From Mamba Brand to player-owned ones, Boardroom’s Nick DePaula predicts what to expect from the sneaker space as the new year shakes out.
As we kick off a new year, there are tons to look forward to for the sneaker industry ahead. Several players are emerging across a slate of challenger brands, while there’s also renewed energy from the longtime staple leaders as well.
The relentless arms race that fuels the industry-wide push for innovation and new methods of design is seeing more competition than ever. As new leagues launch, new stars emerge, and new signature shoes are in store, here are some of the top sneaker storylines to keep tabs on throughout 2025.
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Women’s Sigs Will Dominate Across All Levels of Hoops
Building on the success of the Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu signature series, I’m expecting 2025 to be the breakthrough year that turns the tides for women’s sigs for good. The signature launch list for the next 18 months is expected to include Stewie, Sabrina, A’ja Wilson, Angel Reese, and Caitlin Clark.
Not only do I think the market can sustain as many as a handful of women’s signature models, but I expect there to also be as many as 100 total players across the NBA lacing up a woman’s namesake sneaker in the upcoming 2025-26 season.
Already, the Sabrina series has become a nightly staple at all levels of the game, with players also creating their own Nike By You custom colorways. With Nike’s brand muscle continuing to push the defending WNBA champion point guard into the new year and additional women’s sigs on the way, we could also see the first WNBA signature player tour to make its mark overseas — a must in growing a player’s signature series business globally.
Mamba Brand Extends Beyond Basketball, Takes Over NFL
As we saw on both Thanksgiving and Christmas Day’s batch of marquee games, Kobe cleats are starting to pick up serious momentum across the NFL. First, it was the classic neon green “Grinch” pair that was unmistakable on Thanksgiving, followed up by a mismatched pair that also included the red-based “Reverse Grinch” pair on Christmas.
With Nike going hard out the gate in pushing the “Kobe Brand” throughout 2025, there’s a runway for storytelling all year long given that it is the “Year of the Snake” in the Chinese Lunar New Year. The company is instead deeming it the “Year of Mamba.”
We’ve already seen the Oregon Ducks wear exclusive Kobe 6 cleats in the Rose Bowl and USC receive their own PE editions, with even more hoop designs converted into cleats expected to come. By the time the next NFL season rolls around, Kobe cleats — both officially made by Nike and crafted by custom artists — will be seen all around the league.
In addition to the gridiron push, Nike is also launching a new Kobe-geared category within its branded Nike app, serving up a training and fitness program for fans to push themselves as they channel Bryant’s Mamba Mentality into the new year. Looking out even further ahead, I could also see the Kobe 5 and Kobe 6 specifically translating well both in baseball and in golf, as the demand for some of Bryant’s Sheath-branded silhouettes continues on across all sports.
The Shai 1 Will Have AE 1-Level Debut
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander may win MVP this spring, making for a hard-to-beat platform to be wearing your first signature sneaker. The expected All-Star starter and off-court fashion star is hitting his stride all at the right time, as the Oklahoma City Thunder also look to keep a firm hold on the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference as they enter the second half of the season.
Fans have already long looked to SGA for his fearless fashion, and a signature sneaker that pushes the envelope of modern style and off-court wearability could take him to a new tier of stardom during a breakthrough 2025 calendar year.
With all of those factors in play, I think Shai’s first signature shoe with Converse will have a “shoe of the year” type aura to it. Dare I say, an AE 1-level debut and momentum.
Unrivaled League Becomes HUGE Brand Platform
Kicking off this Friday, I’m looking for the upstart women’s 3-on-3 basketball league Unrivaled to immediately make an impact and become a massive brand platform for the 36 select participating players in the inaugural season.
Already, we’ve seen players like Angel Reese and Sabrina Ionescu carry over their massive WNBA following right into Unrivaled’s media day and practice sessions. The league is also quickly showing a masterful grasp of how to push each player across its social media platforms and celebrate the personalities and skills of its biggest stars. Stars like Satou Sabally and Dijonai Carrington are also expected to announce new sneaker brand partners during the Unrivaled season.
With an impressive — seriously, impressive — roster of brand sponsors and partners all on board to help spotlight and highlight the league’s opening season, and TNT on board as a TV partner, Unrivaled should become a platform to only continue growing the game, the brands of each player, and the ecosystem of sneaker endorsement partners that each athlete is connected to.
Nike Finds Its ‘Innovation’ Groove
One of the biggest storylines of 2024 — warranted or not — was the ongoing onslaught that Nike was lacking innovation. A retro reliance on the Dunk and Air Force 1 was a narrative the brand couldn’t quite shake. Many of its signature sneakers began to feel formulaic, simple, and not distinctive enough.
