The temperature in Queens always drops a few weeks before the leaves actually turn, but by the final Sunday of the U.S. Open, the luxury boxes at Arthur Ashe have taken on the polished unreality of a Ralph Lauren campaign. Heavy cream cashmere is thrown over the shoulders with curated carelessness, vintage white-gold Rolex watches catch the late-summer light, and glossy, bombshell blowouts recall the unapologetic glamour of the late ‘90s and early 2000s.
Then, overnight, the tennis circuit flies to Asia, and the collective focus of American glamour pivots to the gridiron. The stadiums are larger, the stakes louder, and the aesthetic shifts from understated country-club restraint to high-voltage maximalism.
Football season is back, and being a WAG has never looked better.
Tennis bracelets stack against thick rows of bolted Cartier Love bands, engagement rings have returned to unapologetically substantial proportions, and the beauty is equally committed: fresh nails, full glam, expensive tans, and the sort of voluptuous, cascading hair that once belonged exclusively to Mattel dolls rather than women sitting above the 50-yard line. There are custom team jackets, designer bags, black SUVs waiting outside, children in coordinated colors, podcasts recorded between games, and Instagram audiences large enough to turn an affiliate link to a Sunday outfit into record-breaking sales Monday morning.
The NFL may be America’s most powerful sports league, but around it exists another kind of entertainment empire, one built almost entirely by women.
Where It All Began
The term “WAG” actually originates from the other kind of football. During the 2006 World Cup in Baden-Baden, Victoria Beckham, Coleen Rooney, Cheryl Cole, and the rest of England’s wives and girlfriends became a spectacle almost as closely watched as the matches themselves. The British press documented their Cavalli sunglasses, designer luggage, shopping trips, over-the-top primping, and nights out, then mocked them for attracting precisely the attention they had created. They had a reputation for being frivolous, excessive, and distracting, but the world couldn’t stop watching.
Before “WAG” entered the American vocabulary, Kim Kardashian and then-New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush became one of the late 2000s’ most recognizable celebrity-athlete couples, their relationship unfolding during the early years of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Kim went on to turn that fame into a sprawling business and media empire, from beauty and fragrance to mobile games, shapewear, private equity, and SKIMS, the multibillion-dollar company she co-founded in 2019. News to no one, she became a billionaire along the way.
By 2015, E!’s WAGS had turned the hierarchy into the premise of a television show. Cousins Natalie Halcro and Olivia Pierson paved the way for what we know now as fashion-and-beauty influencers, building substantial audiences on Instagram before influencing had even become an industry, and later parlaying that audience into fashion collections and businesses of their own. Nicole Williams English had been modeling internationally since her teens and would go on to launch her swimwear line Nia Lynn, as well as become Sports Illustrated Swimsuit’s 2023 Rookie of the Year and land a 2026 cover. Barbie Blank had made her name in WWE, while Sasha Gates pursued music and fashion. On the spinoff WAGS Miami, Ashley Nicole Roberts described marrying NFL linebacker Philip Wheeler as receiving an “invisible crown.”
Success Beyond The Stands
Ten years later, the crown is considerably more polished.
Natalie, Olivia, and Nicole are now back on Hulu’s The Girls: A Khloé Kardashian Project, alongside Malika and Khadijah Haqq and beauty entrepreneur Yris Palmer. The sports connections remain woven through the cast: Nicole is married to former NFL linebacker Larry English, Natalie previously dated former NFL linebacker Shaun Phillips, and Khadijah spent 13 years married to former NFL defensive end Bobby McCray. Yris, meanwhile, is building a family with former NBA player Troy Daniels.
Millions watched billionaire pop star Taylor Swift’s relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce unfold alongside the NFL season, from her first appearance at Arrowhead in 2023 to Super Bowl celebrations and, eventually, their wedding this summer. Swift hardly needed football to make her famous. Her Eras Tour became the highest-grossing tour in history, taking in more than $2 billion across 149 shows, while the singer who began writing songs as a teenager had grown into one of the most commercially powerful artists in the world.
