‘You’re planting your brand flag’: The power of brand building in the women’s sports boom
‘You’re planting your brand flag’: The power of brand building in the women’s sports boom
On a cold day in the beginning of 2024, Alastair Merry and Mary Lou Bunn had a few questions for a public librarian in Ottawa, Ontario.
“If you could describe Ottawa and what it means to you in a couple words, how would you do it?” they asked. “What do you think of the spirit of the city?”
Merry and Bunn, along with the design firm Flower Shop that they co-founded, were hired by the then newly minted Professional Women’s Hockey League to create the nicknames and logos for the league’s inaugural six teams. They were traveling around North America to figure out what made those six cities tick.
As the ever-growing crop of new women’s leagues — at least eight have launched in the past three years — all aim for longevity, one of the cornerstones of any sustainable foundation is team branding. It encompasses everything from the nicknames to the color schemes and logos, and the PWHL has set a high bar there that other up-and-comers would love to emulate.
“It’s not like branding a dishwasher or a tablet,” Merry said. “This is somebody’s community. This is somebody’s life, going to watch these games.”
Successful leagues need legions of fans who will buy the merchandise, learn the chants and pass along their fandom. Strong team branding is central to all of that. The PWHL has only been around a few years, but its early success with fans has made it an interesting case study.
The league’s first season, which opened Jan. 1, 2024, was played without nicknames or logos. The names and designs, created by Merry and Bunn’s group, were released ahead of the second season.
That release had an impact, according to Kanan Bhatt-Shah, vice president of brand and marketing for the PWHL. When fans finally had their teams’ identities at their fingertips, their involvement could grow deeper.
“These identities really help create this world that allows fans to access it in all the different ways in which they want to fan,” Bhatt-Shah said. “The same level of passion and fervor that existed (in the first season) still exists, there’s just more opportunities for it to come to life cohesively.”
By creating those opportunities, whether it be through merchandise or chants that become tradition, good branding has the potential to turn the initial enthusiasm for a new league into long-term fandom — and, thus, a long-term league.
And in the PWHL, it seems like fans are buying in. The league’s second season was bigger than the first in every measurable way — sales of PWHL merchandise doubled, engagement with league and team social platforms increased by 68% and average attendance jumped by 27% per outing due in part to Toronto and Montreal playing in larger venues, and a nine-game neutral site tour drawing 123,601 at NHL arenas.
The league’s media rights arrangement, which lacks a major consolidated television deal, did not face major changes from the first season to the second.
“When you set a foundation for a sports team, it creates the subsets that continue to feed into the brand,” Bunn said about branding ripple effects. “Then you have fan groups, you have chants, you eventually have mascots. … Over time, there are things that come out of having a strong brand foundation.”
The power of strong branding has been a cornerstone of league launches for as long as professional sports have been around. Thomas O’Grady, the WNBA’s first creative director, created the branding for the W’s original eight teams in 1996. He knows that power well.
“You’re planting your brand flag when you come up with your new identity, and so you’re doing that for the players, for the team, for the community and for the league. It’s a pretty heavy lift when you think about the responsibility of the branding,” he said.
The PWHL branding “is spot on with almost everything there,” O’Grady added.
The PWHL notably differs from its WNBA predecessor in the nature of its relationship with the sport’s male league. While the PWHL and NHL occasionally share rinks or lend each other marketing opportunities, the two leagues have no financial ties to each other — a large difference from the WNBA, which is partially owned and funded by the NBA.
The PWHL’s funding comes from the Mark Walter group, named for the league’s billionaire owner.
And it’s expanding. The heavy lift of branding is starting all over again with the PWHL’s two new expansion teams, Seattle and Vancouver. They are eagerly awaiting their own nicknames and logos, which are expected to bring another surge of enthusiasm.
“You’re waiting to get that new jersey, the new hat, the new scarf, all those things that go with it that have the logo,” PWHL Seattle coach Steve O’Rourke said. “That’ll drive another wave for us.”
The two expansion teams will take the ice for the first time this fall when the puck drops on the PWHL’s third season.
As the league eyes further expansion and continues to grow its fan base, it’s yet to be seen how its future will pan out. But those bright logos will be front and center every step of the way.
“To be able to create brands that are going to stand the test of time and continue to amass energy behind them was part of the strategy,” Bunn said. “And it’s paying off.”
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By ALYCE BROWN
AP Sports Writer