With new CEO Elliott Hill’s “irrational love” for Nike now leading the brand, I’d expect the tail end of 2025 to spotlight just where the company hopes to define itself from an innovation standpoint. The brand announced plans for a “multi-year innovation cycle” of new footwear and technologies on the horizon. Design teams and resources have been shifting internally already, setting the stage to expect more freshness and inspired product.
Salehe Bembury Breaks The Design Formula
Perhaps not since the likes of Tinker Hatfield, Eric Avar, or Aaron Cooper have a signature shoe designer themself had a following or cache on par with the athlete they were designing for. Salehe Bembury is starting to crack that code in the modern era.
After his breakthrough Versace Chain Reaction design a decade ago, he’s designed standout collaborative models for the likes of Anta and New Balance and launched new designs altogether, like the Crocs Pollex clog that did serious, serious numbers.
For 2025, he’s been designing future products for Puma Basketball expected to be headlined by All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton through a new creative partnership. Though Salehe may be known in the lifestyle lane over the years, look for him to make his mark in hoops, continue to bring his quirky design lens to the casual lane, and launch a variety of sneakers with several brands that put his name near the top of the crowd of today’s best designers.
NIL Athlete Shoe Releases Ramp-Up
When Paige Bueckers launched her own GT Hustle model in December, complete with her favorite colors, hometown area code, and thoughtful, personal details, it marked the first time an NCAA basketball player launched their own player-exclusive sneaker at retail.
Look for that trend to really ramp up in 2025. As more and more athletes land NIL shoe deals while in college — and even in high school — brands are looking to take advantage of their impact on the amateur level and launch products sharing their story and bearing their likeness. Whether that’s Reebok and rising HS star Nate Ament or USC star JuJu Watkins and Nike, I expect more NIL athletes to be launching their own PE sneakers at retail as the industry continues to evolve.
Player-owned Sneaker Brands Finally Stick
I love what Jaylen Brown has done. While playing three seasons as a sneaker free agent (for free) was less than ideal, and he didn’t wear his 741 Rover sneaker during his Finals MVP run this past June, I’ve still been impressed by the roll-out, the content, and the products that his 741 Performance brand has launched to date, and in just the last few months.
Brown’s early success could make 741 the first player-led brand to really work.
While the Ball family’s Big Baller Brand is, of course, the most noted recent case, the format has been tried by more than a handful of players over the last 20 years. None have been able to stick, with most players instead opting to return to a traditional brand endorsement model within a couple of seasons.
With Brown hitting the prime of his career on a storied contending Boston franchise while showing both patience and planning with his 741 brand so far, I have all the reason to believe he can really build a business here for this year, and beyond. If he’s successful, it’d finally flip the business model and give players a better blueprint to look at than the misses we’d seen over the years before.
Rare and Coveted Classics Restore Retros
For as much flak as Nike has gotten for its reliance on retro products, for better or for worse, 2025 might be one of the most loaded retro lineups in recent years. While some models, like the “Banned” Air Jordan 1 in its classic black and red colorway will be more available, there’s also an onslaught of original AJ 1s on the way that will make the model’s 40th anniversary one to remember.
Then there’s some major heat that has never been re-released until now. The “Playstation” Air Force 1 and “Undefeated” Air Jordan IV were once thought to be some of the hardest sneakers to track down during the mid-2000s, each fetching well into the four – and even five – figures on resell platforms ever since. When the “Galaxy” Foamposite first launched during 2012 All-Star Weekend, Nike’s entire launch in Orlando was shut down by police, while people actually offered up cars for trade online. All three are re-releasing this year, which should bring some much-needed energy to Nike’s Retro catalog.
2025 NBA Draft Class Makes Instant Brand Impact
This next NBA Draft class is insane. From a pure talent standpoint, it is completely loaded, with the headliners, including Cooper Flagg, Dylan Harper, and Ace Bailey showing just as much promise for the marketing world as they do on the court.
Already, an unheard-of eight players projected to be selected in the first round have a shoe deal through NIL partnerships. Others, like VJ Edgecombe, Boogie Fland, and Tre Johnson, have already shown flashes of being great potential endorsers at the next level.
One of the biggest benefits for a brand landing a player on a NIL deal is the ability to kickstart the planning process even before they turn pro. After agreeing to terms with New Balance during the early summer in 2024, Flagg is already ahead of schedule in planning out future products like player-exclusive sneaker colorways and potential community givebacks for his NBA rookie season. Typically, a player’s rookie season is spent simply planning ahead.
While recent NBA Drafts may have had impressive depth from a player talent standpoint, I’m expecting the 2025 class to become one of the most impactful in nearly 20 years on the endorsement side, going back as far as the 2003 class that featured several future signature athletes.
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