The Golden State Valkyries are gearing up to ride into battle.
Like any expansion team, the Valkyries had a lot to accomplish after they were named as the 13th team in the league last year, not the least of which was introducing their brand to budding fans.
“We had one chance to do this the right way, and it was really important for us to represent what this team means to the Bay Area, to our fans, to the league,” Kimberly Veale, SVP of marketing and communications for the Valkyries, told Marketing Brew. “Of course, everything that’s going on in and around women’s sports right now is historic, and we wanted to keep our foot on the gas pedal with the momentum that we’re seeing.”
The Valkyries have yet to play their first game or draft their first player, and won’t start competing until May 2025, but the women warriors are already making waves, from breaking season ticket records to selling out of merch.
We spoke to Veale about the mechanics behind creating and marketing the Valkyries brand ahead of the team’s first season in the W.
Bridging the gap
As the WNBA affiliate of the seven-time NBA champions the Golden State Warriors, the Valkyries have a big reputation to live up to. The Valkyries wanted to be able to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with that legacy, Veale said, while also establishing a distinct identity for the team.
The internal team worked with creative agency Cartwright and fielded input from the general public: When the San Francisco Chronicle conducted a write-in poll on the possible team name, about one-quarter of the respondents suggested “Valkyries,” Veale said.
Largely known as the women warriors who serve the god Odin in Norse mythology (or Tessa Thompson’s character, Valkyrie, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe), the name evokes characteristics like strength, ferocity, and boldness, which the team strives to embody, Veale said. As for the Valkyries’ color, violet? According to Veale, “it’s ownable across sports, it’s ownable in the Bay Area, it stands out, [and] it’s a very modern, sophisticated color that really lends itself nicely to the brand and the story that we’re telling.”
Like the mythic Valkyries themselves, the team’s logo is steeped in lore. Its iconography pays homage to the Bay Bridge that connects Oakland (where the Valkyries are headquartered and where they’ll practice) to San Francisco (where they’ll play at Chase Center beginning in 2025). The bridge also serves as a nod to the Warriors logo, Veale said, and it doubles as a sword in an homage to the Norse Valkyries.
There are some more subtle Easter eggs in the logo, too, like the five cables on the bridge, which evoke the five players on the court for each team, and the fact that the logo is made up of 13 lines total, which represents the Valkyries’ status as the 13th team in the WNBA.
Welcome to the Bay
With the visuals nailed down, it was time to start rolling out the branding to potential Valkyries fans. The Valkyries have so far locked in more than 17,000 season ticket deposits, making them the first professional women’s sports team to pass that milestone, and only about 5% of those depositors also have Warriors season tickets, Veale said.
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The Valkyries primary audience skews slightly younger than the Warriors, and is very “values-aligned…because they connect with what these players represent,” Veale said. The players in the W are known for their long history of activism.
To help connect with its audience, the Valkyries hosted an in-person block party in May, and is also leaning into other marketing strategies like merch collabs. The team partnered with athlete-founded media and e-commerce company Togethxr to create a violet version of the company’s viral “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports” shirt, which Veale said sold out so quickly in its first run that the brands did a second drop, which also sold out in hours.
“We know that predominantly our depositors are buying merch before they’re placing deposits, and we’re seeing that across women’s sports,” Veale said. “It is important for us to figure out and to really fuel the merchandise funnel.”
The team also locked down an early brand partnership: Earlier this month, the team announced JPMorganChase as its first founding partner, which includes a jersey-patch sponsorship.
San Fran-social
Social media is another key component of the Valkyries’ marketing strategy, but there’s one problem: The team doesn’t have any players to post about yet, and “no pure basketball content” to speak of, Veale said. On-court content tends to perform well for teams on social, but without that, Veale said the Valkyries have been turning to the community for content, like doing a series of posts about Oakland Pride earlier this month.
For now, the Valkyries get to be “fans of everybody” in the league, Veale said, something that will change as the team prepares for battle in 2025. As its social and broader marketing efforts continue to evolve, Veale said fans will remain at the core.
“We want to build a brand that our fans are part of,” she said. “They’ve really earned the opportunity to be on the ground floor with us and to bring this to life, and so when we think about how we’re driving that forward, how we’re showing up for them, how we’re showing up for athletes…it’s important for us to really stick the landing.”