The $3.1 Billion Economy Behind Erling Haaland And His Recovery Ritual

“We did an awesome campaign with Erling Haaland a few years ago where we called the massage gun ‘the machine that powers the machine,’ because that’s when he started to become this, like, Viking machine in football,” Steph Smith, vice president of marketing at Hyperice, told me over Zoom. We, like everyone else, were talking about Norway’s 2026 FIFA World Cup social media breakout star who has dominated my Instagram feed during the tournament season and beyond.

Absent their own national team in the games, Chinese fans adopted Haaland as something of a folk hero, nicknamed him “Habao” (roughly “Ha Baby”) and generated so much viral content that Euronews had to publish a guide separating real clips from the AI-generated ones. He amassed 1.6 million Weibo followers and 5.2 million Douyin followers in the meantime, plus more than 490 million views for Haaland-related Weibo hashtags within roughly a month.

On the pitch, Haaland scored seven goals from 18 shots for a 39% conversion rate, the best at a single World Cup among players taking at least 15 shots since Gary Lineker converted 40% in 1986. He would then drop cross-legged into the meditation pose that launched a thousand memes.

“I really enjoy meditation,” Haaland told Esporte Interativo in 2020. “It makes me feel calm and gives me tranquility.” This was part of a recovery and ritual practice that went along with his in-home cryotherapy chamber, a hypoxic chamber at Manchester City’s training facilities, an ice bath and sauna routine four or five times a week, blue-light glasses after dark, and an Oura ring enforcing a ten-hour sleep target.

“It’s how you sleep, how you prepare yourself for the next training, how you prepare yourself for the next game, how you recover from the game,” he recently explained on his YouTube channel. “It’s a whole package.”

When 39 days of elite physical punishment concluded with stadium lights dimming across North America, millions of fans limped away from watch parties with hoarse voices and sore feet. The world’s elite athletes, however, had other options. Where post-match recovery was once confined to team ice tubs and generic athletic tape, physical restoration now represents a multi-billion-dollar second economy operating parallel to the pitch.

$3.1 billion, to be precise, for the global muscle recovery market. It’s projected to hit $12.4 billion by 2034, with Hyperice leading the pack. In the interim, biomechanics, recovery technology, and ancient wellness culture now converge to create accessible restoration for those whose sprained ankles came from running to grab a Michelob ULTRA from the fridge during a hydration break.

What Erling Haaland Should Wear After The Final Whistle

“We make recovery shoes, basically, before and after working out, before playing sports, before training,” John Gagliardi, founder of KANE Footwear, told me on Zoom. “Your feet coming out of cleats, feet coming out of basketball shoes, your feet coming out of hockey skates, wherever it might be.”

Gagliardi played lacrosse at Johns Hopkins, where he became a two-time All-American, and spent years watching elite athletes finish training and change into whatever slide happened to be closest. “Everybody was wearing slides, or other types of EVA shoes that just didn’t have the thought behind them,” he said. “So I said, why don’t we create a shoe that a podiatrist would bless.”

That podiatrist is Dr. Geller, a board-certified foot and ankle surgeon who works with marathoners, ultramarathoners and high‑performance athletes, and whose input shaped everything from heel capture to arch support. He now serves as KANE’s chief medical officer. The engineering followed the physiology.

“When your feet work out, they expand, they get larger,” Gagliardi explained. “Your feet have to breathe after coming out of socks, coming out of cleats. And so, that’s what the holes are for.”

Instead of burning capital on traditional endorsement checks, KANE built its network organically across NBA rosters, 26 NFL franchises, and more than 60 college athletic programs, from Nebraska to Stanford to the University of Miami Hurricanes. Athletes already had shoes for competition and for daily life. KANE positioned itself as a third footwear category, the in-between transition teams and athletic programs buy in mass for their players. The shoes exist to carry an athlete through the recovery circuit: from the training room to the plunge pool to the bus.

“We have a 10 millimeter drop from heel to toe, so it takes stress off your Achilles and your calves. We have nodes in here that you touch, that stimulate blood flow.”

