How the football jersey became a bigger play beyond the pitch

Back in the day, launching a football kit was relatively simple. Put the new jersey on a few star players, get them in front of a camera, release the photos and wait for fans to decide whether they loved it or hated it.

Today, the jersey is increasingly just the starting point.

Across football, clubs and their sportswear partners are turning kit launches into bigger marketing moments, complete with cinematic campaigns, cultural storytelling, fashion-led creative, experiential activations and even opportunities for fans to shape the product itself.

This season alone, Liverpool and adidas tapped into the club’s culture and identity for its third kit launch, while Manchester City and PUMA put fans at the heart of the creative process, using AI to invite supporters to design and ultimately vote for the club’s third kit. Chelsea and Nike, meanwhile, took cues from fashion and street culture for its "Can't tame us" campaign.

The approaches may differ, but they point to the same shift of football clubs no longer simply unveiling what their players will wear on the pitch. They are using kits as platforms to tell stories, create cultural moments and give fans another way into the club.

So, when did launching a football shirt become a marketing campaign in its own right? And as clubs compete for attention well beyond the 90 minutes on the pitch, what does going bigger on a kit launch actually do for the brand?

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Football kits have always carried identity. What has changed is the number of places that identity can now travel. For Joanne Warnes, managing director of sports agency Octagon APAC, the shift towards bigger kit campaigns is the result of several forces converging, particularly as the lines between football, fashion and culture continue to blur.

Big clubs already produce an enormous amount of content around matches, players and results. But genuinely emotive brand moments are harder to come by, she said, giving the annual kit launch an opportunity to communicate something bigger about what a club represents.

"Culture and commerce are colliding," said Warnes. "The kit launch has become the vehicle for a club to say what it stands for, not just sell a shirt."

The evolution of the football shirt itself has helped. Warnes pointed to the 2018 World Cup and Nigeria's now-iconic Super Eagles shirt as a turning point, when jerseys began moving from football uniform to genuine fashion statement.

Since then, collaborations such as Paris Saint-Germain and Jordan, Real Madrid and Y-3, Arsenal and Stella McCartney, and Inter Milan and Moncler have pushed performance wear further into fashion and everyday culture.

It means the audience for a football shirt no longer necessarily begins and ends with people watching the game.

Nicolle Sing, business director at experiential marketing agency DARKHORSE, sees clubs themselves undergoing a similar transformation. With matchday revenue often accounting for less than 20% of a top club's earnings, she said clubs can no longer operate around "90 minutes of pitch time".

Instead, they are increasingly functioning as lifestyle brands competing with fashion houses, streetwear labels and entertainment platforms for global attention.

"A kit launch is no longer just an administrative product drop, as it has become an annual brand reinvention," said Sing. "By building an iconic brand world around the kit launch, clubs capture cultural gravity and unlock commercial outcomes far beyond the stadium gates."

That is also changing what supporters expect from the product. The static studio shot has increasingly given way to what Sing described as "drop culture aesthetics": cinematic films, authentic subculture storytelling and editorial lookbooks that position a jersey as something that can sit in a wardrobe as comfortably as it does in the stands.

"They aren't looking for a jersey to wear exclusively on matchday, they want a piece of apparel that fits seamlessly into their daily streetwear rotation," she said.

For Sing, nowhere is that creative freedom clearer than the third kit. While home and away shirts tend to carry greater expectations around club heritage, she described the third kit as an "experimental sandbox" where clubs can play more freely with streetwear crossovers, artist partnerships and high-fashion design.

Getting fans off the sidelines

However, looking good off the pitch is only one part of the equation. The relationship between clubs and their supporters is changing too.

Melody Li, SVP, global business development at Dentsu Sports International, said fans no longer simply want to see the new shirt. They want to understand why it exists, what it represents and, increasingly, where they fit within its story. She said: 

The expectation has shifted from 'show me the shirt' to 'give me a reason to feel part of it.

That helps explain why some clubs are moving beyond storytelling towards participation. Manchester City and PUMA, for example, invited supporters to use generative AI to create potential designs, drawing more than 180,000 submissions from over 200 countries and 1.7 million ratings. A fan-created design ultimately became an official third kit worn by the team.

Warnes similarly sees a move from a one-way relationship towards greater dialogue between clubs and supporters. Rather than simply receiving whatever a club puts out, fans increasingly expect to be consulted, credited and involved.

The traditional reveal day is changing as a result. What was once a single announcement can now unfold through leaks, teasers, campaign films, creator content, the reveal itself, a first on-pitch appearance and the eventual public release.

For Warnes, this has brought football kit launches closer to "drop culture", with each stage providing another opportunity to build anticipation and social currency. That approach becomes particularly valuable when football fandom itself is increasingly global.

Many supporters of major European clubs live outside their teams' home markets and time zones, making matchday a very different experience from that of a local supporter. A kit launch, however, can be experienced simultaneously almost anywhere.

Warnes said this is one reason campaigns are increasingly being designed as global digital events rather than stadium-first reveals.

Attention alone won't win the game

For all the films, fashion collaborations and fan participation, a kit campaign ultimately needs to deliver something beyond launch-day noise.

For Warnes, that means creating a consistent idea across the product, story and experience, from the earliest teaser through retail and the kit's first appearance on the pitch. The campaign also needs a life beyond launch, as players, supporters and creators continue to shape the shirt's story throughout the season.

Sing said the real test is whether cultural attention translates into tangible value. By grounding a launch in the values and subcultures surrounding a club, brands can turn kit ownership from a transaction into an expression of identity.

"When a launch successfully translates cultural equity into emotional resonance, it doesn't just generate day-one social media noise, it converts brand loyalty directly into measurable commercial performance," she said.

For Li, the strongest campaigns ultimately come down to participation rather than exposure.

"A new kit already comes with attention. The stronger campaigns make fans feel part of the club, not simply an audience for it," she said.

Her test for whether a campaign has achieved that is simple:

If you removed the shirt, would there still be an idea fans care about?

As football shirts increasingly become fashion pieces, collectibles and cultural symbols, that may be the bigger challenge for clubs: giving fans something to buy into beyond the kit itself.

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