ANYBODY CAN MAKE A HYPE REEL. WE BUILD THE BRAND UNDERNEATH IT.
Sports and entertainment is full of agencies that can produce a great 30-second cut. Far fewer can build the thing the cut is selling — the renewal package that earns a six-figure suite commitment, the design system that holds across two full seasons, the brand library that powers a jumbotron and an in-flight safety video. Bonfire Red builds the brand systems underneath.
ENERGY IS THE EASY PART. THE HARD PART IS WHAT HOLDS UP.
The work that lasts isn't the campaign that crushed for a week. It's the brand framework the in-house team can run with through next season, the renewal materials that close a tier of memberships every spring, the photo and video library that's still showing up in sales decks years after the shoot. We design for that — strategy first, brand and visual systems second, durable content libraries and digital tools third, built to keep moving at gameday speed without losing the design discipline that holds it all together.
We Partner With Sports & Entertainment
WHY TEAMS KEEP CALLING US BACK
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We Build Brand Systems That Survive a Full Season
Sports brands don't get a quiet moment. The team is creating content every week, in-stadium operations are pumping out updates every game, and the brand has to hold up across all of it without going off the rails. We build pressure-tested design systems with the rules, components, and flexibility the in-house production team actually needs. The Crew's 2023 Velo-CITY campaign was built to last two full seasons — billboard to social to jumbotron to out-of-home — without coming back to us for every variation.
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We Treat Premium Memberships Like Premium Brands
Selling a luxury suite, a club membership, or a season ticket package is a high-consideration purchase. The materials have to match. We've built renewal packages for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers across general admission, East Club, West Club, and the franchise's most prestigious Luxury Suites — designed to tell the full story of the year-round experience at Raymond James Stadium and to honor the personal investment of committing to a season. Black wax seals, foil, embossing, custom photography. The renewal kit reads like the experience it represents.
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We Build for Launches, Not Just Campaigns
New properties, new categories, new platforms — we've built brands from a clean sheet. Gridiron Air launched a new category of NFL team travel and needed a brand that could carry sales decks, marketing materials, an in-flight safety video, and a foundational photo and video library shot at headquarters in Fort Worth. Trivi entered a digital category dominated by cartoony, beveled game design and needed a brand that read elevated and built to scale into the future of digital content. We do that kind of work. The launch is the easy day. The library that powers everything after is what we build for.
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We Stay Away from Category Cliché
We're Industry-Agnostic in the Best Way. The category gets stuck in its own conventions — same fonts, same compositional tropes, same hype-video pacing. We bring sensibilities sharpened across luxury, aviation, manufacturing, and consumer brands into sports work. That's how the Bucs renewal kit reads like a high-end hospitality piece instead of a brochure, and how the Trivi app reads like a contemporary digital brand instead of another casino app. The borrowed perspective is what keeps the work from sliding into category cliché.
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Only starters in the Room
Sports and entertainment marketing moves fast and the stakes are visible — a logo reveal lives forever, a renewal package has to perform, a launch can't be delayed. Our founders and discipline leads are actively in the work, not handing the account to a junior team after the kickoff dinner.
In Our Arena
Bonfire Red brings five core services to sports and entertainment brands. Strategy, identity, content, digital, and design systems — calibrated for the speed of gameday operations.
Brand Strategy & Market Differentiation
We define what actually makes the property distinctive — its city, its history, its fans, its category position — and translate that into a strategic narrative the marketing team can run with. The Crew's "Our City. Our Crew." came from this work: a tagline rooted in the genuine link between the club and Columbus, not a generic civic-pride line that could belong to any team in any city.
Brand Identity Systems
Logos, typography, color systems, photography direction, and motion frameworks built to perform across every channel a sports property uses — billboard, social, broadcast, in-stadium, retail, hospitality. We build the rules and the flexibility together, so the in-house team has a system that holds the brand without slowing them down.
Interactive & Digital Platforms
Brand websites, app experiences, and digital ecosystems built to feel as elevated as the rest of the brand and to scale with the business. Trivi's app is a contemporary brand presence in a category dominated by tired design — built to scale into the future of digital content and stand up next to anything else on the user's phone.
Content & Sales Enablement
Cinematic photo and video, original libraries, in-flight and in-stadium content, sales decks, renewal packages, launch materials. The Gridiron Air shoot in Fort Worth produced a foundational library that's still powering the brand across sales decks, internal tools, marketing materials, and social platforms. The Bucs renewal materials were a fully tactile production — black wax seal, foil, embossing, soft-touch — that earned the price of the membership it represented.
Prototyping & Roadmapping
The brand that launches the season is rarely the brand that needs to launch the next one. We help marketing leaders see what's next — turning campaign ideas, sponsor activations, and platform shifts into prototypes and a concrete roadmap, so the team isn't starting from zero when the next season opens.
Rob Dalven Chief Revenue OfficerThe team at Bonfire Red are hands down some of the most creative people in the business. Their design work, attention to detail, and creativity brought our brand to life. They became part of our team and part of the Trivi family.
John Hale COO, Gridiron AirI continue to be amazed by your creativity and attention to detail. Bonfire has been a wonderful outlet for us. Spending days and days which turns into months and months under what is akin to an IRS audit, you have provided not only results but a place to recharge.
