Morgan Riddle has a busy week ahead of her. As she gets ready to attend her third U.S. Open, the influencer has already hosted a Fenty Beauty event in Chelsea, participated in a panel on tennis and fashion with Sporty & Rich founder Emily Oberg and launched a campaign with Heineken for a zero-proof beer. The main event, however, is cheering on her partner, the tennis player Taylor Fritz who is currently ranked No. 12 in the world in men’s singles.
Fritz will have to earn his way to the end of the Open — he won his opening match against Argentina’s Camilo Ugo Carabelli on Monday. Last year, he made it to the men’s singles quarter-finals before getting knocked out by eventual champion Novak Djokovic. But Riddle, between hosting activations and suites with the likes of Grey Goose and Bumble & Bumble, already knows she’ll be busy up to the end of play.
“Regardless of how he does, I’m sticking around,” she told Glossy.
The WAG phenomenon — that is, the wives and girlfriends of elite athletes — is nothing new, having originated in the early 2000s with the stardom of the likes of Spice Girl Victoria Beckham. But Riddle is part of a new class of WAGs that are making careers as social media influencers, translating their unique access to the sports world to TikTok and Instagram followings and brand deals. And with beauty and fashion brands taking a growing interest in reaching diverse sports fans, WAGs’ particular blend of insight and fandom is especially valuable.
“An athlete may be really aspirational. Their followers may think, ‘I’ll never be at that level of fitness,’ or their lifestyle may seem really outlandish to an everyday person. Someone like a WAG is way more relatable,” said Diana Perlov, senior director of client success at influencer marketing agency Open Influence. “They’re just people like you and me, but they are still part of these core lifestyles and get to attend these events that we watch on TV.”
Riddle and Fritz began dating in 2020 after meeting on Raya, with Riddle maintaining her full-time job while traveling with Fritz to tournaments early on in their relationship. Only in 2022 did she post a “get ready with me” video at the Australian Open, garnering 1.2 million views on TikTok and opening her up to the possibility of making a career as an influencer. Today, Riddle has 530,000 followers on TikTok, where her audience is 96% female, close to 350,000 on Instagram, and nearly 80,000 on YouTube. She calls the latter her favorite platform despite her smaller audience, finding the longform format lets her audience see her as a whole person rather than just a photo.
“You can’t hold a normal job if you’re going to travel pretty much full-time with your partner,” she said of the transition. “I think that’s why there are a lot of other partners now on tour who are doing similar things — because [being an influencer] is a flexible job that you can have. You’re already naturally getting that sort of attention, so why not capitalize on it?”
Other tennis-adjacent influencers with professional partners include Paige Lorenze, girlfriend of Tommy Paul, who has close to 700,000 Instagram followers, and Ayan Broomfield, former Division 1 tennis player and girlfriend of Frances Tiafoe, with 75,000 Instagram followers. They too have leveraged their followings and cachet in the sports world into deals with fashion and beauty brands like Dove and Lacoste, with Lorenze also founding her own fashion line, Dairy Boy, in 2021.
“There is a really nice democratization of voice, purely because of social media,” said Christopher Skinner, chief brand officer of e-commerce agency Front Row Group, which consulted on Serena Williams’s Wyn Beauty line. “Morgan is an incredible example of that. She’s not on the court, necessarily, but she’s this supporting player who has her own identity and voice that are part of this culture-making moment.”
Along with giving fans new access to their favorite players, athletes’ partners also open the door to potential new sports fans. Those are often female viewers who may not otherwise follow sports, and who often generate undersung cultural influence.
“The fangirls are the ones who are making the memes, making the merch, blowing things up on social media, and making the viral TikToks about the drivers or the players,” said Riddle, who sees her platforms as helping to make sports more welcoming to women fans. “People tend to kind of look down on them in the sporting world, but I’m like, ‘This is who is growing the sport. So have a little respect there.’”
Perhaps no sports WAG is more indicative of the power of the fangirls than Taylor Swift, who has been dating Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce since September 2023. The pop superstar’s first appearance at a Chiefs game reportedly led to a 400% increase in sales for Travis Kelce merchandise, with her mere presence generating $331.5 million in brand value for both the Chiefs and the NFL.
But stalwart sports institutions have not always had an easy relationship with those so-called fangirls, despite their spending power. TikTok creator Katherine Ellis criticized NBC commentators Chris Fowler and John McEnroe for their dismissive tone toward Riddle when she was shown watching Fritz compete at Wimbledon in July. “You just pissed off women and made me not wanna watch tennis anymore on NBC Sports,” Ellis told her audience.
However, Erin Ally, vp of social media and influencer marketing at brand strategy and PR agency KWT Global, cautioned brands and marketers against assuming female sports viewers are a monolith or will only connect to sports through lifestyle influencers.
“There have been female sports fans for a long, long time, well before Taylor Swift, and they’ll be around well after the Taylor Swift of it all, too,” said Ally. “Brands have to straddle the line between attracting that new female audience member and not alienating the die-hard female audience member who’s been there the whole time.”
For her part, Riddle is not worried about attracting the more conventional fans to her content.
“A lot of the criticism that I get is from men, which is understandable because that’s not who my audience is,” said Riddle. “I understand that a 60-year-old tennis fan who follows Wimbledon does not want to see a video about what people are wearing to the tournament, which is totally fine. It’s not for everybody.”
Riddle also acknowledged that she has received criticism online for turning her relationship with Fritz into a social media career — but those benefits haven’t been one-sided: Her star power has boosted Fritz’s profile, as well. Leading up to this year’s U.S. Open, Fritz has taken part in Riddle’s media appearances, joining the tennis and fashion panel with her and Emily Oberg and being dubbed an Instagram boyfriend in a profile in the Wall Street Journal.
“Social media has really expanded upon what a player is to a fan,” said Ally. “Years ago, a fan of a player just loved their player on the field. … With social media, they can now see the whole 360-degree lifestyle of the player themselves.” And that includes their wives and girlfriends and partners who were previously seen but not heard.
Even with her full schedule, Riddle said what happens on the court is the most important part of the Open. “[When it comes to my work here] I try to not stress myself out too much and not take things that seriously. Because really, it’s just TikToks,” she said. “I would say how I measure a successful tournament is how Taylor does in the tournament.”
