A new era of sports culture.
For more than four decades, ESPN hasn’t simply broadcast sport. Since launching on September 7, 1979 as the first 24/7 sports network, it has shaped how sport is felt, argued over, celebrated, and remembered. From SportsCenter to streaming, ESPN has defined the ritual of fandom.
But culture moved. Fandom is fragmented across platforms, pages, and endless scrolls. The way people discover, debate, and live sport changed fundamentally. As ESPN prepared for its most ambitious chapter yet, a major direct-to-consumer streaming service launching under the ESPN brand, the challenge was not reinvention for its own sake. It was clarity.
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THE INSIGHT:
Fans don’t watch sport. They live it.
Modern fandom is not a schedule of games. It is heroes and villains. Rivalries and receipts. Group chats and generational debates. It is heartbreak on a Tuesday and redemption on a Sunday. Competitors talk about fans. ESPN has always been built by them.
Our opportunity was to re-center the brand on that emotional truth. Not coverage, but culture. Not programming grids, but the surge.
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THE IDEA:
Ignite the fan in all of us.
We rebuilt ESPN around its most powerful asset, its own DNA.
Four letters. A single uncompromising red. The 7° tilt. The speedline. These are more than graphic devices. They are cultural shorthand for authority, immediacy, and movement. Rather than dilute them, we distilled and amplified them into ESPN’s first complete identity system.
The speedline evolved into a connective force, linking information and expressing momentum. The monogram “E” became the front door for Everything ESPN. Dynamic rounded corners transformed into flexible frames for content. A revitalized ESPN Red bridges 46 years of broadcast heritage with a streaming-first future.
Typography carries authority. Motion drives momentum. For the first time, motion theory sits at the core of the system, reflecting the urgency of breaking news, the gravity of star power, and the rhythm shifts of live play. The identity stretches, compresses, interrupts, and reacts in real time, from broadcast to app to social to experiential.
Built for wherever fans live.
Sport does not end at the final whistle. It spills into tailgates, living rooms, cookouts, barbershops, and timelines. The brand was designed to travel with it.
Across live games, studio shows, fantasy, betting, editorial, originals, and social, every expression ladders back to a singular north star, ESPN as the cultural home of sport. Premium yet accessible. Expressive yet disciplined. Opinionated yet authoritative.
The system simplifies how fans find and experience ESPN across games, the app, marketing, and beyond, while amplifying the emotion that made them fall in love with it in the first place.
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THE IMPACT:
ESPN is a cultural engine.
A unified, living brand built for live moments and lasting rituals. Still the definitive voice of sport. Now designed for the speed, scale, and spirit of modern fandom.
Explore the full system at
www.espn.design
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Chin Wang
Heather Donahue
Rachel Weiss
Rami Moghadam
Dale Harney
Elliott Muñoz
Lori Higginbotham
Marissa Dempsey
Nick Galac
Lucas Nickerson
Kynna Randall