Gymshark, one of the UK’s fastest-growing companies, has been named among social media’s favourite activewear brands globally in WeArisma’s Sports and Athleisure 2025 State of Influence report. Its community-led engagement strategy has generated influencer content that garnered over 907.3 million engagements, outshining heritage labels Adidas and Nike.
The British brand’s influencer content blends fitness conversation, comedy, challenges and training advice to foster authentic relationships between fitness creators and their audiences. This has driven increases of 62% in Earned Media Value (EMV), 92% in impressions and 174% in engagements year-on-year.
Gymshark’s impressive social media performance can be attributed to authentic influencer content that appeals strongly to target audiences, which is crucial in the current social media marketing landscape. This is displayed by its Resonance score, which reveals that 29% of consumers who saw influencer content about the brand interacted with it, compared to an 11% industry average. This represents a 43% increase year-on-year and places Gymshark as the sports and athleisure brand with the second-highest Resonance on social media. Conversely, neither Adidas nor Nike ranked in the top 10 brands generating the most Resonance, allowing the challenger brand to establish itself against industry giants.
Gen Z seek style and substance with Tala, Fila, On and Lululemon
Gymshark is not the only British brand creating a global social media impact. Influencer Grace Beverley’s brand, Tala, is one of only two sports and athleisure brands to achieve WeArisma’s top Virality Grade, which assesses the extent to which an influencer’s content spreads beyond their immediate audience. Tala’s branding and influencer content appeals to younger generations who are seeking apparel that blends style and performance to suit their active lifestyles.
As an influencer-owned business, Tala exemplifies how engaged audiences boost social media presence. Fila, On and Lululemon also harness Gen Z influencers to promote this trend and increase reach. Influencer content about Fila, fuelled by Chinese stars Zhao Lusi and Jackson Lee, has driven 320 times more engagement and 42 times more impressions than the brand’s own content. On’s work with Zendaya goes beyond a standard influencer endorsement as the star is contributing to the brand’s long-term aesthetic direction and leading an aspirational movement which generated $11 million in EMV in the 12 months from December 2023. Influencer content about Lululemon has generated 19 times more EMV than brand accounts.
Luxury brands are also capitalising on the appetite for stylish, high-performance clothing to cross into the sports and athleisure sector. This has been particularly effective through collaborations with sports brands that lend authentic appeal, such as Nike x Jacquemus, Adidas x Avavav and Nike x Kim Kardashian for NikeSKIMS.
Nike and Adidas dominate conversation around sporting events
The Paris Olympics dominated screens around the world in 2024 and was a powerful marketing opportunity for sports and athleisure brands. Adidas launched “Home of Sport” on the Champs-Élysées and Pharrell Williams wore Adidas trainers during the torch relay. Meanwhile, Nike debuted Olympics uniforms and AI-generated sneakers supported by content from athletes, Serena Williams, Sha’Carri Richardson and Kylian Mbappe.
While brands will have to wait until the 2026 Winter Olympics to leverage the power of the games again, brands can replicate its success with other sporting events. For instance, 2025 is poised for brands to work with influencers around the growing cult of women’s sports as the Women’s Euros, Women’s Rugby World Cup and Women’s Cricket World Cup are all taking place.
WeArisma’s report uncovers the power of influential voices in sports and athleisure brands’ marketing strategies. WeArisma’s proprietary analytics metric ‘Ripple Impact’ shows how the impact of influencers’ content is significantly further reaching and engaging than brands’ owned content. Across the highest-performing sports and athleisure brands worldwide, Ripple Impact generated up to 19 times more EMV, 42 times as many impressions, 321 times more engagement and 44 times more content than content from the brands’ accounts.
Jenny Tsai, CEO and founder of WeArisma, said: “The growing popularity of sports and athleisure wear and its crossover from other apparel sectors has been driven by younger, fitness and health-conscious audiences looking to combine lifestyle and performance. While this is an opportunity for sportswear brands, it is also a space that luxury brands have increasingly been focusing on. A strong social and influencer strategy is critical to maintaining relevance, but with over 130 million influential sources across the world today, ensuring you are leveraging the right voices to influence your target customer is essential.”
“Evaluating a partnership’s efficacy in this new era requires a new way of thinking about success. While metrics like Earned Media Value are well suited for showing which brands have the most exclusive partnerships, they don’t necessarily spotlight those that are building the most authentic connections with target customers or those whose name travels far beyond the communities of brands or even influential voices and into the vast interconnected social media web. Metrics such as Virality and Resonance and their contribution to Ripple Impact are incredibly useful to build a holistic view of influencers’ impact on brands’ success.”
