From rugby to basketball, sports teams lean into entertainment-heavy brands
Financial pressures, and the need to broaden fan bases and embrace the digital world are driving sports clubs to rebrand. From football and rugby to basketball, designers are taking cues from the world of entertainment.
This applies to sports leagues and organisations as well as individual clubs. Last month, Brand Potential rebranded English rugby’s top flight as Gallagher PREM, “ to position rugby as one of the most electrifying sports experiences in the world.”
And earlier this year, Nomad and Chapter X repositioned the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) as an entertainment brand, playing up the characters of the players, for example.
“Clients are increasingly looking for inspiration outside of sport so that they stand out in a very busy market,” says Tom Allwood, managing director at sports branding specialists MATTA, whose clients include England Cricket, Women’s Elite Rugby in the US , and England Football.
Adam Partridge, executive strategy director at Mr B & Friends, backs this up. “More sports teams are seeing themselves as entertainment brands,” he says. “Now, rugby is realising that it also needs to do more of that, if it wants to be sustainable and appeal to new fans.”
Mr B & Friends is behind the recent repositioning of Bath Rugby, and also rebranded Bristol rugby club, Bristol Bears.
“English rugby clubs have become unremarkably similar,” Partridge says. “Similar imagery, similar language, similar social media posts, kit launches and season ticket campaigns.”
While rugby can count on the loyalty of its long-standing older male fanbase, he points to the challenge of attracting and maintaining the attention of younger audiences.
“Gen Z have so much exciting stimulation at their fingertips,” he explains. “A conventional sport such as rugby, particularly those clubs still steeped in traditional ways of doing things, will have their work cut out if they want to infiltrate the Gen Z world.
“They have to start thinking differently, break free of the traditional rugby mould, and really start amplifying all that they do,” Partridge says.
Bath Rugby’s new identity is intended to celebrate the club’s players as modern-day gladiators.
While Mr B & Friends simplified Bath Rugby’s crest, its focus was on introducing two new contrasting primary fonts – Ra Bold and Nyght Serif – the former a reference to the city’s Roman and Georgian heritage, the latter to reflect the dynamism of its playing style.
In rugby, this need to cultivate a new fanbase is a financial imperative. High-profile clubs have folded or been brought back from the brink by new investment, including Wasps, London Irish and Worcester Warriors.
“Most are propped up by their owners, they can’t afford to keep losing millions, they need to be financially sustainable,” says Partridge.
Bath Rugby is part of this story too. Somerset Live reported in March that the club is increasingly reliant on its owner’s deep pockets to keep them afloat after posting a near £4 million loss in the last financial year.
Many such clubs “need to broaden their fanbase, and reach beyond the rugby bubble to reach more commercial opportunities,” Partridge adds. “This rebrand is about trying to create new revenue streams, growing the Bath Rugby fan base and future-proofing it.”
Similarly, the rebrand of basketball club London Lions is in part to mark the fact that it has turned a corner, after two years of instability and financial issues that left the club facing administration.
The new logo features a geometric lion’s face fused with a basketball topped by a crown – a key heritage cue, as is the year the team was founded.
“Fans had been calling for a lion in the crest for years,” says Hamish Stephenson, founder and CEO of False 9 in London.
The agency has worked with the London Lions for many years on digital content, campaigns and in-arena activations that lean into the entertainment world by “uniting sport, music, fashion, and wider culture into an authentic London experience,” the agency says.
However, Allwood at MATTA cautions that balancing past, present and future isn’t always easy. “Established teams need to modernise without losing their heritage and what makes them special,” he says.
This is a tightrope also walked by long-standing football clubs.
New York-based designer Christopher Payne, who specialises in football clubs, is familiar with the challenge.
“This is the sharp end of design,” Payne says. “It’s a highly opinionated world. So many people have deep relationships with their club’s identity, some of which have been there all their lives, and which they have as a tattoo. It’s very tribal and generational.”
To get his rebrand of Peterborough United (aka POSH) over the line, it was vital to bring fans on the journey. So he conducted a fan forum, fan surveys and focus groups at the design stage.
POSH prides itself on being youthful, with a young team and academy, “but the badge felt dated and tired,” says Payne. Its light blue on white design didn’t help. “For the digital landscape, it was busy and messy and had accessibility issues.”
His solution was to update key elements of the existing identity, like the winged lions and the key.
“We didn’t want it to live within a shield or circle, because if you have a unique shape you can be recognised by your silhouette, and has more power when small on digital,” Payne adds.
Borrowing cues from the entertainment sector is likely to continue, as even financially stable clubs are targeting younger and younger audiences. “People are looking at the next generation of fans, even targeting eight-year-olds,” Payne says.