As hockey fandom heats up, Florida Panthers ink deal with hair care brand

Hair has always been a big deal in men’s hockey, if the timeless “hockey flow” style of many players’ tresses is any indication. But beauty and hair brand sponsorships haven’t always been common in men’s professional sports.

That tide is starting to turn, including in South Florida, where back-to-back Stanley Cup champs the Florida Panthers recently brought hair care brand L’ange on board as the team’s official hair care partner.

The Panthers deal is the first sports sponsorship for the South Florida-based L’ange, according to Shamila Byler, VP of marketing for Integra Beauty, L’ange’s parent company, and she’s betting her team can leverage the rising tide around hockey to find unique opportunities to connect with women and other fans in L’ange’s home region.

“We felt the draw, as many people have, towards more in-person experiences and connecting through shared passion points,” Byler told Marketing Brew. “When we looked closer into this partnership specifically, we saw there was a huge female audience, a lot of it driven by the overall enthusiasm around the team, but also, hockey seems to lend itself to a female audience, which is our target market.”

Puck drop

L’ange moved to South Florida in 2021, and as a relative newcomer to the market, the brand’s marketing team has been looking for ways to make connections in its community, Byler said. Last year, it landed on the idea of a sports sponsorship, encouraged by the “huge expansion of beauty in sports,” she said.

While beauty brands like Essie have made inroads in the women’s sports world, there have been several major brand moves into men’s sports, too; In the NBA, the Golden State Warriors inked a deal with Sephora in November, and fellow NHL team the Toronto Maple Leafs announced a partnership with e.l.f. Cosmetics in 2024.

For L’ange, the Panthers stood out for a number of reasons beyond their recent Stanley Cups. For one, “they’re beloved in the community,” Byler said, which aligned with her team’s goal of fostering connections. There was also strong audience overlap—particularly among families and women of all ages with disposable income—and Byler said she felt the Panthers could provide activation opportunities that felt natural but not unachievable for a first-time sports sponsor, like the team’s annual Women’s Empowerment Night.

“We didn’t want to just put our logos on things,” she said. “This partnership specifically allowed us to get more integrated with the team, which we were excited about.”

In addition to sponsoring the Panthers as a whole, L’ange is also the presenting partner of its dance team. As part of the deal, L’ange is working on content like photo shoots and experiences with the dancers, and provides products for them to use ahead of performances, Byler said.

Her team is still working through additional potential experiences that could help the brand engage with fans through this season and beyond, as the current deal is for two years, with the option to extend.

L’ange already has a presence at Amerant Bank Arena with multiple murals, one depicting Panthers’ mascot Stanley with a long ponytail and a L’ange blow-dryer, and another of the Panthers Dance Team that touts L’ange as its official hair care partner, Byler said.

Heating up

There are other factors that pushed Byler to pursue the partnership. Compared to other sports, hockey felt like “the most brand-safe environment for us in the region,” she said, and with cold, indoor venues, it also allows for fans to get a little more dressed up than an outdoor game during a humid Florida summer, where perfectly coiffed hairstyles might face insurmountable pressure.

Plus, Byler said, there were some indicators that hockey’s star might be on the rise, like the prominence of hockey romance novels on BookTok. L’ange’s deal with the Panthers was finalized in the fall, ahead of the release of the smash-hit show Heated Rivalry, but the recent success of that show is certainly another good sign, she said.

“Maybe it’s…some beginners’ luck for us as far as sports partnerships,” Byler said. “But we did see, outside of Heated Rivalry, really great numbers to say, ‘This is where you should go.’”

A hair care brand sponsoring an NHL team isn’t the most common tie-up, but Byler’s goals for the partnership are similar to other deals: boosting brand sentiment by engaging with fans. The sponsorship will also serve as a learning opportunity for L’ange, both for sports and experiential marketing, Byler said.

“Our goal is honestly to get our feet wet with sports marketing,” she said. “We felt like this was the most attainable but most premium opportunity we had at our fingertips.”