When Beauty Meets Baddassery: The Rise of Beauty Brands Tapping into Women’s Sports

To be a woman,

Does anyone remember the ‘Always #LikeAGirl’ 2014 ad? When young girls were asked to “run like a girl”, something extraordinary happened. Their interpretation wasn’t apologetic or diminished. They ran with pure, uninhibited energy — a stark contrast to the hesitant, almost embarrassed attempts of older participants who gave into gendered stereotypes. 

Years later, “Run like a Girl” found itself on TikTok with thousands of women jumping on to reclaim this phrase with powerful stories. What started as an advertising campaign to start a crucial conversation, has found its way on social media. 

To women all over the world, “run like a girl” represents their stories of survival, courage, and resilience. 

This powerful shift in narrative extends beyond advertising into real-world movements, with brands stepping up to champion female athletes in women’s sports, in meaningful ways. 

Nike’s 2025 ‘So Win’ Super Bowl ad was a reminder that to this day, female athletes experience unnecessary roadblocks, compared to their male counterparts. Despite this, these fearless and talented women face everything thrown at them, head-on.

For decades, women’s sports have been treated as a side act — underfunded, under-televised, and underestimated. But if recent brand moves are any indication, that narrative is shifting. Slowly but surely.

2024 was arguably the year of women’s sports. For the first time in history, the International Olympic Committee distributed equal quota places to male and female athletes. According to a Women’s Sport Trust report, 2024 saw 44.7 million viewers in the UK tune in to watch women’s sports. A seven million increase from 2022. 

Now beauty brands are recognising that female athletes aren’t just a gateway to feel-good sponsor opportunities or ‘great optics’. If done right, these can be authentic long-term collaborations that can steer the future of women’s sports into one that doesn’t involve low viewership numbers or hushed media coverage.

From wrestling rings to Formula 1 tracks, beauty brands are proving they belong far beyond the aisles of Sephora. So let’s dive into the collaborations spotlighting female athletes and teams in women’s sports. 

e.l.f. Cosmetics X Wonder Women of Wrestling Tournament 

e.l.f. Cosmetics is just one of those brands that always seems to get it right. A perfectionist of the beauty world; e.l.f. has always been a disrupter. Its 2023 Super Bowl ad starring Jennifer Coolidge and written by White Lotus’s Mike White was aired at a time when beauty and sports weren’t much in tandem. It managed to engage the entire White Lotus fanbase (practically anyone with a streaming subscription) and brought the world of beauty and sports together.

Today, the cosmetic brand is venturing into underrepresented sports as the official sponsor of the Wonder Woman of Wrestling tournament. A tournament that runs at a high school level, attracting 700 athletes ready to compete in a sport that continues to go under the radar. And what’s more empowering than uplifting young female athletes to showcase their skills with pride? 

As a brand that champions empowerment, all its ventures come across as organic and genuine. e.l.f. cosmetics, you have our hearts. 

Dove X Sport Illustrated 

Traditionally, when you think of Sports Illustrated, you often associate it with professional models and picture-perfect bodies. Or that one episode of Keeping Up that followed Kim Kardashian on her Sports Illustrated cover journey. But Dove is challenging these norms.

Dove has always been a torchbearer of authenticity and representation. The brand that pioneered the ‘real beauty’ movement has collaborated with Sports Illustrated to introduce Sports Reillustrated, which profiles young female athletes. This collaboration was all about body positivity and providing a global platform for aspiring, young female athletes who deserve all the recognition they can get.

A study conducted by EY and ESPN W highlighted how 94% of women in C-suite positions today have played some form of sport, with 52% playing at a university level. This clearly shows how sports impacts confidence within young, impressionable girls. Today, these women in leadership look to hire women who have played sports in some capacity during their formative years. 

NYX Cosmetics  X Angel FC 

As the first beauty brand to be named sponsor for Angel FC, NYX owns its motto of self-expression. 

Apart from being a sleeve sponsor, the brand donates 10% of any deals it makes to support the Los Fotos Project’s Artist in Residence Program. The program provides training and work experience to female and non-binary teens through photography. 

The cosmetics brand and Angel FC have featured Get Ready with Me videos of the players on their YouTube channels, giving us a small glimpse into their journeys.

Charlotte Tilbury X F1 Academy 

F1 Academy was born out of the need to have more female representation in motorsports. With only five female drivers to have ever competed in an F1 Grand Prix (yes, you read that right), it was clear that there was a dire need for better infrastructure to support young, aspiring female drivers. 

Susie Wolf, the managing director of F1 Academy and former racing driver spent much of her career chasing this very dream.

For Charlotte Tilbury, this was an opportunity to tap into female excellence within women’s sports and provide a global forum to showcase these talented women in a male-dominated motorsport. While Formula 1 continues to get all the media coverage and spotlight, even its own Netflix reality TV show, F1 Academy represents a structured pathway for female drivers to reach the pinnacle of motorsport.

The partnership aims to spotlight these drivers’ journeys, challenges, and triumphs, showing young girls worldwide that the track is as much theirs as anyone else’s.

So, What’s Next?

We predict that 2025 will bring a major push for women’s sports, driven by both sports organisations and female athletes taking charge. As the spotlight on women in sports grows, beauty brands are beginning to recognise the impact of partnering with female athletes — not just in shaping consumer perceptions, but as a way to inspire young athletes who seek strong female role models in their sport.

It signals a shift in how beauty brands view women in sports: not as anomalies to be prettified, but as powerhouses to be celebrated.

A Survey Monkey and Parity survey found that respondents overall are more than twice as likely to purchase products that are promoted by women athletes over influencers. 

We may see more beauty brands developing products specifically designed for athletes or even sports organisations launching collaborative beauty lines. But more importantly, we hope to see the tired narratives of “look good while playing sports” change to “feel empowered, strong, and confident”. And we hope to see more beauty brands push this narrative. 

Written by: Avanii Thakur

Our influencer marketing agency and social agency are located worldwide, with our agency network based in the USA, UK, UAE and China.

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