Building an UNBEATABLE Brand

Ahead of the 2023/24 British Basketball League season, the League launched its all-new UNBEATABLE brand identity as we looked to bring British basketball to new audiences across the globe. 

British Basketball is going through a revolutionary and previously unseen period of growth, after securing significant external investment in 2021. As an organisation, we have lofty ambitions to transform not only the League but the sport of Basketball over the next five to ten years. We want to elevate the British Basketball League to a premier content and entertainment organisation that generates joy for our fans, value for our distribution, marketing and licensing partners and supports its community.

As the pinnacle of professional basketball in the UK, the aim is to make noise and shake up the sporting landscape. Britain’s sporting scene has largely been dominated by sports that don’t represent the younger generation or the cultures ingrained within communities across the country. 

It is therefore our aim to break this status quo and drive British basketball to become the #2 most popular spectator sport in the UK, (according to recent study by EY we are currently the 4th most popular sport in the UK for Gen Z) as well as developing its reputation and awareness on a global scale, an ambition that as an organisation we are determined to achieve.  One crucial component we identified was the need to elevate the League’s brand awareness. We strived to achieve a complete brand refresh ahead of the 2023/24 British Basketball League season. This was a process which took careful consideration throughout each step of building a brand that would resonate and excite the sport, our clubs, players, fans and partners. 

The aim of rebranding was to create an emotional connection that would help us attract new fans, increase our organic engagement and be seen as a world-class product. Under the previous branding which had been in place for the majority of years since the League’s inception in 1986, we wanted to provide clarity of who we were and what we represent. Furthermore, it was vitally important to provide direction across the league for commercial, media, marketing, clubs and operations. This meant from the outset and throughout the rebranding process we worked with the clubs, as well as other key stakeholders to ensure they lived and breathed the brand and its values. 

During a series of blog posts in the coming weeks, I’m going to highlight the journey of how we are taking British basketball to new heights through the building of our UNBEATABLE brand. I want to help other brand professionals understand the process we went through, warts and all, to help guide their future endeavours. The series will focus on the following areas

• The brief, strategy and insights
• Agency selection and creative concepts
• Asset creation and aligning with our goals
• Results so far and next steps

I hope throughout this series you will see the knowledge, insight and passion that’s gone into delivering the brand to help bring basketball on this incredible growth journey and the results it’s delivering not just for the league, but our partners and fans alike. I look forward to any feedback throughout the series, don't be shy.

Check out this short video from the selected agency Designwerk. The behind-the-scenes video will follow in the coming series.

If you'd like to put your brand in front of a young hard-to-reach audience with a sport that has that cultural cachet that eludes more traditional sports, feel free to get in contact, we'd love to work with you.

https://www.britishbasketballleague.com/