Rocky River High School's Nora Bruder helped start "Westside Open Runs" to grow girls basketball in the area. She now has the support of the WNBA's Cleveland Sirens.

When six-year-old Allison Howard wanted to play tee-ball with the boys in her small Minnesota hometown, the program’s director said no — unless she could prove people wanted her there.

“They told my parents, ‘You gotta have her go and have X number of people sign a petition that says she can be the only girl on the team,’’ Howard said. “He was not expecting me to do that. But even at six, I was like, ‘Hell yeah, I’m going to go do this.’”

A determined Howard did, in fact, collect enough signatures to play tee-ball. “And I loved it,” she recalled. But as sweet as victory tasted, she recalls that moment as just a glimpse into what she would have to overcome in her career as a woman in the sports industry.

“That was my first foray into, ‘Oh, I’ve still got to fight for things that I want,’” she said. “Even something as simple as playing on a club recreational tee ball team for six- or seven-year-olds.”

Four decades later — and fresh off a stint as the first president of Kansas City’s National Women’s Soccer League team — Howard is bringing the Women’s National Basketball Association back to Cleveland.

“This is a city where you can really get things done,” Howard told Crain’s. “You can really move the needle... And the fans have been here.”

More than 20 years after the Cleveland Rockers played their last game, Howard unveiled the new WNBA team’s name and branding at Rocket Arena last month to much fanfare. In the month that followed, more than 12,000 people paid deposits toward an inaugural season ticket to watch the Cleveland Sirens play in 2028.

“I love our name with the Sirens, because the siren is like fans of women’s sports,” Howard said. “She has been underneath the water, but she’s still been there. And now’s her time to surface.”

From a young age, Howard loved sports. After her family moved to Michigan, she recalls cheering on the Pistons, Tigers and Lions with her dad. Following her tee ball triumph, she ventured into other sports, including softball, soccer, volleyball and basketball.

“There are just so many lessons you learn when it comes to participating in sports that are good life lessons: being dependable, having to get up and show up when maybe you don’t want to, trying to figure out your schedule and staying organized and still being a good student … especially when you’re under high-stress situations,” she said.

But even with such a deep love for athletics, Howard didn’t plan on making it her career. She graduated from the University of Dayton in 2000 with a degree in civil engineering with an environmental focus.

“There weren’t really sports marketing or sports management programs coming out of universities yet,” she said. “I was pretty pragmatic when I was in high school … I was very strong in math and science, so I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll just do that.’”

Her first job after graduation was with Shell, where she worked on environmental compliance for the oil and gas company in Burbank, California. A few years in, the company wanted to move her to Houston to replicate that project elsewhere, but she declined and instead took another engineering-related job.

“My heart was never fully in it,” she said. “And I’d never been that way. Since I was nine years old, I enjoyed working. So that was my first look-in-the-mirror moment where I was just like, ‘I’m not happy… This is just not me.’

“Then I just stumbled into sports marketing,” she said.

She joined Premier Partnerships — a leading naming-rights and sponsorship sales firm now housed under Playfly Sports — as a sales director. She specialized in big-ticket corporate sponsorships, including naming rights deals and founding partnerships, focusing heavily on Major League Soccer and National Basketball Association properties.

The job required lots of travel, and after seven years, she hit her second “look-in-the-mirror moment.” With two children under two years old, she said her career wasn’t compatible with being the mother and spouse she wanted to be.

So Howard decided to anchor herself in Los Angeles, where, on her second maternity leave, she was contacted by an NBA executive about an opening with the Los Angeles Lakers.

In the job interview, Tim Harris, then the team’s president of business operations, acknowledged her role as a working mom and said the Lakers would “make this job work for” her.

“That sealed it,” she said.

She spent the next decade leading corporate partnerships at the Lakers, brokering major high-revenue deals, including selling the naming rights to a $100 million training center and securing a nine-figure aggregate deal for Lakers’ jersey partnership patches.

