On To A Dream Pivot

by Dee Miller

Sixteen years after starting in the Swiss Alps with a cut-up garden hose and an idea for a better running shoe, On is making its biggest sporting expansion yet. The next stop is football.

On has officially launched On Football, entering the world’s biggest sport with an opening line-up that makes the ambition pretty clear: Kylian Mbappé, Thierry Henry and Sydney Schertenleib.

Mbappé joins as both an athlete partner and global ambassador, working directly with On’s product teams on future footwear and apparel. Thierry Henry, who has quietly been working with the company since late 2025, becomes Director of Football, while 19-year-old Swiss international and FC Barcelona midfielder Sydney Schertenleib will help shape products for the next generation of the women’s game.

The first On football boots are expected in 2027, with the company bringing its LightSpray technology to the pitch. The technology creates a lightweight shoe upper from a continuous sprayed filament and has already been used in On’s elite running products.

For On, though, this feels like more than simply entering another sports category.

It looks like the next stage of a playbook the brand has spent years refining.

From Running Brand to Global Sportswear Player

When On launched in 2010, running was the centre of the universe.

It still is. But the company surrounding it has changed dramatically.

On finished 2025 with CHF 3.01 billion in net sales, up 30% year on year, with adjusted EBITDA reaching CHF 567 million. By the second quarter of 2026, quarterly sales had climbed to CHF 850.3 million, while the company now expects full-year sales of roughly CHF 3.47 billion to CHF 3.56 billion.

More interesting is where some of that growth is coming from.

Direct-to-consumer sales grew 26% in Q2 2026 and now represent 45.7% of revenue. Apparel sales jumped 47.7%, Asia-Pacific has grown to more than 20% of global sales, and On says global brand awareness has reached around 30%. More than a third of its customers are now under 34.

That matters because On increasingly looks less like a running shoe company expanding sideways and more like a wider premium sportswear brand building category by category.

Football is simply the biggest category it has entered so far.

The Federer Blueprint

There is an obvious precedent.

Roger Federer joined On in 2019, not simply as a sponsored athlete but as a co-entrepreneur, helping the company develop products, marketing and its wider approach to tennis. The relationship eventually produced THE ROGER franchise and helped On establish itself in a sport it previously had little presence in.

Football appears to be taking that philosophy even further.

Mbappé is being positioned as part of the development process rather than simply the person wearing the finished product. Henry is inside the business helping shape the strategy, while Schertenleib brings the perspective of an emerging player in the women’s game.

As co-founder Olivier Bernhard put it:

“Today, we’re still chasing better. Tinkering. Tweaking. Testing. All in the name of progress.”

And for founder and co-CEO David Allemann, the challenge is even clearer:

“Football doesn’t need another sportswear brand to do more of the same.”

Performance Meets Culture

On’s rise has also come from understanding that modern sportswear is no longer divided neatly between performance and fashion.

Over the past few years, the company has built partnerships with Zendaya, FKA twigs and Burna Boy, alongside fashion collaborations with LOEWE, POST ARCHIVE FACTION and others. Roger Federer gave the brand sporting credibility beyond running, while campaigns around the Olympics and LightSpray pushed its technology onto a much larger stage.

There are signs that strategy has translated into wider cultural relevance too.

In 2025, On became the first Swiss company to enter the Lyst Index top 20 hottest brands, while searches for On products on the platform rose 50% quarter on quarter. On itself pointed to partnerships with Zendaya and FKA twigs and collaborations with brands such as LOEWE and PAF as drivers of that momentum.

Even the launch of On Football reflects that positioning.

Rather than a conventional boot reveal, the campaign was shot by Juergen Teller inside On Labs in Zurich, placing Mbappé, Henry and Schertenleib alongside the machinery and experimentation behind the company’s products. It is football, engineering and fashion imagery living in the same world.

A Very Big Pitch

There is also plenty of commercial logic behind the timing.

The global football footwear market alone was valued at an estimated $22.75 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $36.4 billion by 2034, according to Fortune Business Insights.

But it is an unusually difficult category to break into.

Nike, adidas and Puma have spent decades building relationships with football’s biggest athletes, clubs and fans. On is walking into a market where heritage matters and where new challengers have historically struggled to take meaningful share.

Signing Mbappé immediately changes the conversation.

He spent around two decades associated with Nike, making his switch to On one of the more significant athlete moves in football sportswear in recent years. Markets noticed too, with On shares rising around 5% in pre-market trading following the announcement.

Yet the more interesting part may be what comes after the announcement.

On has already shown that it can move from running into tennis, from performance into lifestyle, and from footwear into a faster-growing apparel business.

Now it is taking that model into a sport with a much bigger cultural canvas.

Performance boots are only one part of the opportunity. Football now sits at the intersection of terrace culture, fashion, music, streetwear and global fandom, making it unusually well suited to the type of brand On has been building.

Running gave On its technology.

Federer helped open tennis.

Zendaya, FKA twigs and LOEWE helped expand its cultural footprint.

Now Mbappé, Henry and Schertenleib are being asked to take that story onto the pitch.

Dream On, football.

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