the makeup partner of the men's basketball team Toronto Raptors. Three partnerships, three business models: from creator content through fan experiences to presence at the point of sale.
Sephora turns motorsport into a beauty experience
Since March, 2026 Sephora has been the official beauty retail partner of the F1 Academy. The brand supports driver Natalia Granada and appears on her race car with its own branding. In addition, there are Glam Bars at selected race events and beauty offers in the F1 Paddock Club at 18 Grands Prix. The company thus reaches not only fans at the track, but also produces visual content around drivers, preparation and race weekends.
The interesting part is translating sponsorship rights into concrete touchpoints: a recognisable car for broadcasts, experiences for visitors and personalities who can tell stories beyond the race. This fits the development of athletes into independent social media creators.
WNBA: P&G connects sports stars with several product brands
Procter & Gamble announced a multi-year partnership with the WNBA in April. The beauty and personal care brands Olay and Secret are among the first activations; for the launch, the group's brands worked with players A'ja Wilson and Paige Bueckers. P&G has been present in basketball with Mielle since 2023. The new agreement expands the approach to several brands and further areas such as retail and digital content.
For large advertisers, this model offers a decisive advantage: a sports partnership can be spread across different product categories without each brand having to build its own fan community from scratch. How sports rights turn into solid sponsorship revenue is also shown by the Golden State Valkyries example.
Rimmel proves the target audience doesn't have to be on the field
Another variant came on 22 September. Coty announced that Rimmel London becomes the official makeup partner of the Toronto Raptors for the NBA season 2026/27. A cosmetics brand is thus deliberately working in the orbit of a men's team.
The logic: sports fans are not a homogeneous buyer group. They are interested in players, fashion, music, lifestyle and the culture around their team. A beauty brand that fits into this everyday world with a suitable content and event concept can become visible even outside traditional cosmetics media.
This was also discussed in September at the Glossy event Pop NYC: athletes and brand representatives described how sports profiles increasingly develop into lifestyle personalities. Player Hailey van Lith reported there that her fans show high interest in everyday glimpses beyond basketball. Digiday has summarised the discussion. The trend thus reaches beyond individual sponsorship announcements.
What marketing teams can take away
The opportunity lies less in the next logo on a jersey than in a content system. A sensible deal combines rights to athlete content, fan activations, the brand's own social distribution and, ideally, a traceable path to the product. Teams that plan all four areas together can judge the campaign budget better afterwards than with mere mentions and impressions. The CarMax creator training in the WNBA illustrates how sponsors help athletes become visible as independent media personalities.
For German marketing teams, the PwC Global Sports Survey published in September offers an important comparison: PwC Global Sports Survey 55 percent of internationally surveyed sports fans between 18 and 24 years watch sports highlights on social media. Among the surveyed sports executives, 91 percent expect double-digit revenue growth in women's sport over the next three to five years. This is a forecast, not growth that has already been measured.
For beauty brands, this opens up two paths: they can establish themselves early in growing sports communities – and at the same time broaden the picture of who can be considered a credible face for cosmetics and skincare.