Sports and Beauty Crossover Has 'Lots of Room to Grow,' Panelists Say
Panelists at Glossy's Pop NYC event — including WNBA star Hailey van Lith — say the sports-and-beauty crossover has only just begun, with Sephora and Ulta already active.
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The takeaway
- Panelists at Glossy's Pop NYC event in Manhattan said the sports-beauty crossover has 'lots of room to grow'
- Panel included WNBA star Hailey van Lith, stylist Dianne Garcia, Courting founder Courtney Kelly and Tantamount Sports Group founder Jenna Smith
- Sephora and Ulta, plus smaller brands, have begun partnering with athletes and appearing at events like the U.S. Open
The sports-and-beauty crossover has only just begun, according to panelists at Glossy's Pop NYC event in Manhattan earlier this month.
"Lots of room to grow" was the message from four industry figures who took the Pop NYC stage: WNBA star Hailey van Lith, stylist Dianne Garcia, Courtney Kelly, founder of tennis brand Courting, and Jenna Smith, founder of sports marketing agency Tantamount Sports Group.
The panel's common theme: the space remains underexplored. Major retailers including Sephora and Ulta, alongside many smaller beauty and fashion brands, have already started partnering with athletes and showing up at marquee sporting events such as the U.S. Open. Even so, Smith argued, the category is far from saturated.
Athletes and sports have become a powerful commercial tool for beauty brands, and industry awareness of that fact has grown. Van Lith's presence on the panel underscores the point: a WNBA player now commands a seat alongside an established stylist, a tennis-brand founder and a sports marketing executive at a beauty trade event — a lineup that would have been unlikely a few years ago.
The panelists' assessment carries commercial weight for brand strategists. If the prevailing view at Pop NYC is that the crossover is in its opening phase, brands that move early on athlete partnerships and sports-event activations — beyond the U.S. Open appearances already claimed by bigger players — may find whitespace before the field crowds.
For smaller beauty and fashion brands, the message is that they do not need to match Sephora's or Ulta's budgets to participate. The range of entry points discussed — from athlete ambassadorships to event presence to purpose-built sports brands like Kelly's Courting in tennis — suggests the crossover is broadening beyond conventional sponsorship models.
What comes next, per the panelists, is expansion. Smith's assessment that there is "more room to grow" positions athlete-driven beauty marketing as a live opportunity rather than a mature trend — a distinction that should shape how brands allocate their 2025 partnership budgets.
The full discussion, including the panelists' detailed remarks, is available on Glossy.
Source: Glossy
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Staff writer covering media and advertising at Eurasian Beauty Journal.
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