Launching a Team by Giving the City the Credit
The Winnipeg Sea Bears are the Canadian Elite Basketball League’s expansion franchise in Winnipeg and the city’s first professional basketball team.
Brandish was brought in to launch the team ahead of its inaugural 2023 season, then returned before the playoffs to give the campaign a second life.
Winnipeg is a hockey city.
The Sea Bears arrived with no game footage, no established fan base, and an incomplete roster. The team had to be introduced without a product to show, and the first game had to feel unmissable to people who had never seen the league play.
Then came a second problem, a better one. The inaugural season worked. As the playoffs approached, fans wanted something to hold onto until the team returned in 2024. A campaign built to celebrate a beginning had to find a way to last.
Unlike most sports, basketball belongs to everyone: all it takes is a ball, a hoop, and somewhere to play.
That insight changed everything.
The campaign didn't need to convince people to become fans, it needed to invite them into something new. Basketball culture already had a name for the people who were there before everyone else: Day One.
For an expansion franchise, that wasn't just a slogan — it was something no established team could offer: the chance for an entire city to honestly say they were there from the beginning. When the playoffs arrived, the idea evolved: Day One, once an invitation, became a badge of honour for the fans who'd answered it.
Day One.
A campaign that honoured the people who had loved basketball all along and invited the rest of the city to join them at the first tip-off.
The idea worked as a slogan, an anthem, and a ticket pitch at once, and it gave the team a fan identity before it had played a single game.
For the second act, Day One became something fans could own: a limited capsule collection released as a true streetwear drop, and the first merchandise in the CEBL produced outside the league’s official channels.
The campaign was built from the communities that already loved the game.
The launch film featured real basketball across Manitoba: high school gyms, neighbourhood pickup games, and community courts where the sport has long been part of everyday life. Rather than manufacturing fandom, the campaign reflected a culture that already existed and invited the rest of Winnipeg to see themselves in it.
That same philosophy shaped the merchandise launch. Working with Winnipeg-based VOAK Sportswear and local streetwear retailer Hobbyism, the capsule collection embraced the conventions of authentic streetwear culture: limited quantities, one item per customer, and a release built around anticipation rather than promotion.
Most sports brands inherit history. Expansion teams don't.
Instead of treating that as a disadvantage, the Sea Bears made it their greatest strength. They gave people something no established franchise ever could: the chance to be there from the very beginning.
Day One wasn't just about launching a basketball team. It was about giving Winnipeg ownership of a story before it had been written. In doing so, the campaign helped create more than sold-out games and record attendance. It helped establish a new generation of fans, a new sports tradition, and a city confident enough to say something it never could before:
Winnipeg is a basketball city.
And we were there from Day One.
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