In Sports, Your Fans Are Your Brand

Branding sports teams is tricky business. The team already has a brand, whether they like it or not. Player styles, rivalries, fanbases and team performance combine to create athletic brands before ads and stadium deals enter the picture. We’ll look at the major league teams from the Bay Area (we’re a Berkeley company, after all) and weigh in on how effectively their recent branding efforts have capitalized on team successes or patched up brand weaknesses.

[N.B.: we’re excluding the Sharks and the Earthquakes, both because these teams don’t quite have enough brand perception and reach, and because we enjoy stoking the flames of controversy. Sorry San Jose!]

Oakland Raiders

The Situation: The Raiders’ brand has a long history of infamy. Its fans have a reputation not only for almost unmatched loyalty, but also for violence, a tradition that followed the team from LA back to Oakland. The team’s gear has been appropriated by NWA and (allegedly) East Oakland gangs, furthering the Raiders’ bad boy image.

The Fix: In the 2000s, team management struck at the root of the problem: violence at games. Fans caught fighting received season bans from the