Strava’s first commercial deal in the pet space pairs 180 million active users with Mars’s IAMS nutrition brand – and turns workout data into urban planning intelligence. The announcement lands as sporting goods brands are accelerating their own moves into a $270 billion pet market.
Strava, the fitness tracking and social platform with more than 180 million users across 185 countries, has formalized its first commercial relationship with the pet industry, naming Mars, Incorporated’s IAMS pet nutrition brand as the official Pet Tag Sponsor on Strava for 2026. The year-long arrangement, confirmed April 8, centers on a 12-challenge series for dog owners and is currently live in the US.
At the center of the partnership is Strava’s “With Pet” tag – a feature added to the platform in late 2025 that allows users to label any logged activity as one completed alongside a pet.
The Mars-IAMS agreement commercializes that feature for the first time, pairing it with monthly challenges through which dog owners who meet activity targets earn virtual IAMS badges on their Strava profiles. The opening round, run in January 2026 and requiring participants to log a 5K with their dog, drew more than 91,000 participants. Qualifying activities span more than 30 sport types, from running and hiking to kayaking, snowshoeing and skateboarding.
Turning footsteps into city data
Data collected through the partnership – how people and dogs move through urban environments – will feed Mars’s Better Cities for Pets program, which works with municipalities to expand pet-friendly green space. Mars and urban network C40 Cities are jointly targeting access to pet-inclusive green space for 10 million people and animals across five cities – London, São Paulo, Los Angeles, Bengaluru and Bangkok – by 2030.
For Strava, the partnership extends engagement and adds a new commercial channel tied to pet-inclusive activity. Evelina Jarbin, Senior Director of Strava for Business, said millions of users were already logging activities with pets, but the platform had not formally recognized the behavior.
Why the industry should pay attention
The partnership arrives at a moment when the overlap between the active lifestyle sector and the pet market is increasingly hard to ignore. As our recent feature examining the full landscape of the pet opportunity for sporting goods brands shows, the global pet market – valued at approximately $270 billion in 2025 – is growing at around 7 percent annually and could reach $500 billion by 2034. The segment most accessible to sporting goods companies, spanning accessories, equipment and performance products, already represents roughly $90 billion and is on track to exceed $160 billion within a decade.
Established sports brands are responding. Thule has identified dog transportation as a key growth driver and restructured its category around the “Active with Kids & Dogs” usage context. Adidas is offering pet lifestyle collections in China and expanding them into functional gear. Specialist players such as Norwegian brand Non-stop dogwear – ranked among Europe’s fastest-growing companies by the Financial Times in 2025 – are scaling rapidly from the performance end.
The Strava-Mars deal adds a new dimension: data-driven behavioural platforms moving into the intersection of fitness and pet ownership. For sporting goods companies watching the pet market, it raises a pointed question: as platform-based consumer relationships consolidate around lifestyle contexts rather than product categories, who owns the active pet owner, and for how long?
The full 2026 IAMS challenge series is live at Strava.com and within the Strava app’s Challenge Gallery.
