UK dog food brand Marleybones named Andy Lapthorne — Britain’s world No.1 quad wheelchair tennis player and an 18-time Grand Slam champion — as its first brand ambassador. His kit will carry the Marleybones logo throughout the 2026 grass court season — the company’s first kit sponsorship since launching in 2020.
Marleybones was founded by Josephine Bager and Mikala Skov and makes Pantry Fresh meals: fresh dog food gently cooked in-pack at an average of 89°C using a method borrowed from premium baby food production. The process keeps meals shelf-stable rather than frozen, removing the cold-chain logistics that fresh pet food has traditionally required.
The brand is stocked at Waitrose, Ocado, Co-op and Whole Foods Market in the UK, and counts more than 12,000 dog parents among its customers.
Lapthorne found Marleybones on Instagram and began feeding it to his rescue dog, Bernie, well before any commercial conversation with the company began. “I stumbled across Marleybones on Instagram. And then got talking from there and I knew straight away that that was the way I wanted to go,” he said.
A European market built on 340 million pets
The deal lands in a market that extends well beyond the UK. Grand View Research valued the European pet food market at $36.39 billion in 2024, and projects it to grow at a compound annual rate of 4.1% through 2030.
Around 150 companies across the region produce roughly 10.5 million tonnes of pet food a yer, feeding an estimated 340 million-plus companion animals kept across 91 million European households — including around 104 million dogs.
Via Marleybones Instagram
Most of that growth isn’t coming from more pets, however; it’s coming from owners spending more per pet, as humanization pushes people toward food that reflects their own dietary values rather than whatever’s cheapest on the shelf.
Euromonitor’s numbers tell a similar story, putting the global pet care market at $207 billion in 2025. Its analysts point to humanization and premiumization as the two forces carrying value growth even as overall volume slows under cost-of-living pressure.
In the UK specifically — still Western Europe’s largest single pet care market — e-commerce now accounts for around 35% of pet care sales, which has made it easier for challenger brands without large retail footprint to reach customers directly.
What UK dog owners say about their pets
Marleybones’ pitch leans heavily on the idea that dog owners now treat their pets as family members rather than property — a claim backed by the UK’s largest dog-focused survey.
Dogs Trust’s National Dog Survey, which pulled in more than 341,000 responses in 2025, found that 99% of owners consider their dog to be family, and that 95% of owners say having a dog is good for their mental health — with an additional 84% saying their dog provides them with emotional support.
But the same survey caught the other side of that coin, too: roughly one-in-five owners said they had considered switching to cheaper dog food during the cost-of-living crisis — a reminder that premium positioning, however well-supported by welfare data, still runs into household budgets eventually.
YouGov research for Dogs Trust and the RSPCA put the UK’s dog population at around 13 million, underscoring the scale of a market brands are addressing domestically, before even accounting for wider European expansions.
Wheelchair tennis enters its annuversary year
The timing of the partnership coincides with a growth moment for the sport itself. The ITF’s Wheelchair Tennis Tour now runs more than 160 tournaments across over 40 countries, and offers more than $6.7 million in total prize money — numbers that have climbed steadily since wheelchair tennis made its Grand Slam debut at the Australian Open in 2002, with all four majors including wheelchair competitions by 2007.
This year also marks the launch of the ITF’s new “Premier Tier” of competition, restructuring the tour to integrate more wheelchair events directly alongside ATP and WTA tournaments. Under such new setup, first-place prize money at Grand Slam wheelchair events is expected to top $100,000 for the first time.
For a brand entering its first-ever sponsorship deal, that combination — an athlete with an organic connection to the product, and a sport actively investing in its own visibility during a landmark year — gives Marleybones a partnership with built-in momentum.
“We built Marleybones because of my dog, Marley — and the belief that every dog deserves better than processed food. Andy found us the same way thousands of our customers do: by simply looking for something better,” Bager said.
Featured image: Via Marleybones
