Ayan Broomfield Creating Tennis-Led Business Brand

When Ayan Broomfield was hoisting the NCAA doubles national championship trophy in 2019 while at UCLA, she had no idea how her relationship with tennis would shift.

It shifted dramatically.

Broomfield grew up playing junior tennis, competing and traveling while playing for Canada. The Toronto-area native went to UCLA and the competition continued to take off. Then it all came crashing down around her and tennis looked to be off the table. Now she’s back traveling on tour, this time as the longtime girlfriend of American player Frances Tiafoe, building her personal tennis-based business brand through modeling, acting as a body double in the blockbuster movie “King Richard” and creating content for major brands focused on tennis fashion and travel.

Now the 26-year-old is headed back to the court, signing to play in the pro-am portion of the upcoming Boss Open in Stuttgart, Germany, and planning to create content around her experience for Boss.

“One thing about tennis, I don’t think you ever lose it,” she tells me about the chance to walk onto a grass court again. “The timing may be a little off, but you start grinding again. I am trying to create content around training, and it has been fun. I am not at the same level as before, but I didn’t think I would be.”

The arc of Broomfield’s tennis career peaked winning that title at UCLA. “Winning the title, this is it,” she remembers. “Then COVID hit and derailed everything for me. I moved to Florida and was training a lot. I had injury after injury, and I didn’t know if this was something I could do full-time on court.”

Soon the questions started getting bigger.

The turning point came ahead of “King Richard.” She was in Africa playing in a futures tournament and got a call about working on the movie. “I was so focused on grinding and getting these [rankings] points,” she says. Instead, she knew she needed to go participate in the movie. “That was one of the main things in my life that changed for me, and I realized I can use tennis to be in the entertainment field. I am on set with Will Smith, this is incredible.”

MORE: Frances Tiafoe Aims To Entertain, Bring Basketball Culture To Tennis

That experience led to a change in her relationship with tennis. Now she’s tennis adjacent, creating content, working with brands and supporting her foundation. “I have my foot in everything with tennis without being on court competing 24-7,” she says. “I still love the sport and have spent 20-odd years in it. With the surge of social media, players can make 10 times more off the court than they were on the court. I can merge the two together.”

While she’s not busy competing, she knows that all those years training didn’t mean playing professionally was the only result. “Picking up this sport leads to so many opportunities,” she says. “You can use it for so many adventures in your life, not just the 50 girls on the WTA tour making money. You can get a scholarship, you can model, you can do content creation. You can use tennis to provide that. It was a lesson for me and a lesson for anyone else who wants to pick up a sport. Even if you don’t reach the highest level, what’s next is not bad.”

The Broomfield-in-tennis business wasn’t locked-in after the movie. It was when she traveled to Wimbledon in 2022 with Tiafoe that things started to click at a greater rate. She hadn’t traveled on tour with him before, but she made the trip to London. He reached the round of 16. Then, with Broomfield with him in New York City the same year, he reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open. Tiafoe didn’t want to travel without her. Being on the tour with Tiafoe opened the door for Broomfield to create content, sometimes specific to a location or a brand’s interest.

“I think the lifestyle of a player or significant other is so unique,” she says, noting that most major sports don’t have that much variation from week to week. Take the NBA, for example, games are played in a rotation of North American cities. In tennis, players may go from Europe to Asia to Australia to the United States, mixing styles of cities along the way. “It is just a unique living situation,” she says. “At some point I said, ‘hold on, if I started showing my life more on social media this is really interesting.’”

The UCLA women’s studies graduate then started growing her own brand. She’s an ambassador for Wilson, a natural fit for her since she used their rackets for years. Wilson’s recent move to revamp their apparel with the Wilson Sport Professionals line has resonated with Broomfield and across the sport. “They had a more dated look,” Broomfield admits about the past. “Recently they have completely changed that. They are so retro cool now and leading the WTA in their kits. Everybody wants to wear Wilson now. I feel I had a part in that.”

Broomfield worked alongside Wilson for a few years, both as a model and content creator. But it was more than that. She met with the owners, product developers and marketers. She’s been able to talk to the team about designing for athletic builds and making clothing tennis-specific to meet a diverse group of body types. “It has been interesting to see that side of it, not just the content creation, see how they make clothes,” she says. “As someone who wants to get into the fashion business side of tennis, I am learning all these things. I want to continue to grow and learn.”

The latest agreement with Boss has her playing in the Boss Open and creating content around tennis style, both on and off the court. “The merge between tennis and fashion right now has never really happened in our social-media age,” she says. “Every brand is trying to take advantage.”

Now based in Florida, Broomfield also wants to focus on her Ayan Broomfield Foundation, planning an activation around Wimbledon that will include Wilson. Her goal with the foundation is to provide tennis athletic wear and equipment to underprivileged youth, but she’s also supported women’s shelters and other groups when she holds activations timed to a tournament’s stop in a city.

From her foundation to her tennis-based business, things get busier this summer ahead of the U.S. Open. “That month is going to be super crazy,” she says. “There are so many different brands and activations for that time. It is the biggest time for American [tennis]. It is going to be huge.”