LVMH puts mark on Olympics as luxury brands embrace sports

Whether it’s the Moët champagne poured to celebrate a win or the custom trunks that Louis Vuitton has made for medal ceremonies, luxury has been on full display at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games.  

To Carly Duguid, the creative director for tennis and fashion star Naomi Osaka, luxury fashion and athletics are the perfect combination.  

“There’s a strong parallel between athletes and brands in their commitment to quality and excellence,” Duguid told CNBC. 

In the influencer age, fashion has quickly embraced the sports world and elevated athletes as fashion tastemakers.  These global stars help connect brands to a whole new market of fans and potential new buyers. 

Osaka was the first athlete to partner with Louis Vuitton, whose roster now includes Victor Wembanyama, Carlos Alcaraz, and many French Olympians and Paralympians. 

LVMH is not alone. Gucci has an ambassadorship with British soccer player Jack Grealish and put billboards across cities featuring Italian tennis champion Jannik Skinner. At the 2024 WNBA draft, Caitlin Clark was the first professional basketball player ever dressed by Prada, and continues to don classic designer wear all season.  Dozens of luxury designers outfitted national teams for the first time for the opening ceremony, marking not only new ties between athletics and fashion, but athletics and the Olympic Games. 

LVMH has looked to make a big splash beyond just athlete partnerships, becoming the first luxury brand to be an Olympic sponsor.  

The roughly $160 million investment, which represents nearly 1% of LVMH’s 2023 profits as the parent company of brands like Celine, Louis Vuitton, Loewe, Sephora, and Dom Perignon, has provided luxury touchpoints to the Games, from the Chaumet-designed medals to French athletes wearing Berluti-designed outfits at the opening ceremony and medal bearers wearing vintage-style, distinctly French LVMH uniforms.  

Connecting to the world’s most elite sporting events may give LVMH a boost as overall luxury spending slows. 

LVMH missed its second-quarter sales and revenue goals, and the luxury sector is more broadly faltering with decreasing global demand, largely due to increased financial instability and a shrinking market of “aspirational” consumers – young, first-time luxury buyers. 

Milton Pedraza, CEO of luxury industry consultancy The Luxury Institute, said that new potential buyers, rather than buying a “no-name belt,” will see athletes at the Olympics surrounded by LVMH branding and aspire for those luxury items. 

Luxury brands once concerned themselves primarily with the most expensive and exclusive sports, like tennis and sailing, but now sell what Pedraza calls “inclusivity with exclusivity.” 

“Today, because many of the rising wealthy are athletes, actors, influencers on social media, there is much more of an [idea that] irrespective of race, creed, gender, or any other background that you happen to have, you too can participate in luxury if you achieve the economic… ability,” Pedraza said. 

LVMH has brought the global Games a classic French glamor from the fashion-forward Opening ceremony, but the brand’s reach goes far beyond French culture. 

“Sports and luxury and fashion bring us together… Shared culture is the objective to make sure that luxury brands… extend out,” Pedraza said. 

The night before the opening ceremony, Osaka attended a star-athlete-studded party at Fondation Louis Vuitton in the heart of Paris alongside Lebron James and Serena Williams as well as actors, artists and other business moguls donning pieces from LVMH brands. 

Duguid called it “the perfect opportunity for athlete ambassadors to show up and support their LVMH partnerships while also celebrating the beginning of the Games.” 

As every medal tray brought to the champions’ podium is in the checker pattern that has long defined the brand, “[LVMH’s] presence will be felt in every vein of the Games,” Duguid said. 

Disclosure: CNBC parent NBCUniversal owns NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. NBC Olympics is the U.S. broadcast rights holder to all Summer and Winter Games through 2032.