While not a FIFA sponsor nor officially endorsed by any World Cup athletes, KANE still leaned into the tournament’s global spectacle on social, styling its recovery shoes as the off‑duty uniform. A TikTok campaign imagined World Cup squads like Argentina, Egypt and Brazil stepping into a Revive pair post‑match. Essentially, what players should slip on to begin the recovery process once off the field.

The global recovery footwear market is projected to reach $26.7 billion by 2033, which explains why a five-year-old company from Westport, Connecticut, can behave like an incumbent. KANE’s own post‑purchase surveys, sent to customers about 90 days after, found 78 percent of customers with plantar issues reported moderate-to-high relief within two weeks of regular wear.

“People wear them and they swear by them,” Gagliardi said, recalling reading comments such as “My back feels better, my knee’s feeling better ever since I bought them.”

From Kobe Bryant’s Bench To Erling Haaland’s Bedroom

“He wanted an air valve on the bag so that it could be more compact to his leg. He wanted a bigger surface area, and he didn’t love the material of the strap,” Smith said, describing the afternoon Hyperice founder Anthony Katz drove a box of cut‑up wetsuit material and ice bags to a Kobe Bryant training session in Irvine. “So he said, if you can fix these things and make it the way I would wear it, I will then wear it on the bench.”

Kobe’s notes became the first product that ultimately launched the company. Inside NBA training rooms, Katz found recovery equipment that was too large, too expensive and too rooted in one facility to travel. “There’s gotta be a way that we can democratize this,” Smith said of Katz’s thinking. “How do we make it accessible to the masses, and also give the teams the opportunity to take this in a kit and travel with it?”

This is the exact problem Hyperice has been solving since.

During the 2026 World Cup, Hyperice operated largely outside official stadium spotlight, building recovery suites inside team hotels across North America. “We supported a lot of the federations with recovery rooms at their hotels,” Smith said. “We created these spaces where they could be in Normatec boots, use the massage guns, use the Venom equipment.”

The driver was pure logistics. “Spain went to Miami, then back to Dallas, then was in LA. There were very quick turnarounds for some of these people, and we wanted to make sure they had access to the product at their hotels and while they were traveling.”

The company has developed partnerships with Equinox, Lifetime, Barry’s Bootcamp, F45 and even the Delta One lounge at JFK to make structured recovery a customer value add. A global collaboration with Westin allows hotel guests to order a “Recover & Recharge by Hyperice” kit as room service. “This is the same tech that the pros have,” Smith said, “and it’s awesome that the everyday athlete also has the same access to that technology.”

The best endorsements have arrived organically. Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk was photographed wearing Normatec compression boots in the back seat of his car on post‑match drives home before becoming an official partner. When Kylie Jenner was asked to name a favorite brand during her pregnancy, she called out Normatec’s compression boots (boots she has posted in repeatedly on social media) without Hyperice paying for the mention.

Then there is Haaland. Before the viral goal celebrations, the Norwegian striker ordered Normatec boots off the Hyperice website on his own dime. The company noticed the order, reached out, and built a formal marketing relationship from there. That deal has since lapsed, but he still uses the boots nightly and contributes feedback in R&D.

“I’ve used Hyperice recovery tools before and after matches for years to help me maintain and compete at the highest level,” he said in the 2021 endorsement deal announcement. “Hyperice technology not only helped me get to the top of the game, but also keeps me there.”

Before Erling Haaland’s Cold Plunge, There Was The Göbek Taşı

“When I looked at the saunas, they were just little boxes,” Gökhan Yavuzer, founder of Hürrem Hammam in Miami, told me in Turkish via Zoom, speaking through a translator. “People spend 15 minutes there in a boring environment, plain, purely functional structures, and I thought that was wrong.”

While high-tech percussion and bio-based foams optimize physical recovery through mechanical efficiency, Hürrem Hammam approaches restoration as a sensory sanctuary. 20,000 square feet, a 4,000-square-foot Grand Hammam, Marmara marble kurna basins, copper bowls, a Haseki hammam, a cold igloo, herbal sauna, and the Topkapi restaurant await those seeking ultimate recuperation within the largest authentic Turkish hammam in North America.