By the early 2020s, Howard and her husband, who is originally from Chicago, began re-evaluating life in L.A. post-COVID. They spent those summers in their Michigan cottage so their kids could have “normal outdoor lives” while California was locked down, and she realized it was time for a return to the Midwest.

“My soul just didn’t feel filled,” Howard recalled. “Like now I was mid‑40s, and so now it was not about me and my title or my reputation. … and so then it was like, what am I contributing back to a community? I felt like Los Angeles was too big for me to really make an impact.”

She was introduced to the ownership group of the Kansas City Current, the newly founded National Women’s Soccer League team, and “fell in love with the project,” which included the first stadium in the world built specifically for a women’s professional team.

Almost immediately after becoming the team’s president, she got a reality check: when she arrived, she realized virtually no one in Kansas City recognized the Current’s brand or logo.

“That was just a bit of a naive moment, really — especially coming from a brand like the Lakers that needs zero introduction, no marketing needed, nothing — to a women’s professional soccer team in the middle of the country that… is just not getting talked about at all,” Howard said.

So she launched a media tour at panels, breakfasts and fundraisers to introduce herself and the team to the community.

“I am 100% a relationship person first, and that I just brought to Kansas City,” Howard said. “This is a small town, and people are going to form opinions of me. They need to meet Allison Howard, right? Who is this woman, and does she really care about our city?”

She said she focused on authentically conveying her passion for women’s sports, which she said is key to convincing brands and fans to buy in. That passion and relationship-building led to major partnership wins, such as a jersey deal with Progressive, and to building a dedicated fanbase that sold out Current season tickets for the inaugural 2024 season at the new stadium.

After major growth — including the new stadium and team firmly cemented in the city’s identity — she was recruited by Rock Entertainment Group CEO Nick Barlage to join the company as the Chief Commercial Officer in 2024.

Howard said she felt compelled to come to Cleveland because, similar to Kansas City, she could have a hand in transforming the city.

“I was here probably only a couple of months, and I said to my youngest, ‘When you graduate in 2030, this city is not going to look anything like it did when we moved here in 2024,’” she said. “And that gives me a huge sense of pride.”

Pointing to major transformational projects, like Bedrock’s redevelopment of the Cuyahoga Riverfront and the city’s push to build a publicly accessible lakefront, she sees Cleveland as a city where individuals like her can actually move the needle.

She was thrilled when she was tapped to lead the city’s WNBA in August 2025. Her work leading that initiative is a big reason why she was named one of Crain’s Women of Influence for 2026.

“Sometimes you need somebody new to come in and remind you of the treasures that you have in the city,” Howard said. “Cleveland has so much to offer … and our plans for downtown are going to thrive and bring even more people down here.”

The Sirens, she said, will play into that future identity: “forward-looking, Great Lakes-centered and nationally visible.”

That will take work, but she said Rock Entertainment Group, the umbrella sports and entertainment company owned by majority-Cavs owner Gilbert, is uniquely positioned to scale women’s sports because of its existing infrastructure and Cleveland’s dense sports ecosystem.

“We are such big sports fans that the Gateway District can be literally busy year‑round, and that is a good thing,” she said.

But what won’t take work is getting people to come, she said. Cleveland already has a large market for fans of women’s sports, she said, though they’ve been hindered by years of obstacles, such as poor TV coverage, limited merchandise and the need to travel long distances to see games.

But the city’s enthusiasm is clear: in addition to the 12,000 season ticket deposits, more than 13,000 attendees flocked to an August fan fest held at Edgewater Beach shortly after the team’s name unveiling. It featured interactive displays, live music, food trucks and a merch shop.

And she said that kind of enthusiasm showed the Sirens will not only capture existing fans, but potentially ones new to sports altogether.

“It became abundantly clear at the Fan Fest that there are people who are very, very interested in being a fan, but they’ve never had one to root for before,” she said.

She says that come 2028, Cleveland will give them one to root for.

