Sports Branding
Brand identity and content system designed to grow sports talent agency
Twenty Sports Group was set up in 2022 to represent world-class athletes, coaches and broadcasters in international rugby.
The challenge
The particular challenge of launching a startup is trying do so without having a brand in place, it creates a lot more work for founders to tell their story themselves.
The relationships, the knowledge, the industry credibility is all real and none of it is visible until you build something that communicates it. An agency representing international athletes can't operate without brand touchpoints that build trust. The people it wants to work with will not wait long enough to find out who is behind it.
Ryan came to us before Twenty had a name on the wall, a single piece of content, or a brand of any kind. He had the network, the experience and the ambition to build something that could operate at the top of rugby. What he needed was a visual identity that made that credibility clear and a content system that could keep pace with the agency as it grew.
The strategy
Improving the visual identity and brand collateral
Sports talent operates in a world where perception matters at every level. To the athletes considering who represents them, to the clubs and broadcasters on the other side of the table and to the sport itself. The visual identity carried real strategic weight. It was the first thing the market would see, and it had to communicate depth and professionalism before anyone had asked a question or taken a meeting.
We explored multiple directions for the brand, each taking a different approach to the same core brief: confident, professional, and credible to the people inside the sport. Working through typographic systems, colour palettes and layout approaches across three rounds of concepting, we tested ideas against what the founder knew about the industry rather than what looked good in isolation. His knowledge of the world Twenty was entering shaped every decision.
The final identity is bold, clean and designed to hold its own in a sport that takes itself seriously, built around a strong typographic mark, a strong colour palette and a visual system that works across both print and digital formats.
Social media content and design system
In sports talent management, the public announcements are a big part of the the product. How an agency communicates a signing, a contract extension, or an international call-up tells you as much about the agency as anything else. The content had to be as sharp as the identity behind it.
We developed a design system of templates rather than one-off graphics whose purpose was consistency and pace. In a fast-paced industry where breaking news is immediate every new announcement could be produced quickly and to the same standard, without the brand losing consistency. Five distinct content series covered the full range of what Twenty wanted to communicate to the world.
The Welcome to Twenty series was the flagship format, used whenever a new athlete joined the agency's books. A rendered player image, bold typographic treatment, Team Twenty's brand palette and a signature graphic marking the signing. The players it featured over two years included international rugby stars Alex Mitchell, Will Joseph, Henry Arundell and Ollie Sleightholme to name a few. Each post was designed to carry the weight of the name it announced. The agency's credibility was built announcement by announcement and the visual quality of each one was part of how that credibility accumulated.
Contract announcements
Contract announcements followed a separate visual language, a two-post format built for impact, using player imagery and typography designed to generate the kind of attention a significant signing deserves. Reactive content covered international call-ups, debuts, 100-cap milestones and captaincy announcements, each one built to turn around quickly within the same visual system so the brand stayed consistent regardless of the pace of news.
Two years building a sports brand from day one
Twenty launched with a brand that looked established just as it started its operation. The founder understood that you only get to make a first impression once and in a sector where perception travels fast, arriving with the right brand changes what is possible from day one.
Over the two years that followed, the brand and content system supported the agency through its growth. Every announcement, whether a new signing, a milestone or an international call-up, was an opportunity to reinforce TSG's standing in the sport, and the consistency of the visual output meant those moments compounded rather than fragmented. The roster grew to include multiple England internationals across the game and the content treated each one with the same level of care and craft.
The working relationship lasted more than two years from the agency's first day. That kind of continuity does not happen through one-off project work.
The takeaway
A business launching into a competitive, high-profile industry cannot afford to let its brand lag behind its ambitions. The stars that Twenty wanted to work with were making judgements at the first touchpoint and those judgements happen before a conversation starts.
Brand-led creative work is how you close the gap between what a business is and what the world sees. For Twenty, that meant building a visual identity rooted in the values of the sport, the founders unique expertise and the standards of the people in it and then building a content system that could communicate every milestone with the same confidence. The brand helped create the conditions for growth, running ahead of the agency's ambitions and ensuring Twenty looked the part.
"I've worked with King Creative for over 2 years now, everything from logo design to social graphics and general brand work, and they've been great throughout. They're a really valuable part of a business that's starting out."
Ryan Shahin, Twenty Sports Group