On 10 September in Nice, Salomon and The IRONMAN Group announced a five-year deal that starts in 2027. Salomon becomes IRONMAN's Global Premier Partner through 2031, with exclusive rights in performance footwear, apparel and technical bags. It takes the title of the World Championship in Kona, puts its name on the run leg at IRONMAN-owned races, the Salomon Run Course, and becomes title or presenting partner at seven more, from Oceanside and Lake Placid to Lanzarote. The footwear slot it takes over has been Hoka's for most of the past decade.
A trail brand on a flat, hot course.
On paper it's an odd fit. Salomon means snow, mountains and trail. An IRONMAN ends with a marathon on tarmac in the heat: different shoes, different fabrics, different problems.
Naming rights don't solve that. Nobody on the start line in Kona picks a shoe because of the name on the finish arch.
The year before the deal is the real deal.
What makes this interesting is what Salomon is doing before 2027. It has already signed long-distance athletes, among them Marjolaine Pierre, Julie Iemmolo and Casper Stornes, the 2025 IRONMAN world champion. It ran a pop-up at this month's World Championship in Kona, a full year before its name goes on the race. And the partnership reaches past product into training, nutrition, recovery and biomechanics.
That is a brand buying time on the course: athletes racing in the kit, feedback from the people the product is for, and a story that is already running when the logos go up. Credibility in endurance sport gets built in that order. Athletes, then product, then the name on the arch.
The same logic works at every scale.
Few brands will ever buy Kona. The mechanism scales down fine. A brand moving into a new sport or a new market needs the same three things: a real race, athletes who actually race it, and content shot on the course rather than in a studio.
There is usually a fourth party with a reason to pay for part of it. IRONMAN's own partner list already includes a destination (Experience Oman, its Official Global Destination partner through 2030) and a race like Lanzarote sells an island as much as a course.
That is the structure we build around a single race: destination, event, brand and athletes in one agreement, as with Visit France, Salomon and Dutch creators at a skyrace in the French Alps.