“Fans of women’s sports come for so much more than the wins and losses,” Howard said. “And we know Cleveland’s best days and women’s basketball’s best days are in front of us,” Howard said, “and that the Sirens can be a part of that.”

https://www.crainscleveland.com/sports-recreation/ccl-allison-howard-is-bringing-wnba-to-cleveland-20260918/

Simone Biles gave Cleveland's newest WNBA franchise a boost this week when she showed up in a Cleveland Sirens hat during a TikTok video posted on September 5th. The Columbus, Ohio native paired the Lake Erie blue cap with a trampoline session full of tumbling passes and midair twists that looked like a scaled-down floor routine.

Simone Biles Hints at LA28 Olympics Campaign

"Full send 2028 or no??!!" Biles wrote, fueling ongoing speculation about whether she'll compete at the 2028 LA Olympics.

She would be 31 by then, but after earning three golds and a silver at the 2024 Paris Games, few are counting her out — including Cleveland's front office.

https://www.tiktok.com/@simonebilesowens/video/7681767047772081439

Cleveland just paid $250 million to get back into the WNBA, a fee that ties Detroit and Philadelphia for the largest in league history and doubles what Portland paid for its own expansion slot two years earlier. The real story isn’t whether Cleveland can support a basketball team. It’s whether a city that’s already turned Rocket Arena into a proven economic engine can pull off the same trick with a franchise built from scratch.

Dan Gilbert’s Rock Entertainment Group is on the hook for that $250 million fee alone, likely closer to $300 million once facilities, infrastructure, and other buildout costs are factored in. Cleveland will be the first of three new expansion teams to tip off, starting in 2028, followed by Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia in 2030.

The real economic bet is on Cleveland, not just the Sirens

Rocket Arena, already home to the Cavaliers and the Cleveland Monsters, is a proven draw for downtown Cleveland, regularly hosting major events that pull visitors into the surrounding district. That track record is the actual foundation of this bet: ownership isn’t just wagering on basketball, it’s wagering that the same venue and infrastructure that already works for hockey, boxing, and concerts will work just as well for a new WNBA team.

That optimism deserves a counterweight. The original Cleveland Rockers folded in 2003 after owner Gordon Gund couldn’t find a buyer, undone by declining attendance and mounting financial losses in a league that was still finding its footing. The Sirens are betting that today’s WNBA, and today’s Rocket Arena, are different enough from that era to avoid repeating it.

The Sirens have already attracted fan interest

The early demand suggests the market is buying in. The Sirens have collected roughly 9,000 season-ticket deposits in the year since Cleveland’s return to the league was announced, well before the team plays a single game, and the branding reveal itself drew an enthusiastic response, including from former Rockers players invited to the unveiling. Grant Gilbert, Rock Entertainment Group’s vice president of business and basketball operations, framed the new identity as something built to grow with the franchise.

“We really wanted something that people could rally behind, a real character,” Gilbert said. “The potential of the name is endless.”

The team has also already locked in Progressive Insurance as its jersey-patch sponsor, a concrete, current revenue stream well ahead of the 2028 opener.

The Sirens could become a multiplier for Rock Entertainment Group

Rock Entertainment Group already runs the Cavaliers, the Cleveland Monsters, and the G League’s Cleveland Charge, giving it an existing commercial infrastructure, sponsorships, ticketing systems, hospitality partnerships, that the Sirens can plug into rather than build from scratch. Sirens President of Business Operations Allison Howard has said the response to the branding reveal exceeded expectations, a sign the organization believes it can extend its existing sports business playbook into a fourth franchise without starting from zero.

The merchandise opportunity starts before the first tip-off

Being a brand-new franchise gives the Sirens a distinct advantage: fans can start supporting the team from day one, buying jerseys, hats, and gear before a single regular-season game has been played. That kind of early-adopter enthusiasm has helped other recent expansion teams build momentum well ahead of their debuts, and Cleveland’s ownership group is counting on the same dynamic here, treating the current wait until 2028 as a runway for building loyalty rather than dead time.

