On Tuesday, Houston took its first small step in its new approach to embodying a football club, with one giant leap in its brand refresh. The Dynamo became Houston Dynamo FC, and both the MLS side and the Dash unveiled new crests for the 2021 season. Both were designed to embed the Houston community into the fabric of the clubs and firmly place the Dash and Dynamo on equal footing.
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The Dash lifted their first trophy in 2020, winning the Challenge Cup this summer, then following it up with a second-place finish in the Fall Series. Kristie Mewis, who had the best 2020 out of anyone, told The Athletic, these successes are the ideal foundation to build on.
“It’s perfect timing for a rebrand,” she said. “I think we have reinvented ourselves, and we’re going in the right direction. I think Houston, as a community, will follow and I’m really excited to see what happens in 2021.”
The Challenge Cup was a huge boost for the NWSL side of the organization, but three other major influencing events changed the course to Tuesday’s rebrand, though it has actually been in the works for two years.
First, Katie Scallan was hired as chief marketing officer in July 2019. Then in October of that year, the Dash played a friendly in Monterrey, Mexico against Tigres Femenil, and though they lost the game, the personnel on the trip came away with plenty of notes on how Tigres advertised the men’s and women’s first teams as equals on billboards and around the stadium. Finally, Houston and creative agency 9th Wonder collaborated for the first shift to a more cohesive approach to the Dynamo and Dash with the Hold It Down campaign — a club motto that worked for both MLS and NWSL — in January.
After doing focus groups with supporters, there were some things locked in as the organization looked for its fresh start.
“One thing that was very clear was we were not getting rid of the Dynamo (team name), we weren’t getting rid of the Dash (team name), and we weren’t getting rid of orange,” Scallan said. From there, the internal creative team got to work, once again with 9th Wonder’s help.
The end result does include two wholly new crests, but Scallan compared the entire process to remodeling a house. “We stripped it down to the studs, and that got ugly. We had to get bare and dirty. We had to develop and then put our framework up, which was our vision, our mission, our value statements,” she said, before walking through all the elements of the brand refresh. “It’s not just a pretty little logo, which is going to get all the attention. It’s going to be more about how we’re going to build the organization and the club as a whole.”
We grind. We shine. We are Houston.
H-Town #HoldItDown pic.twitter.com/M2Jm2GUXsn
— Houston Dash (@HoustonDash) November 17, 2020
Houston is now front and center on both crests — the largest part of the team name. For the Dash, gone is the clip-art soccer ball and the attempt to capture the concept of speed. The main design element of the new crest, the H, has negative space filled with blue, a reference to Houston’s bayous. Even the angles on the “H” are a nod to Pennzoil Place, an iconic part of the Houston skyline. Both crests feature a hexagon, rather than a shield or roundel. The choice was intentional: the six sides represent the six wards of Houston, and also link back to the Dynamo’s founding in 2006. There was another reason, too.
“It’s a little more scientific, but it’s really special,” Scallan said. “Hexagons are the strongest naturally occurring shape. When you put them next to each other, their strength multiplies based on the pressure and support they get from their neighbors.” Scallan said the matching hexagon crests showed how the Dash and Dynamo were on equal footing, but also how the players and supporters were stronger together.
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While both teams are keeping the identifiable “electric” orange, the Dash are also keeping the touches of blue and white on their crest, and leaning into a space exploration theme a bit, as well. The blue, according to the club’s style guide, is “space city blue,” and the symbol at the bottom of the crest is a quasar, an homage to NASA. The Dynamo badge features a lightning bolt in that same position. Combined, the two teams recognize the two major industries of Houston: energy and aerospace.
The team has plenty of new merch ready to go, including a heat-friendly alternative to scarves in branded bandanas. The Dynamo and Dash have also set up new partnerships across the Houston community, with rappers, fashion designers and artists — including one with artist Alex Roman, Jr., who goes by Donkee Boy. He recently made headlines for his memorial mural of George Floyd in the Third Ward, and another mural in honor of Vanessa Guillen, both painted with his mother, Sylvia.
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Roman, Jr. will paint the player tunnel at BBVA Stadium, what Scallan said would allow the team to have his “fingerprints” and the feel and vibe he provides for Houston at their home stadium.
As with any team that’s gone through a brand refresh, new crests and a mission statement don’t magically solve every single problem. But Scallan and the organization have reprioritized a few things with the new approach: putting Houston and the club’s relationship with the community front and center, and backing up their commitment to making the Dash and Dynamo true equals.
“We don’t just want to be a soccer team that plays in Houston, we want to be Houston’s team,” Scallan said. “We want to have Houston at the center of all of our thought processes and decision making, and lean into the culture of our city.”
As much as the Houston Dynamo have looked for a fresh start and “greater prominence” within the Houston community, especially with the team struggling to find relevance and postseason success in MLS, the Dash’s history within the organization and within the NWSL has its own nuances — including some of those same struggles for relevance.
