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Glossier has agreed a long-term deal to become the first official beauty partner of the USA women’s basketball teams ahead of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris this summer, The Business of Fashion has learned.
It marks the New York-based beauty brand’s second foray into women’s basketball, after it became the first-ever beauty partner of the WNBA in 2020, a deal which it extended in March.
The partnership will see Glossier get its products on some of the contemporary greats of American basketball, who will be in action at the Olympics, including Brittney Griner, Breanna Stewart, Kelsey Plum and Sabrina Ionescu.
Glossier will gift the USA Basketball players products to take on the chartered flight that takes the teams from the WNBA All-Star weekend in Phoenix, AZ, to Europe for the Games later this month. It will get social media and out-of-home advertising opportunities, and will organise activations in the coming weeks, including at a Team USA exhibition game in London on July 23. The brand will also provide the players’ make-up for high-profile events like the opening ceremony on July 26.
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The deal comes amid the soaring global popularity of US women’s basketball, buoyed by a cast of superstar rookies and seasoned WNBA talent who are garnering unprecedented attention and commercial interest, both for their on-court achievements and pre-game style.
“For a long time there’s been a false narrative that sports and beauty shouldn’t mix,” said Glossier chief executive Kyle Leahy, who pointed out that the brand will be the women’s team’s first dedicated sponsor since Tampax in 1996. “Our initial partnership with the WNBA four years ago wasn’t seen as the hottest thing to do, but now this is the direction the industry is headed and we’re fielding calls from all kinds of sports organisations.”
Glossier was first approached by USA Basketball for the Olympics partnership off the back of its WNBA deal. The representative explained that brands typically sign on as a partner of both the men’s and women’s teams — but Glossier pushed back.
“We told them we’d love to be considered for the women’s team only because that’s where we know we’re going to make the biggest impact,” Leahy said. “We already have relationships with all these players anyway because of this long-running WNBA partnership.”
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