Her close friend Kristin Juszczyk famously started cutting apart NFL jerseys because she couldn’t find anything she actually wanted to wear to watch her husband, San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk, play, turning them into corsets, skirts, and jackets at her sewing machine. She eventually dressed women including Taylor Swift and Simone Biles and now runs Off Season with Emma Grede, selling the sort of sports clothes she once had to make herself.
Simone Biles has more Olympic medals than her husband, Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens, has NFL seasons. Ciara was already a Grammy-winning R&B star with hits like “Goodies,” “1, 2 Step,” and “Level Up” by the time football entered the picture with Super Bowl-winning quarterback Russell Wilson. Hailee Steinfeld brought the Oscar nomination she earned at just 14 for True Grit to Buffalo with Bills quarterback Josh Allen, while Madison Beer brought two Grammy nominations and the enormous online following she has been building since she was 13 to Los Angeles with her fiancé, Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert. Normani arrived in Pittsburgh with Steelers wide receiver DK Metcalf after finding global fame as a member of Fifth Harmony and launching a solo career.
By the time Cardi B began dating New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs, she had already become the first solo female rapper to win the Grammy for Best Rap Album, scored multiple No. 1 singles, built businesses in fashion and beauty, and amassed an Instagram following larger than the population of most countries. Their relationship has since ended, and the two share a son, but for a time the woman arriving at Patriots games wasn’t simply famous enough to rival the player on the field. She was Cardi B, after all.
Elsewhere in the Patriots family, Ann Michael Maye has been crowned the “Queen of New England.” She and quarterback Drake Maye were childhood sweethearts long before an NFL contract or million-follower audience entered the picture, but Patriots fans have since turned his wife into a celebrity in her own right. Her annual Bakemas series, game-day style, and glimpses into their life together have only added to her popularity. She has since built a sizable social following and partnerships with Ninja, Poppi, HelloFresh, JetBlue, and DoorDash. The Mayes have secured more than 40 brand deals together, but Ann Michael has become such a draw that companies originally interested in the Patriots quarterback have found themselves asking for his wife, too.
Olivia Culpo won Miss Rhode Island, Miss USA, and Miss Universe in the span of roughly a year and a half before building a career across modeling, television, fashion, and business, including restaurants and her own beverage company. She married San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey in 2024. Olivia Ponton, meanwhile, was signed to a modeling agency at 17 and has since appeared twice in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, fronted campaigns for Victoria’s Secret PINK, worked with brands including Ralph Lauren, SKIMS, Coach, and Tommy Hilfiger, and built an audience of more than 12 million across platforms. Her still-undefined relationship with Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow has simply given that enormous audience something new to speculate about.
Finally, it-girl Alix Earle, already had millions of followers when she began dating then-Miami Dolphins wide receiver Braxton Berrios, turning game days into another recurring feature of an audience already following her clothes, beauty routines, vacations, and dating life. Shortly after their split, her rumored fling with none other than Tom Brady set the internet ablaze. But while speculation swirled around her love life, Earle was busy building something of her own: by spring, she had launched Reale Actives, and this September, landed her own Netflix series, Earle Meets World.
WAG Culture Is Pop Culture
Taken together, the women surrounding the NFL now command enough fame, influence, and attention to constitute a celebrity class entirely of their own.
In fact, WAGs have become such a cultural phenomenon that Sports Illustrated Swimsuit opted to devote an entire digital cover series this February to NFL wives and girlfriends, including the beautiful Christen Goff, Claire Kittle, and Ronika Love. These women represent only a fraction of the talent, ambition, and business savvy found among the women surrounding professional sports today.
The successes of the wives and girlfriends of professional athletes are as varied as the women themselves. There are billion-dollar companies, Olympic medals, Grammys and Oscar nominations, fashion lines, television shows, magazine covers, and million-follower audiences.
But the woman beside the athlete has become interesting for something simpler too: people like watching her. They want to see what she wears to the game, where she sits, who sits beside her, the wedding, the house, the babies, the businesses she builds, and what happens next.
Beneath all of that attention, the original fantasy remains: pulling up to a packed stadium on a brisk Sunday afternoon wearing the number of a man you love, slipping into a temperature-controlled suite, and looking down as he runs onto the field while tens of thousands of people cheer for him.
It’s difficult to imagine a better seat in the house.