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The Dash were the first NWSL expansion team, announced during the offseason following the league’s inaugural season. Despite then U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati promising no expansion for the infant league for its second year of existence that August — instead looking for “slow and steady” growth — by November, Houston’s interest was public. In December, the organization landed the rights to a NWSL expansion team and the Dash were born.
The Dash debuted with a ninth-place finish, bottom of the table, in 2014. Through the first six seasons, the team failed to make the playoffs, compiling an overall record of 40 wins, 70 losses and 26 draws. And those struggles extended to the stands, too. Despite reducing the capacity of BBVA Stadium to 7,000, the Dash have never topped the high mark of the 2015 season, a World Cup year, when they averaged 6,413 fans per game (thanks largely to the team’s all-time attendance record of 13,025 set on July 13, 2015 following the World Cup final win by the USWNT).
By 2019, as seven of the nine NWSL teams set new average attendance records thanks to the World Cup bump, the Dash’s numbers dropped to an average of 3,615 fans per game. This time, the first match following the U.S.’s triumph in France only pulled in 5,327 fans — perhaps in part because the Dash were the only team to not have a single player feature on the U.S. roster.
Despite what felt like a yearly ritual in Houston of starting out with the promise of playoffs, only to watch it dissolve by the fall, the front office felt they weren’t that far off from unlocking the team’s potential.
So when the Dash took this year’s Challenge Cup by storm, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. The players had figured out how to turn the lack of respect for the team into something productive, rather than letting themselves sink into resentment.
“I think that’s just part of our identity now,” Shea Groom said in July. “We came into this tournament, and this year, wanting to make a statement — that statement being that the Houston Dash is something to be reckoned with in this league.”
And even after winning that first trophy (and then finishing second in the Fall Series), head coach James Clarkson saw no reason to let the narrative go ahead of the return to the regular season (fingers crossed) in 2021.
“We’ve talked about the ‘underdog’ tag, and ‘nobody likes us, and nobody rates us,’” Clarkson said after the team lifted the trophy in Utah, soaked in Budweiser. “I think that’s still true, but the players have bought into what we’ve done. The effort and the work that they’ve put in off the field has paid off, but there’s no end-game to it.”
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Mewis said this week that the Dash’s strong year is great, but “obviously we’d love 2021 to be an even better year. A goal of ours — it always has been, of course — is to make the playoffs. But I think we’ve just really proven ourselves.”
While 2020 was “messy,” in her words, she also thought the team’s performance was still a meaningful display of its cohesion and success.
Every city loves a winner, so the Challenge Cup will likely bring in some new fans for 2021. But from a Dash point of view, it’s hard to overlook a more meaningful investment into the NWSL side, and the organization’s commitment to putting the Dash on the exact same level as the Dynamo.
For Mewis, one of the players who has been in the league every single season since 2013, there’s a much bigger appreciation at the heightened standards and additional investment.
“It’s funny, every time one little thing gets better I’m like, oh, I just feel like I truly appreciate it so much. All the girls who go back, like Christine Nairn and those players who started out in this league with me, like we’re the only ones who understand how difficult it was to get the league started — and to be treated and to feel like a professional,” she said, laughing a little.
But the investment matters — and so do the optics, especially as Houston bids to be a host city for the 2026 men’s World Cup.
Janis Burke, CEO of the Harris County – Houston Sports Authority and member of the executive committee for the bid to be a World Cup host city, noted that Houston does have plenty of options for sports fans, with six professional teams — including the Astros, Texas and Rockets across the big four leagues, plus four Division I NCAA programs in the city limits, as well.
“We are the most diverse city in America right now, next to New York, but I would argue that we’re even more diverse,” Burke said. “I think that lends itself to lots of different sports, and people having lots of different choices for their number one sport. I think soccer is definitely growing in our community.”
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Burke emphasized that the approach the Dash and Dynamo are taking is important, and aligns with FIFA’s quest to improve women’s soccer. “It’s a strong statement that we are treating both of our teams equally; they’re both professional teams. If you look at the uptick in soccer after the World Cup was hosted in the United States the last time (in 1994), we’ve got that opportunity leading into and then hosting in 2026. I think putting that rebrand out right now is great timing.”
Houston won’t know if it’s been selected as one of the 10 U.S. host cities until late 2021, but there’s still plenty of other work waiting for the city’s soccer community to establish a stronger foothold.
“This is step one of the process, and this is more than just a logo,” said Scallan. “This is a bigger story, and how we’re going to live and breathe as an organization, as a club, on the field, off the field, the front office and tech ops. There are a lot of pieces, and all of them have to come together and it doesn’t happen overnight.”
Even with the understanding that there’s still plenty more work to be done, and this is just the start, Scallan is extremely positive about what the future holds for the Dash and Dynamo.
“Come talk to me in a year or two, and I think people are going to be able to look at this and say, ‘You know, they were having some problems over there. There was a disconnect between the men’s and women’s teams. Look at how they’ve been able to bring them together.’ I think that’s what I’m most excited about.”
(Photos: Houston Dynamo FC)
