Beauty Brands Are Dropping the Ball on Women’s Sports

Women’s sports are undeniably on the rise. But according to Olympic track and field athlete and entrepreneur Allyson Felix, women’s sports marketing is still virtually nonexistent.

Take a once-in-a-generation athlete like Caitlin Clark. “She gets a shoe deal, and it’s with Nike, and it’s the same shoe deal that Michael Jordan would have gotten 40 or 50 years ago,” said Wes Felix, cofounder of female athlete management firm Always Alpha and brother of Allyson Felix. “We need companies that only sell products to women to be involved in women’s sports.” 

After her public break-up with Nike, outlined in a 2019 New York Times op-ed in which she shared that the shoemaker refused to pay her while on maternity leave, Felix broke the mold when she partnered with Athleta as the women’s athleisure brand’s first athlete sponsor. 

“In track and field, you always have your shoe sponsor, and there’s only a handful of players in the game,” she said on stage at ADWEEK House in Cannes on Monday. “When we stepped away from Nike and we got the Athleta deal, it was like, ‘Oh, there’s another way to do this.’”

The Athleta deal led the way for the Gap-owned brand to partner with other female athletes like Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles. “When we did that deal, they had never worked with an athlete before,” Wes Felix said. 

He said that Sephora’s recent move to sponsor the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries is “what true sports marketing will look like.” But the beauty industry has been “exceptionally behind” in embracing what could be a huge opportunity. 

“There are a lot of companies out there that only sell to women who should get involved in women’s sports,” he said.

For female athletes, the hardest part is opening the doors to have that conversation with a brand. “You’re most times educating that person on sports entirely,” Wes Felix said. “Because if you work at a beauty brand and you’re in partnerships, it’s not necessarily a sports world.”

Most beauty brands without experience in sports are “defaulting to templates that work,” added Cosette Chaput, CEO of Always Alpha.

“We’re long past the days of a traditional endorsement [or] product placement,” she said. “This can look any way we want it to, whether that’s social, whether that’s traditional, whether that’s IP. We can build this together.”

Allyson Felix added that female athletes are now taking ownership by creating content that gets them in front of audiences directly and authentically—and that’s opening the aperture for brands. 

“As more of us share, it’s becoming easier,” she said. “There’s also just the power of the collective. You can reach so many people by just sharing your real life.”

“Now we have the attention of the world of women’s sports, but things have to change to get there,” Wes Felix added. “When they do, we’ll start to see more of these brands.”

All-in on women athletes

The Felix siblings launched Always Alpha in 2024 as the only athlete management firm focused exclusively on women. The idea was that for women’s sports to reach its full potential, “we’ve got to go all in,” Wes Felix said.

“One of the biggest things we faced was convincing people that this didn’t already exist,” he continued. “We’re going to eat or starve solely on women’s sports. We’re not going to sign one male athlete who makes $100 million, and that’s how we keep the lights on.”

According to Chaput, because of the pay discrepancy between male and female athletes, the latter make 80% to 90% of their income off the field, compared to 30% to 40% for the former. 

“That was one of the drivers of us building a new agency,” she said. “How do we completely build a new system from the ground up that serves the female athlete?”

Wes Felix added that 20% of Always Alpha’s clients have never had an agent before. “We’re building the market,” he said.

For Allyson Felix, launching the agency was about building her legacy around bringing female athletes the value they deserve.

“I’ve learned so much with all the knowledge that I have,” she said. “Maybe there’s an opportunity to pay that forward and to give that knowledge to this generation, and hopefully they could benefit from some of the missteps and the things that I learned.”

According to Wes Felix, what women’s sports needs the most to succeed is not just the support of brands, or even male sports fans, but the support of other women.

“If Taylor Swift hadn’t gone to five Kansas City Chiefs games, but she went to Angel City Games, what would that do for women’s soccer?” he said. “If women really get involved with women’s sports, it will surpass men’s sports, and I think it’ll do it very quickly.”