Babolat at 10, Louis Vuitton at 20: how Carlos Alcaraz’s sponsor portfolio was built

From a racket deal signed in childhood to a luxury house once he was world No. 1: the order in which his sponsors arrived shows how much risk each brand took.

TENNIS

9/20/20264 min read

Carlos Alcaraz is 23 and has seven Grand Slam titles. In February 2026 he won the Australian Open and became the youngest man to complete the career Grand Slam. According to Forbes, between the 2024 US Open and August 2025 he earned around $35 million off the court, more than any other tennis player in the world.

At this point, signing Alcaraz is an easy decision to defend in any boardroom. But his portfolio wasn’t built in one go. Line up his sponsors by the date they arrived and a ladder appears: each brand came in when the risk it was willing to take matched what Alcaraz had already proven.

Babolat: a contract at age ten

Babolat came first. Alcaraz signed his first contract with the French racket maker in Spain at the age of ten. Eric Babolat, the company’s CEO, said so himself in 2023: the relationship “started 10 years ago when he was only 10 years old.”

For a racket brand, signing children is part of the job. It signs many of them, most fall away, and each bet is cheap. What it gets from the one who makes it is hard to buy later: authenticity. Alcaraz didn’t pick Babolat once he was famous. He grew up with it.

In August 2023, already world No. 1, he extended the deal by seven years, to at least 2030. That secured Babolat the core decade of his career.

Nike, while he was still a prospect

Nike arrived in 2019, when Alcaraz was about to turn 16. He was a junior with plenty of buzz, coached by Juan Carlos Ferrero, but still without results on the professional tour.

Nike’s logic is similar to Babolat’s, but the stakes are higher. The brand dressed Federer and Nadal for their careers and needed the next one before someone else got him.

One week in January 2022

In January 2022, Alcaraz was playing the Australian Open at 18. He was ranked 31st and was the only player his age in the top 100. That same week, two very different deals were announced.

On January 20, ISDIN unveiled him as an ambassador. ISDIN is a Spanish dermatology and sun-protection lab, and the fit makes more sense than it first seems: Alcaraz plays in the sun for hours, and ISDIN was the official sun-care partner of events such as the Mutua Madrid Open and the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell. For the brand, a young Spanish player was the most credible possible face of “protect your skin.” For the player, it was a deal that fit his daily life. The relationship has grown since, and the two have developed a sunscreen designed for athletes together.

A day later, Rolex named him a Testimonee. The reasoning here is different. Rolex has been in tennis for decades and has had Federer and Nadal on its roster. It didn’t need immediate sales. It needed continuity: making sure the next great name in tennis wore its watch when lifting trophies. Doing so with the world No. 31 says a lot about what it saw in him.

BMW, before the first Grand Slam

In June 2022, BMW signed Alcaraz, then ranked fifth in the world. The deal was presented as a mobility agreement, with the brand providing his electric cars. It came a few weeks before BMW moved into Spanish sport in a big way with Real Madrid.

The timing matters. That September Alcaraz won the US Open and became the youngest world No. 1 in ATP history, at 19. BMW had got in just before. It renewed the partnership in September 2025.

Luxury arrives with No. 1

The fashion brands came later, and that’s no coincidence.

In January 2023, Calvin Klein picked him for its “Calvins or Nothing” campaign. He was already a Grand Slam champion and world No. 1. In June 2023, Louis Vuitton named him a house ambassador, just after he had reclaimed the top ranking by winning at Queen’s.

A luxury house isn’t looking for what a racket brand wants. It doesn’t sell performance, it sells image, and image needs the public to already know who is wearing the clothes. That’s why these brands pay for certainty rather than instinct: they arrive later and usually pay more to do so.

The risk of signing early

Taken together, Alcaraz’s portfolio is almost a textbook. The brands that came early bought three things: a lower price, long contracts and a story that can’t be manufactured later (“we were there from the start”). In return, they took the risk that talent wouldn’t turn into titles.

That risk doesn’t disappear once the player wins. In April 2026, tenosynovitis in his right wrist forced Alcaraz out for almost five months. He couldn’t defend Roland Garros or Wimbledon, both of which he had won the year before. He came back at the US Open and lost in the quarterfinals to Ben Shelton. For a sponsor, that means months without its image on the year’s most-watched courts.

That’s where portfolios differ. A brand that signs for ten years accepts that seasons like this will happen. One that signs for a single campaign doesn’t.

Nike and the missing piece: the logo

One piece is still falling into place. In June 2024, according to Relevo, Nike and Alcaraz renewed their partnership on a long-term deal. The figures published in Spain, $15–20 million a year for about ten years, are press estimates: neither Nike nor the player’s team has confirmed them.

What is documented is the logo. On January 21, 2026, Nike filed a trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office for a “CA” mark covering sports products. Within Nike, only Federer and Nadal had had their own logo, and they got it at 26 and 27. According to people close to Alcaraz, the launch was planned for mid-season, right when his wrist took him off the court.

That logo is the last step of the portfolio. It’s no longer a brand betting on a player, but a player starting to become a brand within another.