Since the start of the year, the 2024 Paris Olympics has been buzzed about in the lead-up to the games. With celebrities, fashion sponsorships, an opening ceremony unlike previous years and more — this year’s Olympics in the City of Love shaped up to be the biggest yet.
So just how much impact does every four-year sporting event have on consumer shopping behavior? Algolia, an end-to-end AI search platform that handles 1.7 trillion searches annually for more than 17,000 companies, surveyed 1,000 U.S.-based consumers to find out how much the Games have influenced shoppers to purchase sports-inspired fashion.
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The report found that Amazon (47 percent) was the top place for consumers to purchase sports-related apparel in support of their nation’s athletes and teams. The team’s organization’s official website (31 percent) and the consumer’s favored sportswear retailer (25 percent) were also in the top three destinations.
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While many are purchasing merchandise in support of their nations, 56 percent of consumers see there’s room for improvement with design and offering more fashion inspired by major global sporting events.
The top influencers at the events are the athletes participating, with the likes of Simone Biles and Stephen Nedoroscik being the biggest names from the U.S. coming out of this year’s Games.
Forty-two percent of all consumers said they are more likely to purchase a product, such as Biles’ Athleta partnership or Coco Gauff’s New Balance partnership, endorsed by a top athlete representing their country. This amount jumps to 55 percent for Millennials and 65 percent for Gen Z.
While Algolia’s study shows that only 18 percent of men and 27 percent of women have bought merchandise in support of a women’s athlete or team, the report’s authors see change coming in upcoming years. The support and viewership for women in sports like the WMBA and motorsports has seen exponential growth.
StockX has also seen a shift in the secondary market surrounding the Olympics. The marketplace found that the top traded product is the newly released Jordan 4 Retro SE Paris Olympics in the shade of wet cement, with more than 8,300 trades — making it the highest-selling Olympic product sold on StockX.
Other top traded products include the grade school size sneaker of the Jordan 4 Retro SE Paris Olympics in wet cement, the Nike SB PS8 Electric Pack Olympic Safari, the Kith Olympic Heritage Atlanta Basketball Vintage Tee in black and the Nike SB Olympics 2024 Pullover Hoodie in obsidian and white. Overall, Kith’s basketball collaboration with Team USA has also seen a 62 percent price premium.
Notably, StockX saw growth with Olympic-related products for May, June and July with trades up in July by 1,083 percent over the month of June.
“We’ve seen early excitement around the games,” said Rachel Makar, senior director of merchandising at StockX. “Searches for ‘Olympics’ are up 239 percent since June and Olympics-related products have seen three straight months of trade growth — up over 1,000 percent month-over-month — with no signs of slowing down.”