As the Cleveland Sirens are getting ready to shake the league starting in 2028, franchise executive Allison Howard stated that they’ll be following a path different from their NBA counterpart.

“We don’t want to be the Lady Cavaliers,” she told the media on August 4, 2026. “We really need to be very separate, very distinctive. We love our Cavaliers, and they’re such an important part of this organization. But this team (Sirens) can exist very much on the independent side of the Cavaliers.”

The Sirens, the WNBA’s 16^th expansion team, unveiled their name, logo and branding this Tuesday at Cleveland’s Rocket Arena. They chose a blue-forward color palette over the Cleveland Cavaliers’ usual wine and gold and a logo idea unprecedented in both the NBA and WNBA.

With a light blue Siren cradling a basketball in the logo, the franchise gave a massive nod to the fluid, fast movement of the sport, Cleveland’s previous women’s basketball team, the Cleveland Rockers and the city’s asset, Lake Erie.

“It had to be separate,” Howard told Cleveland.com. “This brand needed to be very distinctly and authentically Cleveland. The biggest thing we wanted to do was tie it back to our greatest asset, which is Lake Erie.”

Moreover, it's not just the logo and colour palettes that will be different.

Sirens Will Be Targeting a Different Crowd

The WNBA’s latest expansion team, the Golden State Valkyries, chose the Valkyrie violet as their primary colour, but kept a tie with the Golden State Warriors in terms of name and the black, white, and gold palettes. However, the Sirens will deviate from the Cavs in further ways.

“The demographic that will come to Rocket Arena in 2028 for the Sirens games is going to be very different than the ones that come to the Cavaliers,” Howard added to the same segment. “They eat different food. They drink different drinks.”

So, it’s not just forging a new identity for the team but also having a separate base audience, different from the Cavs.

How much do you think they'll succeed? Let us know in the comments.

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Written by

Deblina Roy