Following Rebrand, Seattle Reign FC Adds New Sponsors

One 12 months since Seattle Reign FC was offered again to Seattle-based homeowners, the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League workforce is settling right into a refreshed model. However because the Reign fights to remain within the working for the nationwide championship this November, it’s additionally enjoying an extended branding sport—for the hearts and minds of Seattleites and the love of sports activities followers everywhere in the globe.This spring, Seattle Reign FC labored with advertising and marketing agency Redscout on a model refresh forward of the 2025 season that’s led to new sponsorship offers with Alaska Airways, BDO, Glowing Ice, Sheraton, and Umpqua Financial institution. Healthcare firm MultiCare additionally renewed its sponsorship of the workforce, whereas Starbucks, Gatorade, and Seattle Reproductive Companions have ongoing partnership offers. Nonetheless, there’s one essential empty sponsorship slot: The one on the entrance of the workforce’s jersey. That slot—typically thought-about a major sponsorship, and sometimes negotiated to be multi-year offers—is commonly the most costly, giving a workforce the most important enhance to their backside line. Bringing the queen homeSeattle Reign FC was based in 2012 as one among eight inaugural members of the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League. The league have performed below two completely different names, three completely different homeowners, and in 4 completely different stadiums since starting play in 2013.The back-and-forth of the enterprise facet—a few of which is predicted on the earth {of professional} sports activities—hasn’t stymied the Reign’s success on the sector. Although they’ve but to scoop up a championship title, the Reign has made it to the ultimate match 3 times and brought house three NWSL shields—a trophy awarded to the workforce with the very best file on the finish of the common season. In 2022, the workforce additionally received The Ladies’s Cup, an invitational match in Louisville, Ky.When the workforce was purchased from its Seattle-based founders by the French membership Olympique Lyonnais in 2019 for about $3.5 million, the identify modified to OL Reign and the queen brand was changed by a lion. The workforce additionally started enjoying in Tacoma, Washington, a metropolis about 40 minutes south of Seattle alongside the Puget Sound. 5 years later, Olympique Lyonnais offered the workforce for a whopping $58 million to Sounders FC, Seattle’s Main League Soccer workforce, and funding agency Carlyle. The sale was finalized in June 2024, solidifying the workforce’s return to Seattle. “We had been benefactors of the fact that we had been bringing the workforce again from a global proprietor,” mentioned Courtney Carter, chief income officer for Seattle Reign FC and Seattle Sounders FC. The message, she defined, was: “We’re staying in Seattle. The Reign isn’t transferring. It’s gonna be this deeply-rooted Seattle soccer possession that basically cares about leveling up.”The imaginative and prescient for the Reign’s new model positioning started to crystallize when planning for Megan Rapinoe’s retirement match in August 2024. The Olympic gold medalist and two-time World Cup champion performed for the Reign since its founding, and the workforce was planning to retire her quantity 15 jersey in honor of the soccer legend’s contributions. The workforce wished to make the second particular for the franchise’s greatest star—bringing in the best companions, making certain followers felt a part of the second, and paying tribute to Rapinoe’s expertise and management. Google Pixel sponsored the match in a partnership that received a Cynopsis Sports activities Media Award in June.The workforce employed Redscout to revitalize the model within the three-month break between seasons. Ashley Shaffer, chief advertising and marketing officer at Redscout, shared a fractional CMO position with Carter and Sounders’ chief integration officer Taylor Graham as they labored to form a brand new model persona, visible id, and manifesto—all with out dropping any of the legacy that gamers and followers beloved in regards to the workforce.“This fan base had caught with them by thick and skinny, and it was time to get them again [to feeling] like they had been being supported and seen, in order that they might really feel proud carrying that crest once more,” Shaffer mentioned. “That was the massive imaginative and prescient.”The which means of the queenShortly after the Carlyle-Sounders’ buy of the workforce, the Reign hosted an appreciation occasion for its season ticket holders on the Queen Anne Beer Corridor in Seattle to know how linked followers felt to the queen brand. A printout of the crown was positioned on a desk with markers, inviting followers to write down down what they felt the queen represented.The response was overwhelmingly optimistic. Followers described the queen with phrases like, “assured,” “sturdy,” “genuine,” “inclusive,” and “badass.” If it hadn’t been clear earlier than, the occasion bolstered that the rebrand wanted to deal with the queen brand, mentioned Maya Mendoza-Exstrom, the Reign’s chief enterprise officer.“The problem of the second,” she defined, “is that this league is so completely different than it was in 2012 when the queen first appeared.” To try this, Redscout labored with the Reign to revamp the appear and feel of the workforce’s pictures, branding, social presence, and web site. Altering a sports activities workforce’s branding is like strolling a tightrope, mentioned Derek Aframe, govt vp at sports activities advertising and marketing agency Octagon. The aim, he mentioned, is to respect the die-hard followers whereas evolving to new followers.“For those who go too far with a brand new id, you then run the danger of all of the fairness you’ve constructed up,” Aframe mentioned. That philosophy is seen within the delicate modifications that Redscout made to the Reign’s queen brand. The brand new brand infuses the visible id of the workforce with the identical focal factors members beloved: confidence, grit, energy, inclusivity, and legacy. Shaffer’s workforce tweaked the colour palette, constructed out a design system for social media, and opted for a extra portrait-like, framed pictures type to introduce gamers in lieu of the stark, backlit photographs which have grow to be a little bit of a cliché in sports activities imagery, she mentioned. Redscout additionally labored with the Reign on a brand new uniform design, referred to as the Rise equipment, which faucets into the identical language used for Rapinoe’s retirement match. The brand new visuals, jersey, and anthem intention to sign that the Reign franchise is on the rise.Courting sponsorsThe new look resonated with Alaska Airways, mentioned Eric Edge, vp of name and advertising and marketing. Calling it a complementary partnership for 2 manufacturers embracing Seattle, Edge famous that the clear, seamless visuals had been additionally a part of the equation when his firm was contemplating the deal. Alaska Airways is the presenting sponsor for worldwide name ups, which means that the Alaska Airways will seem on content material related to Reign workforce members who’re referred to as as much as play for his or her nationwide groups—like Jess Fishlock, who made historical past earlier this month by scoring the primary aim for Wales in a global match in the course of the Ladies’s Euro 2025.“We additionally beloved the best way Reign FC elevates their athletes by considerate visuals and makes it simple for different manufacturers to shine,” he mentioned. “We will’t wait to offer thrilling experiences to the Seattle neighborhood whereas highlighting the significance of ladies’s sports activities.”The Reign is searching for extra sponsors that may maintain the workforce anchored within the Emerald Metropolis for the long term. Extra particularly, the workforce is searching for a sponsor to be splashed on the entrance of jerseys to cement the model refresh. The Reign is at present the one workforce within the league with no front-of-kit sponsor. Octagon’s Aframe estimated that front-of-kit sponsorship offers vary from $1 million to $2 million per 12 months.“That spot represents one of the crucial beneficial and significant actual property alternatives in media and sports activities,” Carter mentioned. “Curiosity is excessive, conversations are accelerating, and we’re in lively talks with a number of world-class manufacturers. The window is open—however not for lengthy.”