'Bold, inspiring' rebrand set to change WNBL forever

• The WNBL have launched a rebrand as it prepares for its first season under the ownership of the Wollemi Group and the NBL
• WNBL CEO Jennie Sager said the project was about being "bold and inspiring"
• She also said the league has plans of expanding to as many as 12 teams

New logo, new colours, new words, a new CBA and most importantly, a new era for the WNBL.

Under new ownership and after fighting off hurdles such as getting all teams to commit to the league under The Wollemi Capital Group Syndicate (WCGS) and the National Basketball League (NBL) consortium, as well as ensuring eight teams will compete by helping save Adelaide, the WNBL officially launches its rebrand.

Headlined by a logo that will stand out, led by purple, WNBL CEO Jennie Sager said the project was all about being "bold and inspiring".

"I think the first, and probably the most important thing, was really just getting thoughts and feedback from all of the key stakeholders across, athletes both past and present, the clubs and also internally here at the WNBL and of course, with our new owners in Robyn (Denholm) and Larry (Kestelman).

"So, we put out a survey to roughly 100 key stakeholders and really just took that step in the process initially to figure out if this was something people wanted to happen and then, if we were to rebrand and to launch a new logo, what should the rebrand really encapsulate? It was incredible because the response was unanimous.

"Every single person wanted a new logo and a new brand. The key words that kept coming up were something that was bold, modern, dynamic and inspiring, but also indicative of the professional level of this league and the clubs and the players and that elite level and how that can look around the world as well.

"That was really important that we got feedback and input from everyone.

"The colours themselves were more about feeling bold and inspiring. We literally took out a colour wheel and looked around the world at team logos, both men's and women's across different codes and different sports and tried to look for some clear space, while still feeling like we were landing somewhere that was bold and inspiring and also modern and professional. That was how we landed on the purple.

"It was also unanimous that everyone just really loved the purple."

Sager said the rebrand was important because it was a "new chapter" for Australia's longest running professional women's competition.

"We are rebirthing a league and that's a specific moment in time that will be legendary. With that comes a rich history of the last 45 years, but also a desire to up-level everything and take this league into the future," she said.

"We just felt like part of that had to be a rebrand because you really have to just represent that this is a new chapter and a new moment in time. Where we've landed with the logo really shows that purpose and reshaping the future of the game and that the WNBL is just really ready to rise."

The league's new chief executive believed the rebrand would propel the WNBL to new levels in regards to corporate support and also said one of the areas fans would see a major change in was the competition's social media presence.

"There's nowhere to go but up when it comes to the presence that we can have both across social platforms, but also just digitally in general, whether that's the website and the app and just that online presence also," Sager said.

"There is so much opportunity there, and so when we launch the brand, you'll see things starting to change on our socials.

"We're still working out a lot of stuff on the back end, so, some of that may be slower than we'd necessarily prefer but certainly as we get closer and closer to the season kicking off, you'll see a lot of the content really amp up, the social strategy change and the general look and also even things like YouTube and again, our website and app as well."

Sager said they were "working through the process" to sort out the league's broadcast deal for next season but were close to being able to announce what will be happening for season 2025-26.

She also said steps had already been taken to attract, not only elite Australian talent back to the WNBL for the coming season, but the upper echelon of imports as well.

"Fans would have seen the announcement of our CBA, which was absolutely a historic change, and so a big driver of doing that is to hopefully support the athletes to stay in Australia longer," Sager said.

"If we can improve those conditions, both financially, but also physically and mentally, then that hopefully gives them an incentive to stay in Australia longer and to be able to play at home instead of rushing overseas. That was absolutely one of the reasons why we pressed so hard on (the CBA). Hopefully we'll see a big change in the next couple of years.

"I think the name that we can make for ourselves overseas, but also the feedback that we get from the WNBA, not only of the American athletes coming and playing over here, but just our athletes going over there, we're definitely held in such a high regard with the WNBA and it's a great partnership that we absolutely want to continue to build."

While the delay in ensuring an Adelaide-based team would continue to feature in the WNBL forced free agency to be pushed back, Sager said she expected it to open within the coming weeks and for the season to tip-off in mid-October.

She said she was also ecstatic to see Adelaide team continue to have a presence in the league, with the help of the South Australian Government, and hoped they could keep the Lightning name. But they would need to come to an agreement with former Lightning owners, the Pelligra Group, for the intellectual property of the club.

As far as who will coach Adelaide, Sager said they were working through the process of appointing a general manager and head coach with the latter being the priority before free agency starts.

With a rebrand comes big plans for the future of the WNBL with bids backed by the Tasmania JackJumpers and Brisbane Bullets wanting to enter the league for the 2026-27 season. But Sager said they had even bigger plans of expanding to 12 teams in the future.

"Our plan was always to keep it at eight teams this year and that's mostly because of the short runway that we have to get this first season up, but we'll absolutely expand to 10 teams next year," she said.

"We're not ready to announce which ones those will be, but we're committed to increasing to 10 teams next season.

"From there, our timeline is maybe looking at 12 teams two years after that. We have to make sure we don't expand too quickly and we can maintain that elite level of skill. There's a lot of learnings from the WNBA, where you saw them kind of scale too quickly initially, then they paired it back and then they've scaled up again.

"We really want to get that balance right, but we're definitely committed to 10 teams for next season."

While some things are still uncertain, one thing is for sure — today is a landmark day for women's basketball in Australia and a major step towards propelling the WNBL to the level the current players, and those legends who laid the platform in past decades, deserve.