Carlos Alcaraz’s Nike Wimbledon Shoes Signify Major Marketing Step

When defending Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz walked onto the sward at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club in his blue-trimmed Nike Vapor 11 shoes it marked a major turning point for both Alcaraz and Nike Tennis.

It showed off the first player-edition shoe for the 21-year-old Spaniard. But simply donning a player-edition model wasn’t the biggest move, it was when Nike made the design available on its retail site, giving Alcaraz the type of treatment recently reserved for Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Naomi Osaka.

The Nike-Alcaraz shift comes on the heels of Spanish-language Relevo reporting that Alcaraz signed a 10-year extension with the Oregon-based company this summer worth at least $15 million annually. Alcaraz also had a visit to Nike worldwide headquarters outside of Portland in late March, following the Indian Wells tournament in California.

Signing a player to a major contract is one thing, but marketing that player to attempt to mine value from the contract offers the next step. For example, Italian Jannik Sinner, now 22, also signed a hefty extension with Nike in 2022, reportedly a 10-year deal valued at $15 million per year, but we’ve seen very little in the way of special marketing for Sinner. He wears the same on-court kits as other players and only until recently was the brand able to coax him out of a discontinued footwear model, the Zoom Zero.

MORE: One-On-One With Carlos Alcaraz On His 7-Year Extension With Babolat

On the women’s side, only Osaka and Aryna Sabalenka have been given any sort of special treatment recently. Sabalenka had her own dress and matching shoe color for the 2024 Australian Open and Osaka has for years now had her own clothing line and player edition shoes available for retail purchase.

With Alcaraz not only wearing a player-edition shoe on the court—often the first step in unique player promotion, something that may still be coming for Sinner—but Nike making that shoe available at retail marks a milestone step in the relationship.

The Wimbledon shoe isn’t just a color change—Sabalenka’s Australian Open shoe was a different color to match her dress than mainline models—but a different colorway design. The Alcaraz Vapor 11 features “Baltic blue” on the collar, Swoosh and midsole in a chess-board pattern. The wording on the midsole was switched special for Alcaraz to read “one step ahead,” while the icons below the words include a chess piece and a chess board.

Fans of Alacraz—or of special-edition shoes—now have something unique to chase. And with four major tournaments each year, the launching of an Alcaraz player edition at Wimbledon gives fans hope that a new player edition model will also be coming for the summer’s U.S. Open.

The Relevo report says that Nike will create a logo for the Spaniard, ala the bull for Nadal, the “RF” that the brand once had for Federer or the current “NO” for Osaka. If this comes to fruition, expect that logo to adorn player-edition shoe models and open the possibility of Alcaraz-themed apparel.

Already reaching No. 2 on the 2023 Forbes tennis player valuation list behind Novak Djokovic, a jump from No. 10 in 2022, the new Nike deal will only help cement Alcaraz as one of the key earners in the sport. Just last year he signed a seven-year extension with French racket maker Babolat and has deals with Rolex, BMW, Louis Vuitton and Calvin Klein.

Alcaraz first signed with Nike in 2019 (he previously wore Lotto), a deal that was set to run until 2025. Now with major wins on three different surfaces, capturing the 2022 U.S. Open, Wimbledon in 2023 and Roland Garros in 2024, Nike’s locking up of both Alcaraz and Sinner shows that the brand has invested in the two players it believes will be the face of men’s tennis for the brand in the next decade and also signifies they are still committed, at least at some level, to the sport of tennis.

Nike, of course, has stiff competition in the tennis space. New Balance has heavily invested in Coco Gauff, giving her the only signature shoe for a current player. Asics has aggressively backed Djokovic with player-edition shoes part of the brand’s Court FF 3 line. Federer-backed On continues to create fresh silhouettes in his signature line—both on and off the court—worn by Iga Swiatek and Ben Shelton. The likes of Wilson, Diadora, Yonex, Babolat, Mizuno, Lotto, Fila, Head, K-Swiss and Lacoste have all continued investing in the sport and footwear.

Nike, though, has made its latest move in tennis with Alcaraz, hoping the young superstar can move the brand “one step ahead.”