In the words of Mr. Grede, “It comes down to the intersection of commerce and entertainment. They have come together.”
The language of influence
Mr. Villaseñor said his deal with the Coyotes will allow him to get his hands on everything from potentially “the campaigns to the arena color palette, the drinks, the lighting, the logo and the design, beyond the stereotypical merchandise .” program to dress up the team at both street and formal level.” It’s like an in-house makeover program!
And not unlike what he’s trying to do in reinventing Bally where he added some seedy razzle-dazzle to the Alpine ephemera. “If you really dissect it, it’s about honoring the heritage and strengthening it,” Mr Villaseñor said.
That’s the kind of fashion language traditionally found in design studios, not weight rooms. But, said Scott Malkin, an owner of the New York Islanders, it’s not the only connection. Mr. Malkin is also the founder of Value Retail, a group of luxury outlet malls in Europe and Asia, and this year broke ground for a new shopping village adjacent to the recently opened UBS hockey arena in Belmont Park.
Sports and fashion are both, he said, “about creative energy coupled with execution,” about managing talent that often doesn’t fit easily into a rigid structure and needs to evolve as society does. They both deal with a brutal schedule and can have tremendous psychic impact and reach, he said, and they both like to talk about the “curation of experience.”
And they’re both about branding, on a macro and micro level.
After all, what is a brand but a collection of values surrounded by a name or a logo or an object? It is a symbol that represents heritage, know-how and beauty, for example. Or excellence, aspiration, strength, grace and activism – all adjectives that attach to athletes. And sometimes handbags. Or sneakers.
