When the moment is the message: fashion marketing at sports’ biggest stages

Arriving at the top of the escalator in Antwerp’s flagship Zara store, shoppers are met with a mannequin dressed head to toe in white. The look is instantly recognisable. Worn by Bad Bunny during his Super Bowl performance, it went viral within hours. Much of the post-game commentary focused on the estimated “media value” of the appearance, but in-store, Zara’s priorities appear more pragmatic: conversion.

Merchandising has been optimised to allow customers to recreate the outfit with ease. Trousers, shirt, tie and closely aligned alternatives are grouped intuitively, turning a fleeting cultural moment into an immediately actionable retail experience. It is a reminder that visibility alone is no longer the end goal, translation into product matters just as much. Zara was not the only brand to capitalise on the performance. The Super Bowl stage itself was transformed into a highly curated cultural setting, complete with celebrity appearances from Pedro Pascal, Cardi B and Jessica Alba, while Bad Bunny brought New York’s Caribbean institution Tonita into the spectacle. Rather than feeling incidental, these elements reinforced a coherent narrative rooted in identity and place, an increasingly effective strategy in sports-linked fashion marketing.

Footwear provided the clearest data point. Bad Bunny wore an unreleased pair of adidas BadBo 1.0 Resilience trainers during the performance, triggering immediate secondary-market activity. According to StockX, trades of the sneaker increased by 200 percent on Sunday compared to Saturday. Momentum continued into Monday, with trades rising 262 percent compared to the platform’s 2026 daily average. The pattern mirrors previous Super Bowl-driven spikes, including the market response to Kendrick Lamar’s appearance last year, underscoring the event’s continued influence on resale demand.

This is what effective synergy between sports and fashion looks like: cultural relevance paired with commercial readiness.

A similar logic played out at the Winter Olympics in Italy, where Oakley used the global sporting moment to unveil AURA, a new collection that reworks key eyewear and apparel styles with a colour-shift paint treatment. The line includes the Flow Scape goggle, Oakley’s widest field of view to date, alongside the Stunt Wing and CYBR Zero eyewear, the Permian lifestyle model and the MOD1 helmet. Rather than leaning on overt celebrity, the rollout centred on performance credibility and the athletes behind the scenes, aligning product innovation with sporting context.

In both cases, the lesson is clear. When fashion marketing intersects with sport at scale, success is less about logo placement and more about timing, coherence and the ability to move seamlessly from spectacle to product. The biggest moments still matter, but only if brands are prepared to meet consumers where the attention lands.