Paris Saint-Germain, Inter's meeting in Champions League final showcases connection between fashion and sports

It is as familiar a sight as any, be it on a live stream of choice or on a social media platform -- soccer players walk down a corridor of a stadium hours before an upcoming match, frequently in uniform. They are not clad in the kits that they will be wearing in a few short hours on the pitch, though. The outfits are usually something more formal, a look more sartorial than the polyester jerseys they are famed for wearing – and oftentimes supplied by a luxury apparel brand.

The name recognition of the players on the pitch has matched that of the fashion houses that have flocked to dress them in recent years, both for matches big and small. Look no further than this season's edition of the UEFA Champions League, when Hugo Boss partnered with Stuttgart and Zegna outfitted reigning champions Real Madrid. High fashion will have a place at Munich's Allianz Arena for Saturday's final, too -- finalists Paris Saint-Germain and Inter hail from two of the world's fashion capitals and will likely turn up to the venue with an unofficial nod to their cities' stylish roots in Dior and Canali, respectively.

Formalwear and sports may feel like an unlikely combination but years after NBA players began to earn comprehensive coverage from GQ for their pre-match looks, luxury fashion brands have found a happy home in the professional sports landscape. It is not merely a matter of personal expression from individual athletes, though – these companies are striking actual partnerships with sports teams and especially so in soccer, the world's most popular sport. The collaborations are a mix of wants and needs for all parties involved, naturally coming with plenty of financial incentive and the most coveted intangible of our times – brand awareness.

"It wasn't just a question of style," Paris Saint-Germain chief brand officer Fabien Allegre told CBS Sports, "but of expanding our universe, connecting the new generation of fans from different universes and creating those essential links to be recognized as an innovative brand."

Luxury brands' new frontier

The business of luxury brands is built on catering to a very elusive group of wealthy clientele, but there is one very obvious problem with that strategy -- the customer base is always going to be incredibly small. These companies have been slowly forced to abandon a strict definition of luxury and expand their audiences in a variety of ways, including opening stores in smaller American cities like Troy, Michigan, and Naples, Florida.

"When they have capital structures that are very capital-intensive to operate, they need to find a new area of growth," Thomai Serdari, the director of the luxury and retail MBA program at New York University, said.

That is where popular sports teams -- and their supporters -- come in. Sports fans serve as ideal customers through their psychographics, a marketing approach that categorizes people based on their attitudes rather than traditional demographics. Formal partnerships with major sports teams during popular events marks an attempt for luxury brands to capture a slice of some very large audiences, and those brands have been showing up in droves – Louis Vuitton has partnered with several major sporting events like the FIFA World Cup and the NBA Finals to make trophy cases, while Burberry and Gucci have partnered with individual athletes like Tottenham Hotspur's Son Heung-min and Manchester City's Jack Grealish, respectively, in the past.

The financial incentives go both ways. While luxury brands gain recognition with new audiences, teams and individual players have new revenue – and more creative revenue streams open to them.

"I think a crucial part of the whole equation is the athletes themselves and how they are, in essence, placed in the front lines," Serdari said. "These are people who otherwise didn't have access to this sort of expensive sponsorship or ambassadorship. It can be, for them, a totally new revenue line in certain instances and even if it's not about revenues, It gives them the ability to express themselves and dress themselves in a way that is fun for them but also appeals to their audiences so it only allows the relationship between their own audiences and themselves their own personal brands to be stronger, to be more cohesive."

Formalwear partnerships are not exactly designed to ensure, for example, that all PSG fans walk into Dior stores and that Inter supporters start purchasing clothes from Canali as frequently as they do the team's new kits. These deals can play a sizable role in putting together the unique puzzle that is brand-building, an increasingly important marketing exercise no matter the industry.

Fashion as part of a broader experience

The newness of the crossover between luxury apparel companies and sports is not one-sided. In an era of unmatched global connection, history-laden sports teams have felt a need to refresh their brands to appeal to the widest audience they have ever had access to. PSG have used that opportunity to focus heavily on fashion, which is how Allegre and his team interpreted the brief from president Nasser al-Khelaifi upon Qatar Sports Investments' takeover of the club in 2011

"Our president shared a clear vision: To make Paris Saint-Germain a global brand both on and off the pitch, and for me, the objective was to be both a successful football club and a cultural brand in its own right," Allegre said. "This ambition quickly took shape with unique collaborations that had never been done before by a football club, a showcase in the iconic Paris shop Colette, and our first appearance at Paris Fashion Week, in collaboration with Koche and Bape. Then, seven years ago, our collaboration with Jordan Brand."

PSG's collaboration with Jordan, the brand named after basketball great Michael Jordan and owned by Nike, is the club's most notable expansion into the fashion industry and perhaps the most natural marriage between sportswear and style that currently exists. Jordan has designed kits that the players have actually worn in competition, as well as several athleisure collections with the club. Jordan Brand and PSG are now synonymous with each other in a way that earns the club style points, finding a genuinely authentic meeting point for two industries that have sometimes seemed like polar opposites.

"Fashion and sport are about the same things: Identity, emotion and movement. When they come together in an authentic way, it creates powerful things, stories that touch people," Allegre said. "All our lifestyle initiatives in the broadest sense are a way of bringing people into our world, even if they're not football fans at first. Sometimes it's a jersey seen in a concept store or worn by one of our players on Dota [the video game] that gets the ball rolling. We also know how to use our power to put the spotlight on designers, stylists and creative collectives -- whether in Paris, Tokyo or Los Angeles -- who have the same values as us."

PSG's presence in the fashion industry is not just limited to their work with Jordan, though. Dior is their formalwear partner this season in a deal that really leans into Paris' reputation as a fashion capital. It offers a different type of visibility for PSG in an industry that they have already staked their claim in.

"Paris Saint-Germain is the sporting soul of Paris. Together, we embody a certain idea of modern refinement," Allegre said. "For the 2024-25 season, Dior has once again designed exclusive outfits for the players and staff. But it's not just a suit: it's a posture, a way of representing the club at all key moments -- whether at the entrance to the stadium or on the red carpet. The high standards of fit and detail echo what we strive for on the pitch: precision and excellence. It's lifestyle in its own right."

The innovative strategy can go a long way for a club like PSG, who do not benefit from the splashy domestic broadcast deals some of their counterparts around Europe count as part of their earnings. No club will turn down an additional revenue stream, though, and the increasing commonality of formalwear in sports marks an impressive collaboration between two industries that once had very little in common. It helps that partnerships like PSG's with Dior and Inter's with Canali have an authentic hook -- the luxury brands hail from the same cities as the clubs they partner with, adding to the unspoken experience of a match, whether you are in attendance or not.

In short, it is a new spin on things for a new audience in a new age.

"The new generations who have taken us away from simply product consumption to a brand and experience consumption first," Serdari said. "Many more people are willing to have a pleasant afternoon or evening watching a sport that they like and they like it because it's part of this experiential lifestyle. Within that experiential lifestyle, they're also more prone to be educated about new products that come from specific brands ... Millennials started it all but now Gen Z is very much about the experience rather than the product."