NFL Fans in the Smallest Markets Are Buying the Most Merchandise
It’s January in Miami, and Chelsea Gray arrives in the Sephora entrance tunnel for her debut at Unrivaled, the new three-on-three women’s basketball league. The Las Vegas Aces guard and captain for Unrivaled’s Rose BC wears a yellow Avirex leather jacket styled with a crisp white shirt and loose black tie—an outfit that affirms Unrivaled is nearly as much about style as it is the play on the court.
Gray’s look is the brainchild of athlete-stylist Sydney Bordonaro, who works closely with other major names in women’s basketball including Kelsey Plum and Cameron Brink. She’s led the charge for the integration of style into the women’s game.
Bordonaro played at the collegiate level for both Pepperdine University and Long Beach University. “I did my undergrad and master’s in sports management because I wanted to be an agent,” Bordonaro tells Front Office Sports. “That was always kind of the plan.”
But her path swerved.
Several years ago, mutual college friends introduced Bordonaro to Jewell Loyd, the Aces guard currently playing for Mist in Unrivaled. Eventually, Loyd asked Bordonaro for some style advice because, in her own words, “I always just kind of dressed a little bit bizarre. I’m always a little bit sporty.” The conversation evolved, and Loyd asked Bordonaro to dress her for the playoffs. “I really fell into [styling],” Bordonaro says. “It was like the most unbelievable blessing.”
Now, Bordonaro outfits an extensive roster of some of the highest-profile players, including Gray, whom she’s known since playing pickup games together during her spell at Long Beach University. They’ve collaborated particularly closely during this opening Unrivaled season.
“She hasn’t even worn the best ones yet,” Bordonaro says. They’ve been able to experiment with different silhouettes because “[Gray] is always down to play.”
Bordonaro is among a crop of prominent and emerging stylists, including Courtney Mays, Amadi Brooks, and Brittany Hampton, who focus on bringing style to sports. However, it’s taken time for the athletes they dress to explore their relationship with fashion and open a space for stylists to work with them.
Bordonaro explains many athletes are solely focused on their game, which means their personal branding and style is underdeveloped and takes a back seat. They’re “uninformed,” she says, because they aren’t expected to be style icons, too.
“Women’s athletes specifically are different from a singer or some type of actress. The beauty and the fashion is so new to them,” she says.
As women’s sports as a whole find a larger market, partly thanks to the influence of social media and also big names like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, fashion has become a new avenue for revenue and cultural impact. “You’re trying to curate your image and get consistency and hopefully you want to get brand deals,” Bordonaro says.
She describes the partnership between fashion and sports as “a two-way street. The fashion people are dipping into the sports, but the sports people are also getting an understanding.” Style’s place in women’s basketball has been evolving each year—“elevating,” as Bordonaro calls it. “We’re just trying to make them look good and feel good and present an authentic image to who they are.”
Style is increasingly playing a big role in women’s sports, but Unrivaled has specifically created a unique opening for it to take center stage.
Ahead of the league’s first games, Unrivaled announced a multiyear partnership with Sephora, bringing in the cosmetics giant as its official and exclusive beauty partner. As part of this major affiliation, Sephora has provided Unrivaled with a “glam room,” seeded products to players, and placed branding across the league, including the tunnel itself.
Compared with the WNBA, Bordonaro believes Unrivaled breeds a more relaxed environment with less pressure—especially because players have different resources. Founded by two current professional players, Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, the league offers minimum six-figure salaries, gives inaugural players equity in the league, and has signed NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals with college players Paige Bueckers and Flau’jae Johnson.
Eliza Huber, senior fashion editor at Who What Wear, agrees with Bordonaro. “[Players] have so much at their fingertips at Unrivaled,” she says, referencing the impressive training and recovery facilities being provided. “Stewie [Stewart] and Phee [Collier] really took their experience and made sure that the players had everything they could possibly need.”
Resources like this enable players to spend energy on style instead of being laser-focused on their on-court performance. (In contrast, in the closing stages of the 2024 WNBA season, A’ja Wilson turned up to numerous games in a plain white T-shirt, discarding her usual glam moments to place sole focus on her sport.)
Unrivaled’s centralized location in Miami means Bordonaro—who usually works in Las Vegas—has access to the local design district, which means she can shop locally and work with Miami’s designers. “It’s really nice having that type of access to all those elite stores and brands in one area.” The region’s climate during late winter also has its benefits. “It’s not too hot, not too cold. We can layer if we want or even wear shorts,” she says.
In Bordonaro’s eyes, the 3-on-3 game format, alongside the close proximity of fans to the court, allows more players to shine than usual on both a professional and personal level.
Visibility is a key component that can open new doors for women basketball players. “As we’ve seen in other sports leagues, showing fans and viewers a little bit more about yourself when given the platform gives players the opportunity to financially benefit from leaning in to style more,” says Huber. She believes cultural growth is a more pressing matter within the women’s game than the men’s. “In the NBA, it’s different because players make so much more money just at their base salary. They don’t necessarily have to offset their salary with brand deals like you would in the WNBA.”
The Unrivaled season will come to a close in March, but the marriage of sports and style will stay. Huber predicts college basketball will follow in the footsteps of the WNBA and Unrivaled in embracing fashion. “I really expect the NCAA to jump in. With NIL players having the opportunity to make so much more money than they probably do in the pros with brand deals, I really see the tunnel fit phenomenon moving into college basketball, specifically during March Madness.”
Bordonaro and Unrivaled are opening doors for many athletes, but there is also more movement in the sports-meets-style space, especially in women’s basketball, in which many athletes are signing partnerships alongside working with stylists. For instance, Clark, who is styled by Adri Zgirdea, also has a partnership with Prada. Beauty is also becoming an attractive prospect for athletes; Brink is a brand ambassador for Urban Decay. Teams are also growing partnerships, including the New York Liberty, who teamed up on a multiyear agreement with Off-White in December.
As style becomes a bigger part of the game, opportunities like Unrivaled have set the tone for more evolution in the space. Athletes across many women’s sports are all in on the future.