Yavuzer has spent more than 29 years designing saunas and spas across 55 countries before bringing Ottoman bathing culture to the Magic City. “The historical buildings of Istanbul had the greatest influence on me. Because of my curiosity about Istanbul’s history, I studied its historical structures. The history, the past and especially the architectural lines of the hammams affected me deeply, and I began to concentrate on hammam design.”

Hürrem takes inspiration from the 16th‑century romance between Ottoman ruler Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent and his chief consort Roxelana, who became Hürrem Sultan upon winning his heart. Inside the hammam, an entire hallway is devoted to visually telling their love story through art and historic panels.

“For the first time in history, Hürrem married Sultan Süleyman,” Yavuzer recounted. “It broke all the traditions. The love between Hürrem Sultan and Sultan Süleyman was very great. When he went away on military campaigns, they wrote beautiful poems and letters to each other. Their relationship is remembered in history as a great love.”

Chief Ottoman architect and engineer Mimar Sinan, credited with designing and overseeing hundreds of monuments (around 200 of which still stand in Türkiye today), built the eponymous Hürrem Sultan Hammam at her request between 1556 and 1557, on the historical site of the ancient Baths of Zeuxippus. It still remains in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet Square, between the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque and the Blue Mosque.

Unlike ancient Roman baths that relied on standing pools, Ottoman hammam architecture is defined by fresh, continuous flowing water across heated stone slabs (göbek taşı). For the Miami rendition, Yavuzer sourced authentic, mineral-rich Marmara marble quarried from historic Turkish island deposits used 500 years ago. The stone holds heat uniformly, while handmade İznik ceramic tiles and indirect lighting soothe eyes worn by digital screens.

“While designing Hürrem, alongside using history, I also brought in modern spa elements,” Yavuzer shared. “We’re recreating a historical hammam bathing form, but there’s also the cold plunge. There’s sauna, steam room, coming from other cultures of today. I tried to build a design, a space, that preserves the history while bringing these elements together, so cultures could meet, and people from every culture would find something they love there.”

Yavuzer’s Juno Design and Manufacture, based in Güngören, Istanbul, has been building hammams, steam rooms and therapy rooms for hotels internationally since the mid-nineties, including projects like the Merit Starlit in Montenegro. Miami’s Hürrem is the first time he’s operated of his own. Chicago will be next, then New York.

“For our guests, this isn’t only about washing. We created special resting areas so they could be cleansed spiritually too, so they could find peace. People who come here and spend the whole day leave feeling completely renewed. They leave happy. Seeing them happy makes us happy too.”

What The C-Suite Can Learn From Erling Haaland’s Recovery Stack

In the pursuit of luxury, true status no longer stems merely from pushing the human body to its absolute limit; it also considers how artfully you bring it back to life. Hyperice, KANE and Hürrem are all solving for that same tension. Each has turned that necessity into an experience, a product category and a marketing language the C-suite can deploy far beyond sport.

• Own The In-Between Transition. Too many brands exhaust their marketing budgets fighting for attention during the primary event when real power lies in owning the transitional micro-moment immediately following exertion. By positioning itself as a distinct footwear category designed specifically for physical release, KANE has embedded its name into an essential physiological rehabilitation.
• Leverage Hospitality As A Frictionless Trial Engine. Hyperice built authority in places consumers couldn’t access, then expanded by placing the same technology in gyms, hotels and airport lounges. Instead of diluting its elite credibility to reach a broader audience, the brand translated that credibility into environments where the average person could understand its every day relevance.
• Pair Mechanical Efficiency With Sensory Narrative. Physical restoration requires mechanical tools, but true customer devotion demands emotional sanctuary. Hürrem’s marble, lighting, architecture and historical narrative serves as more than design. When customers enter, the décor immediately signals to the body a forthcoming relaxation and a mental reset. Where products can be copied and technologies commoditized, sensory resonance creates a physiological memory that will beg to be repeated.

This is how recovery becomes a business when a brand defines itself beyond what its products do to identify how the customer needs it most; when that need becomes unmistakably visible; and what the total experience will ultimately mean. That is the larger business lesson to be taken from Erling Haaland’s Viking machine. Performance may create spectacle, but recovery is what keeps the story going.