Brazilian tennis lived by memory. The last reference was Gustavo Kuerten, Roland Garros, 2001. Twenty-five years ago.
On Thursday, May 29, that changed. He came from two sets against Novak Djokovic and won in five epic sets. He then beat two-time Roland Garros champion Casper Ruud in four sets.
He reached the quarterfinals as the youngest Brazilian to reach that stage in a Grand Slam in the Open Era.
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This Tuesday, he met Czech Jakub Mensik, saved six match points in the final tie-break and said goodbye to Paris with his head held high.
For XP Investimentos, ON Running, Rolex, Yonex, Mercado Livre and Claro, the farewell did not erase what had already happened.
How we reached R$1.3 million
registered it 66.9 million views on X/Twitter throughout Fonseca’s Roland Garros campaign. This is the number that allows the calculation.
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The methodology is straightforward: if a brand wanted to buy this same audience on X/Twitter via paid media, it would pay based on the platform’s average CPM in Brazil, which is around R$20 per thousand views. The calculation results in R$1.338 million.
But this value has a clear limit: it only covers X/Twitter, the only platform monitored by this project. Instagram, YouTube, television, national and international press, sports portals and repercussions outside Brazil do not count. The correct number, therefore, is at least R$1.3 million. The difference is not rhetorical. It is methodological.
The timing that turns sponsorship into investment
There is an important distinction between sponsoring an athlete and investing in them. Sponsorship is a fixed cost. Investment is a bet on future appreciation.
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XP Investimentos signed a five-year contract with Fonseca in June 2024, when the tennis player was 17 years old and ranked 217th in the ATP rankings. At the time, the CMO of XP Inc., Lisandro Lopez, declared that the brand believed “in overcoming the impossible and in Brazil’s dream of regaining global prominence in tennis”. Two years later, Roland Garros turned that bet into a measurable return.
Mercado Livre entered later, in December 2025, taking advantage of the boom after the titles in Buenos Aires and Basel. He paid more for an already valued asset and still captured part of a historic campaign.
ON Running, Rolex, Yonex and Claro complete the portfolio of brands that featured on Fonseca’s uniform during the 9.253 posts e 14 million impact that X/Twitter recorded on the day of his victory over Djokovic.
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Anyone who was associated with the Fonseca name before this peak captured the full return. Whoever arrives now pays for an asset that has already been priced.
The audiences that tennis alone wouldn’t buy
Fonseca’s return to visibility at Roland Garros is not limited to the tennis audience. This is the data that most interests anyone who analyzes the value of a brand associated with it.
The identified that the theme crossed editorial bubbles that tennis sponsorship rarely reaches. The account @blog_formula1, with 199 thousand Formula 1 followers, published five times about Fonseca, with the biggest post reaching 453 thousand impact e 32,605 likes.
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@CentralDoBrega, a humor profile with an entertainment audience, generated 578 thousand impact e 36,703 likes. Football clubs such as Corinthians, Grêmio, Flamengo and Vasco published it. Surfing and basketball profiles too.
For XP Investimentos, Mercado Livre and Claro, whose audiences go far beyond the sports audience, this niche transcendence has specific value: it is incremental exposure that no tennis media plan would buy.
The @CentralDoBrega fan who saw the post about Fonseca was not part of any sports campaign targeting. It arrived through the algorithm, through the organic, through the collective emotion of a historic moment.
The pattern that Claritor records every week
In every column I publish here at InfoMoney with data from, a phenomenon repeats itself: in themes of strong emotional appeal, small accounts go viral with an efficiency that surpasses large profiles by orders of magnitude.
It happened during the Ypê controversy. It happened when Neymar was called up. In Fonseca’s campaign at Roland Garros it happened again. The account @DinisQuaderna, with 650 followersgenerated 375 thousand impact. A @ecobaghappy, com 665 followersreached 536 thousand impact e 15 mil retweets.
Accounts with less audience than an average company meeting room delivered numbers that big brand marketers would not be able to replicate with investment in media.
The return in visibility generated for Fonseca’s sponsors did not depend on paid media, hired influencers or content strategy. It depended on a 19-year-old Brazilian playing tennis better than anyone expected.
Fonseca leaves Paris with 25th place in the ATP rankings, accumulating more than R$16.8 million in career prizes. The fairy tale of 2026 ended in the quarterfinals. XP Investimentos, ON Running, Rolex, Yonex, Mercado Livre and Claro continue to have the tennis player’s brand on the uniform. And the next Grand Slam is the US Open in August.
