The Vancouver Whitecaps Football Club has unveiled its new logo for its inaugural Major League Soccer season.
Gone are the stylized wave and soccer ball that have been a fixture for the Whitecaps since the team changed its colours from red and black just before the team’s 1979 North American Soccer League championship season.
The club’s logo now features three white and three mirror-image powder blue peaks. Even club president Bob Lenarduzzi is unclear on exactly what the team’s uniforms will look like or even if they will have dark blue as well as powder blue.
“We benefited from Adidas seeing the value of lending their creative people to our rebranding,” Lenarduzzi told Business in Vancouver.
Not only does the logo show mountains and water – two things Vancouver is synonymous with. It also has a large ‘V’ for Vancouver and a ‘W’ for Whitecaps.
“What we’ve done now has provided a much more contemporary and subliminal brand,” Lenarduzzi said.
The Whitecaps are in the final phase of exclusively selling 2011 season tickets to current season ticket holders.
Lenarduzzi said that, starting June 12 at 10 a.m, the general public will be able to buy 2011 season tickets.
That season will start at Empire Fields, which is a temporary stadium built on the site of the former Empire Stadium, where the NASL Whitecaps played in their heyday.
The team will then move to the renovated B.C. Place stadium midway through the season.
So far, more than 10,000 people have bought season tickets. Lenarduzzi believes that this is more than the MLS’ Seattle Sounders were able to sell nine months ahead of their MLS debut.
He said excitement over the World Cup could also fuel sales.
What country does he believe will win world soccer’s greatest prize?
“I go for Italy every four years,” he said. “I’m of Italian descent, and we won it four years ago.”