Who doesn’t love a summer of sport? Just as the tennis world celebrates another Wimbledon championship, attention is already turning to Sunday’s FIFA World Cup Final. As billions of people tune in to watch the world’s best athletes compete, another trend is gaining visibility alongside the action itself: the rise of health and performance wearables.
Earlier this year, Wimbledon announced that, for the first time in the competition’s history, players were allowed to wear approved wearable technology during matches. Many players took advantage of this over the first two weeks in July, including Jannik Sinner and Serena Williams, wearing subtle data-tracking devices as they competed.
Player sponsorship is not new – tennis has always had visible brand partnerships, from Nike kit to Rolex watches – but the introduction of consumer electronics to the notoriously strict Wimbledon dress code was. It highlighted, as one leader in the technology space told us, that the big growth in consumer tech is everything related to longevity and health wearables.
One of these brands is Whoop. Speaking to a commercial leader, we were told: “The actual product isn’t particularly special in terms of design, but the data is very good and the marketing has been phenomenal.”
The screenless, wearable tracker has become closely associated with elite sport. It does not try to behave like a phone on the wrist, or compete with a smartwatch as an all-purpose consumer device but, instead, it gives users information about strain, recovery and readiness, and wraps that information in the language of serious performance.
The audience for that message is large and growing. Sport England data shows that 64.6% of adults are now doing 150 minutes or more of moderate-intensity physical activity each week, while the World Health Organization estimates that around 3.8 billion to 4 billion adults worldwide participate in physical activity. Within that much broader market is a smaller, more committed group of amateurs who increasingly train like professionals, and, as such, are data-focused.
That is the market Whoop has tapped into. Although not every user is an elite athlete – in fact, many are not – they do want to borrow from the habits, language and data culture of elite sport. At the World Cup, all the England players wore Whoop devices, as did Thomas Tuchel and members of his coaching staff. Simply by choosing the right people to wear their product, Whoop has been able to position itself as a brand chosen by athletes at the top of their game. With so many options to choose from, and a screenless design, this was crucial.
“Simply by choosing the right people to wear their product, Whoop has been able to position itself as a brand chosen by athletes at the top of their game.”
The results of that strategy are clear. In March, Whoop raised $575m in new financing at a $10.1bn valuation, and, somewhere on the horizon, is also looking to float. In a highly competitive wearables market, it has come to dominate a specific space: data-led performance for people who want to train, recover and live with the seriousness of athletes.
Oura has done something similar, but with a different emphasis. It is less fitness-focused than Whoop and has built much of its reputation around sleep, preventative health and recovery. Its breakthrough came in 2020, when the NBA and WNBA gave players Oura rings capable of detecting illness symptoms before they manifested.
However, it’s been able to grow its story since then, moving beyond the idea of a sleep tracker without losing the clarity of what the product is for. That has translated into significant commercial momentum. The company is now worth $11bn following a $900m Series E funding round, has confidentially filed for an IPO, and expects to hit $2bn in annual revenue.
What Whoop and Oura have done isn’t a new, groundbreaking marketing strategy, but they are key examples of how newer consumer electronic brands in a competitive market can breakthrough and find their niche. Neither brand has reached where they are now by promising to give the consumer everything, but instead, they have each focused on one thing, done it well, and built a clear story around why it matters.
There is also something significant in the fact that both Whoop and Oura are screenless. As we were told, “people are not interested in screens on their bodies,” and this sits within a broader cultural movement, particularly among younger consumers, to be less tied to screens. So-called ‘dumb phones’ are building momentum, and many consumers are choosing to abandon the likes of smart fridges for an analogue one that is easy to set up and does its job well. In that context, the appeal of screenless wearables is not simply that they are more discreet, but that they offer the benefits of data without adding another interface demanding attention.
“Customers are starting to value things that aren’t smart. The things that they want to be smart, need to be very smart, but the things they don’t want to be smart, they actually would prefer not to have.”
That is a change from the way the consumer electronics conversation has often been framed. For years, phones dominated the category, and the question was always what they could do next. What more could they give the consumer? What other parts of daily life could be absorbed into the same device? But the logic of constant expansion has become less persuasive. 54% of people are not using half of what their device has to offer, so it is now harder to make the case for upgrading simply because a new model can do more.
As one leader told us: “People want better devices and less of them. I think customers are starting to value things that aren’t smart. The things that they want to be smart, need to be very smart, but the things they don’t want to be smart, they actually would prefer not to have.”
This isn’t just true for wearable tech. Leica, another consumer electronics brand, has built a distinctive premium position by making cameras feel less like functional devices and more like objects of craft, taste and cultural identity. Crucially, it has built a community around that idea, through galleries, events, workshops and its wider celebration of photography as an art form. That sense of belonging has helped keep the brand relevant well beyond professional photographers or camera enthusiasts. Commercially, it is working: Leica reported its fourth consecutive record year in 2024/25, with revenue up 7.6% to around €596m.
“No one wants to feel like the Chief Technology Officer of their own home”
Creating a community means having marketing leaders who understand that storytelling is a crucial part of brand building. Dirk-Jan van Hameren’s appointment at Whoop is a good example of this. Previously referring to himself as a ‘storyteller’, the former Chief Marketing Officer at Nike brings with him experience and knowledge from leading branding and marketing for a large sports retailer to the role. However, it is also his career as a former Olympic track cyclist which aligns him so perfectly with Whoop. That in itself, is an ideal way to continue telling the story and reinforcing the community.
Consumers are not necessarily looking for every object in their lives to become smarter. They are becoming more discerning about where technology is useful, where it is intrusive, and whether it’s been made for them. As most consumers can probably sympathise, “no one wants to feel like the Chief Technology Officer of their own home” – managing an ever-growing collection of devices, platforms and ecosystems.
That is why brands such as Whoop, Oura and Leica are succeeding. They are not trying to do everything. Instead, they have built products with a clear purpose, communities with a strong identity, and stories that give consumers a reason to care. Wimbledon’s embrace of wearables may signal more than a change to its dress code. It offers a glimpse into the next chapter of consumer electronics: winning not by doing more, but by doing less – and doing it exceptionally well.
