As brands wrestle with the task of defining their influencer marketing budgets for 2026, many are questioning how to balance branding and performance while justifying their spend. Decathlon, one of the world’s largest sporting goods retailers, with a presence in more than 70 countries, has developed a strategy that aims to integrate KOLs into the heart of the business, by anchoring partnerships within product expertise and close personal relationships.
In this interview, Decathlon Netherlands Chief Marketing Officer Anaise Crombé Grare outlines how the brand allocates influencer budgets, the goal of long-term community building, and why authenticity matters more than short-term ROI.
We expect a slight increase. Our budgets are not increasing proportionally to what we need to achieve. It’s in favour of inbound channels, which includes influence and PR. I want to secure investment in those areas. It’s also about making sure the total pie is not reduced. Our influencer budget is isolated on one line, it’s quite clear.
Influencer marketing is very local for us. While our headquarters is in France, and many global partners are French athletes, in the Netherlands we must stay relevant to Dutch audiences, often working with Dutch-speaking influencers from specific regions.
No it means we would like to have more influencers, and do more community activations. At Decathlon Netherlands, our priority is to build a group of people who genuinely use and love our products and share our values. The focus is on expanding this community, not demanding more from individual influencers.
I’m really looking for small and medium influencers who are highly relevant to their sport. Decathlon covers several sports, so relevance matters more than audience size. For example, I’d rather send a product to someone who will test it to the max, be very genuine in what they think of it, engage with our events — even if their audience is smaller — than work with a large influencer who lacks that dedication and authentic commitment to our brand and our products.
Not really. For us, influencer content belongs to our community, not as sponsored content. The relationships are long-term and always-on, across several sports. A running influencer might also be invited to test a camping tent, or attend a paddle event. We prefer this broader perspective over one-off, paid activations. Our aim is to create a relationship with the influencer on a broader perspective than on a one-shot.
Today, we work on yearly contracts, often two to three years. We don’t pay per campaign, it’s a fee for the relationship we have with them for a year. The focus is product-based: influencers are product and user ambassadors rather than commercial spokespeople. They test products, attend events, and embody our values. Our influencer calendar is not linked with the company’s commercial campaigns.
Decathlon is still more on the branding side. Commercial KPIs are not part of our influencer relationships — we track them, but they don’t drive the collaboration. We want to keep the relationship genuine and authentic, focused on awareness, reach, and community building rather than sales attribution.
So far, budgets are modest enough that they haven’t been challenged. We report on reach, new members, opt-ins, followers, and qualitative aspects such as alignment with our brand values. It’s about both volume and depth of community engagement.
Two things: technology and time. Tools are critical for measurement, because the manual relationship and collaboration management can be huge. So tools, from measurement to contracting and management are essential. At Decathlon Netherlands, the main challenge is time investment. We engage a lot and invest a lot of time in the relationship we have with them. Perhaps an ambassador comes to the office for a coffee, that is all time that we invest but don’t count. My influencer manager, who is also a PR manager, sometimes struggles because this can be a bit endless. On top of that, contract management is complex, as legal teams don’t always have the latest market expertise and the market evolves quite fast.
Absolutely. The younger generation is good at social media, so a lot of it is organic for them. But it’s often about deeper topics. Where finance could challenge me is if I wanted to create a full-time position dedicated to influencer management — that’s where I’d need to justify resources.
Quality over quantity. Choosing the right influencers and investing in long-term, value-based relationships matters more than being commercially driven. Influencer marketing is a long-term play.
In an ideal world, I’d love a larger influencer budget. But I’m aware that more budget also means more pressure on results. For now, influencer marketing remains a source of pride internally—senior management sees the impact directly on Instagram, and that helps. I’m also exploring involving Decathlon teammates—store staff who are semi-professional athletes—as micro-influencers. They’re already experts in their sport, and bringing them into the program would add authenticity.
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