NBL26 CHAMPIONS

SYDNEY KINGS MERCH RANGE
& SOCIAL ROLLOUT

the brief

To celebrate the Sydney Kings being crowned Champions for the NBL26 season, I worked on the Merchandise Range & Digital Marketing Campaign for the merchandise range.

Within our design team I crafted the Streetwear capsule for the Championship range, while working with the Digital Marketing Manager I also crafted the look & feel of the campaign across all of our digital touchpoints.

The PROBLEM

With Sports Merchandise becoming as important as ever for team revenue, opposing sports leagues were beginning to break away with product innovation. Fans are buying on emotion, so they're happy to spend the money if they can be wowed with the offering.

In order to make our Merchandise perform strong and win sales, we needed our Socials to lead this experience and create an emotional connection to persuade fans to get behind our product.

Our audience is still buying commemorative NBA merchandise from the 90s, so the emotional connection to these events provide a huge opportunity if executed correctly.

DESIGN INTENT

This is the biggest moment in the NBL calendar, so I wanted that to be reflected by the campaign visuals and design of the physical merchandise. Aesthetically this needed to feel like a premium piece of sports marketing, with social posts that fans would love to share on their stories with pride to show-off that their team were the ultimate champions.

Pushing that pride with the apparel, I wanted the range to feel bold but not gaudy, something that the average punter could wear on a nice day or when they wanted something comfy.

The INSIGHT

The NBA is the cultural leader for world basketball, and fans perceive their product to be of the highest ilk both on and off the court.

Matching that level aesthetically for the Sydney Kings meant the campaign needed to take on key design elements that the NBA champion, and the merchandise needed to utilize washed tones & a cozy vintage style. And lots, lots of gold.

THE OUTCOME

The range performed incredibly well across the NBL Store and supplementary retailers, with the range outperforming both previous Championship Ranges for the Sydney Kings in NBL22 and NBL23.

Furthermore the range pushed myself further with my compositional abilities, colour grading and understanding of photo-editing, as the key floating heads piece of the Sydney Kings players took a great deal of research & effort to get right.