CREATING EXPERIENCES FANS ACTUALLY FEEL
Sports and entertainment brands operate live — the pressure is constant, the audience is paying attention, and everything has to hold together at once. We help teams and brands build connected experiences that move fast, stay sharp, and work in the real world.
01 Member Experience
Every Seat Has a Story
A membership renewal program built for every level of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers experience — from general admission to Luxury Suites. We helped tell the story of what it means to be part of gameday at Raymond James Stadium, then brought it to life through tiered renewal packages that reflect the NFL's top-ranked gameday customer service.
02 Creative Infrastructure
One System. Every Touchpoint. Big Win.
The 2023 Velo-CITY kit launch became an opportunity to build something bigger than a campaign — a full graphic system designed to carry the Columbus Crew brand across 2 seasons of nonstop content. We developed an omnichannel design framework built to flex across billboards, social, jumbotrons, and out-of-home.
03 Retail Design
More Than a Display Screen
We led the digital design for Gatorade's interactive in-store experiences for the G Series Zero and G Series Pro lines — touch-driven product education, bold visuals, and athlete-focused decision support that made a crowded retail environment feel more useful and the brand feel more premium.
04 Connected Systems
Bringing Fans Closer to the Game
Working with The Martin Agency, we designed 'Game Time' — an augmented viewing platform connecting live NCAA tournament broadcasts with real-time team content. The experience turned passive viewing into an interactive second screen, letting fans follow stats, stories, and updates without losing the game.
THE LEDGER
Bonfire Red has worked with teams, leagues, brand sponsors, and entertainment platforms — building the brand systems, content libraries, and digital experiences that hold up under the pace and pressure of the category.
FAQs
Answers to common questions about working with Bonfire Red in sports & entertainment.
Most often the head of marketing — VP of marketing, CMO, chief brand officer, or head of premium experiences for a team or property. We also work directly with brand sponsors activating in sports, and with founders launching new sports and entertainment properties. The common thread is a leader who needs the brand to do real work: drive renewals, support a launch, hold up across a full season, or enter a new category convincingly.
A campaign is what runs for a few weeks. A system is what the in-house production team uses every Monday for 2 seasons to build social, gameday graphics, sponsorship integrations, and the dozen other things that come up every week. We design for both, and we build the system to outlast the campaign.
The Crew's Velo-CITY work is the clearest example — the campaign launched in 2023, but the underlying system kept producing through 2024.
Yes — and it's how most of our sports and entertainment engagements run. We concept out the system, once approved we build it with the in-house team’s guidance, and then hand it off with documentation the in-house team can actually use. From there, we stay on call for consulting. The goal is to make the in-house team faster and more confident, not to insert ourselves between them and the work.
The same way we approach luxury hospitality work. The materials have to justify the investment they're representing. Tactile production — foil, emboss, soft-touch, custom photography — combined with a story structure that treats the member as a long-term partner, not a transaction.
The Bucs renewal program was tiered across general admission, East Club, West Club, and Luxury Suites because each tier deserves to feel like the right kind of premium for that member.
The scope depends on whether you are a startup or an established entity pursuing a rebrand.
- Startups: We offer a "speed-to-market" package covering brand strategy, visual and verbal identity, brand styleguide, sales deck materials, social media graphics, and a starter website. We phase in additional needs based on your budget and specific Year 1 goals.
- Funded Startups or Rebrands: Our typical scope is comprehensive, including brand strategy and identity, a foundational content library, a social package, a full website or app, and the sales materials required in market on day one. Gridiron Air is a great example of this package.
- Fully Custom: Whatever it takes.
By building systems with the in-house production team in mind from day one. The brand guidelines need to be usable at gameday speed — clear rules, ready-to-use templates, photography and motion direction that works under deadline. We pressure-test the system before handoff, so the first time the team uses it isn't the first time it's been stressed.
Yes. We’ve supported sponsor activation work from multiple angles — including retail experiences for Gatorade and connected fan engagement platforms developed alongside The Martin Agency for NCAA basketball. We understand that sponsorship creative has to do more than ‘show the logo.’ It has its own approval process, stakeholder expectations, timing pressures, and performance goals — while still needing to feel seamless inside the larger fan experience.
When we developed the Columbus Crew Velo-CITY brand system, we intentionally built the framework to support sponsor activations across social, stadium screens, and in-game moments. That meant creating adaptable templates and motion systems that allowed partners to participate in the energy of the match instead of just occupying space beside it. A Tim Hortons’ goal celebration could become ‘Score a Goal, Win a Free Medium Hot Brew.’ A Donatos Pizza promo could roll out instantly with a Crew-specific offer code tied directly to game action. Instead of generic sponsor Facetime, the system created more contextual, useful, and memorable moments for fans — while giving partners clearer visibility and stronger integration into the experience itself.
Case by case. There are real opportunities — content variation at gameday speed, fan personalization, asset tagging across massive content libraries — and there are real limits, especially around player likeness, sponsor approvals, and league rules. We help marketing leaders think through where AI earns its keep and where it doesn't, then build the system to match.
READY TO UP YOUR GAME?
You’ve built something people care about. The atmosphere is real. The loyalty is earned. We help make sure the brand reflects that same level of energy, consistency, and confidence everywhere fans encounter it.
