Oakley has been a recognizable brand in the football world since the ’90s, when former NFL players like Mel Gray and Warrick Dunn wore Oakley sunglasses under their helmets before visors were common.
A few decades later, football looks a little different—and not only when it comes to players’ preferred eyewear. Both the audience and the athlete pool of the sport include more women, and the team at Oakley wanted to be a part of that growth, Corey Hill, the brand’s VP and head of global sports marketing, told Marketing Brew. Enter flag football, which, without helmets and visitors, might present an even clearer path for Oakley to promote its brand and products than tackle football.
“In flag, there’s this culture of eyewear already in 7-on-7 boys football that has carried into girls football,” Hill said. “We felt like it’s a great space for us to continue to cultivate that opportunity with a new audience.”
Oakley has spent the past few years supporting flag football organizations and athletes from youth tournaments to national teams, with the ultimate goal of growing both the sport and the brand’s appeal among women and younger consumers, Hill said.
Full field
With flag football set to make its debut as an Olympic sport in 2028, the NFL has been working to grow brand involvement among its partners, including Oakley, which has been a league sponsor since 2019. Hill recalled that NFL representatives reached out about flag opportunities a few years ago, around the same time he happened to be coaching his daughter’s flag team, leading to a “symbiotic relationship” and Oakley’s initial involvement with flag on a local level, he said.
Since then, the brand has had a presence at regional and national flag football tournaments, including the NFL Flag Championships. Oakley is also serving as the official eyewear partner of USA Football’s men’s, women’s, and junior national teams through LA28.
Though Oakley’s involvement with flag now reaches up to the highest levels of the sport, Hill said his team’s primary focus for flag remains connecting with younger audiences, especially girls.
“One of the things that we want to make sure that we’re doing is talking to the consumers that we think can help grow the brand,” he said. “In the past, I would say our consumer had skewed a little older and male. Bringing in younger, female [consumers] really helps to grow our potential market base.”
One way to do that is through the Oakley Icon Alliance, the brand’s women’s flag football tournament that has plans to expand to include 16 teams in its regional rounds in 2025. The event is meant to provide girls with an opportunity to play at a high level while also giving them a “premium-level experience, much like what the boys get” at their tournaments, Hill said. That includes recovery stations, streaming and broadcast coverage, and games held at NFL facilities.
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“The whole point was to put that top-level experience out there that right now, they’re not necessarily getting from any other brand,” he said.
End zone
Oakley has been seeing movement among the youth demographic, and engagement rates among that audience have increased by double digits in the past three years, according to Hill. While that growth isn’t entirely due to flag football, he said, he credits it as a factor, and Oakley has clocked sales growth for products it’s promoting specifically in flag, like its HyperGrip technology, he noted.
While flag football doesn’t have the reach of the NFL, this summer’s championships aired on platforms including ABC, ESPN Deportes, and Disney+, and games reached a total of 7.7 million fans, up 65% from last year’s tournament, according to ESPN. Oakley “got some really good exposure” during that coverage, Hill said, and also had some standout moments on social: Wide receiver Brysen Wright, for instance, celebrated a viral catch with a backflip while wearing Oakleys.
“We couldn’t have built a commercial that was any better, because the product then stayed on his face when he did the backflip,” Hill said.
Oakley is currently in the midst of its Oakley Icon Alliance regionals, with the championship on the horizon in February. Beyond the youth level, Hill said his team is also focused on the 2026 IFAF Flag Football World Championships that will showcase its sponsorships of Team USA and deal with Mexican flag football star Diana Flores.
In the midst of those moments, and in the run-up to LA28, the Oakley team will continue to prioritize efforts to foster a stronger pipeline for young girls to get into football and develop their skills in between the youth and national levels, Hill said.
“We’re really all about making sure that there’s opportunities for sport for young people,” he said. “We think [flag] is a super disruptive space. It’s obviously different than anything that’s been out there.”
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