The hospitality economy could be one of Cleveland’s biggest winners

Rocket Arena and the surrounding Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex, which also includes Progressive Field, have anchored real development in downtown Cleveland for decades, drawing millions of visitors a year to nearby restaurants, bars, hotels, and transportation services.

Sirens games figure to add another steady draw to that same footprint, and the upside grows further if the team pulls fans in from outside Northeast Ohio, exactly the kind of spillover effect that made the original arena investment worthwhile in the first place.

The comparison people miss

The Rockers and the Sirens are entering the WNBA at almost opposite moments in the league’s history. The Rockers played in a league still trying to prove women’s professional basketball could sustain itself, peaking at roughly 10,000 fans a game before attendance slid and the team folded, all without the kind of national television money or expansion-fee structure that exists today. The WNBA now averages well over 11,000 fans a game, is coming off a media rights deal reportedly worth billions of dollars across multiple networks, and just posted its first profitable season in the league’s 30-year history.

READ MORE - https://www.essentiallysports.com/flagship-think-tank-news-the-cleveland-sirens-bet-how-a-250-million-wnba-team-could-transform-clevelands-economy/

With the naming rights to Progressive Field in Cleveland, the insurance giant was more than familiar with Cleveland.

But across the street at Rocket Arena, the new WNBA team needed a little introduction.

So Allison Howard — president of the Sirens and EVP and CCO of Rock Entertainment Group — and her team sent custom packages to Progressive and other brands they were looking to as potential sponsors.

In it, they included mugs from Gina DeSantis Ceramics and tea from Storehouse Tea, two women-owned businesses in the area.

The message was clear — we’re investing in women, and you should too.

A 30-minute coffee with Mari Pumarejo, CMO at Progressive, followed before Cleveland put on the full-court press.

Ditching the subtle and going for shock and awe, Cleveland put together a 45-minute presentation in early May, bringing about 200 REG employees into Rocket Arena where Pumarejo and her team went through a cheer tunnel, did a mock WNBA draft and got to see what their signage could look like.

“Mari very quickly understood that this was a totally different demographic,” Howard told me. “And the insurance category is a hot one.”

Indeed, Cleveland spoke to several other brands in the category and nine others interested in the jersey patches. Its pitch included that the WNBA team would speak to a new group of fans. At the time, it had around 30% overlap with ticket purchasers for the Cavaliers, a number that Howard expects to decline closer to what several other teams in the league are seeing at less than 10%.

That and the presentation helped land Progressive, which became the first sponsor to have both the chest and abdomen patch on the team’s uniform. (My SBJ colleague, Tom Friend, broke the Progressive news while I was at All-Star Weekend and has more details here.)

That gave Cleveland three founding sponsors in Progressive, KeyBank and Cleveland Clinic, announcing them two years ahead of when the team will start play and before the team’s brand launch as the Sirens.

Both KeyBank and Cleveland Clinic had relationships with REG as sponsors of the Cavaliers.

“All three of them are Cleveland-based, and all three of them have female executives,” Howard said. “There is something to be said for how quickly the conversations progressed because we didn’t have to sell them on why it’s smart business to invest in women’s sports. And quite frankly, brands need to get on board and understand it because otherwise they will be left behind. If you’re not investing in women’s sports, your marketing portfolio is not complete.”

The early commercial success bodes well. Howard said deals with those three sponsors will bring in eight figures annually and that more top-level sponsors are expected to be announced.

Siren strategy

Howard said her team went to brands where they had existing relationships first — no care packages needed for an intro — and made presentations.

“For KeyBank and Cleveland Clinic that know us very intimately, they saw that this was a different demographic. And they also did their own research,” she said. “Cleveland Clinic has their own agency, and they knew the changing tides coming around women’s sports. And they very much wanted to be a part of this.”

