The past few weeks have been particularly busy in the world of sportswear investor relations, which means there are some new tennis tea leaves to read.
Lululemon and Asics recently reported earnings, while On and Amer Sports, the parent company of Wilson, laid out their longer-term strategies for investors. All four have made significant investments in tennis over the past several years, making what they have to say about the sport and where it fits into their broader businesses particularly interesting.
But figuring out exactly how tennis is performing inside these companies requires a little detective work. None of them reports tennis revenue as its own line item. Depending on whose financial statements you’re reading, the sport gets folded into categories like “Core Performance Sports” or “Ball & Racquet,” or disappears entirely into much larger footwear and apparel businesses.
Still, these updates tend to leave behind some useful clues. A regional growth figure here, a new long-term target there, a comment about where marketing dollars are going. Even which sports get singled out when a company lays out its plans for the next three years can tell us something. And this latest batch gave us quite a bit to work with.
Amer Sports just raised its long-term growth expectations for the division that houses Wilson, with the expansion of its tennis business playing an important role in that optimism. Asics revealed some pretty wild numbers about how quickly tennis is growing across Asia. Lululemon is still talking up the sport while trying to revive momentum around its broader business.
And then there’s On, which spent this morning laying out an ambitious new plan through 2029, including the sports it sees helping power its next phase of growth. Tennis didn’t make the list.
Keep reading for what On’s new growth plan tells us about where tennis fits into its next chapter, the impressive numbers coming out of Asics in Asia, and the clues Wilson and Lululemon are giving us about what comes next.
