Beauty brands are sleeping on tennis—Mecca isn’t
Outside of sunscreen, beauty brands are largely MIA in tennis. Mecca's partnership with the Australian Open underscored why that’s a missed opportunity.
Mecca—which is essentially the Sephora of Australia and New Zealand—has quickly become a case study in how beauty brands can meaningfully get involved in tennis.
Although fashion brands have flocked to the sport in droves in recent years as tennis has grown in popularity, beauty brands have remained largely on the sidelines. Yes, nearly every tournament has an SPF sponsor like La Roche-Posay or ISDIN, but for the most part, it ends there. With so many beauty brands getting involved in other sports, it’s puzzling that they’d pass on one where skin is heavily on display, suncare is central, and many players treat the court like a stage for self-expression.
The problem isn’t that beauty doesn’t fit in tennis. It’s that brands have tended to approach it narrowly, defaulting to sunscreen while leaving much of the category underexplored…