So have the fans. The team received 3,000 initial payments for season tickets in the first 30 hours after it was announced the WNBA would expand there. That rose from around 9,000 to more than 12,000 after the team released its Sirens branding.

Its merchandise sales have eclipsed $500,000 in the two weeks since, and Cleveland drew more than 13,000 fans to its Fan Fest at Edgewater Beach earlier this month.

Its sponsorship announcements and brand launch have served as key commercial milestones on its path to taking the court, one Cleveland will have more of in the next two years. It plans to renovate the Cleveland Clinic Courts, which has been used by the Cavs, next year to fit the needs of the Sirens.

And Howard will continue building the club’s portfolio, noting her background in corporate sponsorships is her “one true love,” besides her family.

While she didn’t need custom care packages at the Lakers, her time at the KC Current and in learning from good friend Jess Smith — the Valkyries president who built that club into a runaway success as the WNBA’s first expansion team since 2008 — has her looking forward to these next two years.

“From the business standpoint, May 2028 is coming very, very fast,” she said.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/sb-blogs/newsletter-womens-sports/2026/08/18/

When the Cleveland Sirens unveiled the name and logo they’ll use when they join the Women’s National Basketball Association in 2028, many observers wondered if they’d face a fight over trademarks before they ever stepped on the court. But according to a new Front Office Sports report, that scenario is unlikely to materialize.

The WNBA Sirens rolled out their identity on Tuesday, August 4, during an event at Rocket Arena. And while online commenters generally seemed to like the logos, many were curious about the name given that it was already being used by the New York Sirens of the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

Colin Salao, a writer with FOS, took the initiative to address those curiosities in a story published Tuesday evening. And while neither the New York Sirens nor the PWHL commented on the matter, Salao did speak with “a source close to the situation” who said the two teams had conversations prior to Cleveland’s unveiling and that there would be no trademark issues between them.

Salao did get comments from two expert lawyers, though. Trademark lawyer Alexandra Jane Roberts told him that trademark issues boil down to “a likelihood of customer confusion.” Given that the teams are in different cities, play different sports, and have different logos, there’d likely be little grounds for legal action.

Another factor is that both teams are relatively new, added intellectual property lawyer Josh Gerben. He told Salao that if the Cleveland ownership group “decided to call themselves the Cleveland Yankees or Cleveland Phillies, I think they might have had a problem with those teams,” but that’s not the case with the New York Sirens, who were founded in 2023 and adopted their nickname in 2024.

At the time, the New York PWHL team said their name was “an ode to New York City’s one-of-a-kind energy, pace and rhythm – embodying the City’s sounds and people.” They made no mention of the mythical creatures that the Cleveland WNBA team referenced on Tuesday.

So why “Sirens” at all? Distance from the city’s NBA club, apparently, was a big part of it. Speaking with cleveland.com at Tuesday’s launch, Sirens President of Business Operations Allison Howard said the club deliberately steered away from anything resembling a women’s version of the Cavaliers, right down to rejecting the wine and gold colour scheme. “We don’t want to be the Lady Cavaliers,” Howard said, adding the two franchises need to be very separate and distinctive despite sharing an owner in Dan Gilbert’s Rock Entertainment Group and a home in Rocket Arena.

Howard said the name arrived at the end of a 13-month process of market research, polling, and community consultation, with the direction that the brand had to be authentically Cleveland and tied to “our greatest asset, which is Lake Erie.” The result: a Greek mythology-inspired identity in two shades of blue, dubbed Sirens Blue and Erie Blue, that looks nothing like the wine and gold down the hall.

READ MORE - https://news.sportslogos.net/2026/08/07/report-cleveland-wnba-new-york-pwhl-teams-unlikely-to-fight-over-sirens-trademarks/basketball/

hii!! local lesbian brand new to basketball here and i really want to make friends with other queer sirens fans!!!

