Sports Fandom, Pinterest Boards & A Jude Bellingham crisis
This is a sports post. Mostly. Kind of. Stay with me.
Disclosure: I'm a Pinterest employee - the views expressed here are my own and don't reflect the views or opinions of the company. All data referenced is publicly available via trends.pinterest.com and Pinterest's Summer 2026 Trend Report.
Let’s start with Jude Bellingham, if you haven’t noticed yet, congrats on your peace. But a huge chunk of the internet spent the last two weeks discovering that Jude Bellingham exists, and GQ has now formally documented what they're calling a "horny new fandom” around him. Women who’d never watched a minute of football in their life suddenly rearranging their afternoon around England games because of one man’s jawline and his habit of giving his jerseys to kids.
The article asks "why Jude? and why now?"— but I could've told them exactly why, because I've been watching it happen every single day on Pinterest, “Jude Bellingham” is up 700% month over month right now. The autocomplete under his name in the Pinterest search bar isn’t “stats” or “assists” — it’s aesthetic, girlfriend, fine pics, selfie, boyfriend material. There’s carefully curated boards, like so many many boards including a “I love Jude Bellingham” board with 300-plus pins and counting as well as collages edits with pink bows, pearl hearts, candy hearts that say KISS ME.
This is not your average sports fan, this is your Pinterest super fan … I’ve been saying it for a hot minute: everyone knows Pinterest is not the platform to watch the game or comment on it, but there’s so much sports world building happening on the platform. And it's not just me saying it, Pinterest's own Summer Trend Report just called it: sports are moving "from a spectator moment to an entire aesthetic."
There’s also a study that came out (Acceleration and USC Annenberg, worth a read) that put actual numbers on the shift. 49% of Gen Z sports fans said they got into a sport or an athlete through fan content or something totally unrelated to the actual competition — a relationship, a viral clip, a docuseries. A quarter of them said they’d rather follow the athlete’s personal story than watch them play. Nearly a third said they support the athlete, not the team.
Case in point: Frosted Tips.
GQ also wrote about the revival of frosted tips at the WorldCup: Valencia bleached his hair for luck, then Nico Williams and guess what’s also climbing on Pinterest - Frosted tips searches. Fans are clocking their favorite players' looks and taking those pins straight to their barber. Fans don't want to spectate anymore, they want to participate and Pinterest is where that starts.
The study also calls out athletes’ relationships as a huge part of what pulls Gen Z fans in — which brings me to the WAGs, especially in tennis and F1. Every season there’s a new It Girl, and like clockwork, the Pinterest searches arrive: her sunglasses, her court side fits, her whole aesthetic. It’s genuinely one of the most reliable recurring events on the platform at this point. US Open is in six weeks and I cannot WAIT to see who gets cast this year. And if I were a beauty or fashion brand, I’d already be building for it — the fits, the makeup looks, the accessories. The searches are coming whether you show up or not. You might as well be the pin they save…
What’s interesting is that every single pin is intent. Nobody saves what they’re passively watching. You save what you’re planning to wear, buy, copy, manifest and ultimately become (even a WAG). A pinned frosted tip is a barber appointment. A pinned cleat is a checkout page. And honestly? This is all still wide open. Brands could be inspiring the boards, feeding the collages, showing up where the fandom's actually taking shape.. The thing is, fandom was never really just about the game or even the watch party. It's about what happens after — the haircut appointment, the jersey styled three ways, WAG-core, the 300-pin shrine. And if that's where fandom actually lives, then maybe — just maybe — the sports media plan should include the platform where all of it is happening 👀
TLDR: The match ends after 90 minutes. The boards? The boards live forever!
I love this! thank you for sharing
I'm a huge Pinterest fan! I get so much inspiration from it for my Substack articles, I'd absolutely love for you to do an office tour 💖