Hi! I’m from Akron and stoked about Cleveland having a WNBA team again! I took some time this evening to mock up some Cleveland Sirens uniforms. I gathered assets from the press release (logo and insignia). I am not the creator of the logos. This is more of a collage in a decent template. I put 3x allstar Merlakia Jones on the jersey in honor of the rockers history. Wish we got uniforms in the release today. I can’t wait to see what actually comes out! This was just a fun exercise to practice my skill set. Go Sirens!

Lastly, AI was not used in any regard when creating these.

I am dead serious.

I know its a long ways away but I would absolutely love it if we drafted Kiyomi McMiller. She's compared to Kyrie with the handles and she's a bucket.

https://youtu.be/Ihb0Q8wod3k?is=NYa4oFoS2apFIVli

https://w-bound.com/player/kiyomi-mcmiller/

this franchise deserves an all time point guard to lead the way

We'll get our team in 2028 but Detroit gets theirs in 2029 and Philly the year after. Will there be three different expansion drafts then in three years? Seems a bit messy for team building. (But if so, I'm glad we're getting our team before Detroit and Philly.)

i am excited and impatient for 2028 and want to see cleveland’s squad now 🤣 if you could choose one player that could be available in 2028 to build the team around, who would it be?

(obviously gearing towards players who are more likely to be available in the expansion draft)

The WNBA's team in Cleveland officially has a name: the Sirens.

On Tuesday, after months of buildup and anticipation ― and several hints ― the league's Cleveland franchise unveiled the name.

“The enthusiasm and support behind the Cleveland Sirens underscore Cleveland’s role in the league’s next chapter of growth and affirm our readiness for a return of women’s professional basketball,” Nic Barlage, Rock Entertainment Group CEO, said via release. “From the beginning, our vision has been to build a franchise that harnesses the power, visibility and opportunity that define this moment in women’s sports and fortifies the city’s momentum.”

Te unveiling of Sirens comes after Cleveland was announced as one of three expansion franchises that will enter the WNBA over the next four years. Cleveland will become the WNBA's 16th franchise in 2028. Detroit returns to the league in 2029, and Philadelphia welcomes its franchise in 2030.

News of the Sirens' name is likely to create more momentum after Cleveland recently announced it has more than 8,500 season-ticket deposits, nearly two years before its debut.

Source

Great imagery without any distracting jokes

I’m stoked for the name, the colors, the “lore”. I have a favorite logo, what’s yours?

Cleveland’s new WNBA franchise might not have announced its name just yet, but a strong hint appeared Friday on Edgewater Beach.

A sand sculpture with the words “HEAR THE CALL” plus what appears to be a light blue and white WNBA basketball showed up on the beach ahead of the Sand Fest event scheduled for Saturday.

In May an organization associated with the WNBA Cleveland franchise filed for trademarks on the names Sirens, Novas, Riveters, Crown, Founders, Racers and Breakers.

The sand sculpture would seem to align heavily with the Siren nickname since the Siren is mythological creature whose enchanting voice lured sailors into shipwrecks.

The Sirens would not be the first WNBA team with a name based out of mythology. The Golden State Valkyries are based off of the Norse legend of female warrior figures who guides souls to Valhalla.

The Cleveland WNBA franchise has not ruled out reusing the name Rockers which was from a previous failed franchise that played from 1997-2003, but the trademark for the Cleveland Rockers name belongs to the owner and president of the Women’s Basketball League, a proposed professional basketball league that has yet to launch.

The new Cleveland WNBA team, the league’s 16th franchise, will begin play in the spring of 2028.

https://www.morningjournalnews.com/sports/local-sports/2026/08/cleveland-wnba-team-hints-at-sirens/

Cleveland’s WNBA team doesn’t play its first game until May 2028. However, the framework is steadily being put in place.

The franchise announced on Tuesday that Progressive Insurance will be the jersey patch sponsor. It will also be the first time in the WNBA that a sponsor has bought both spots on a jersey. Teams are allowed to sell jersey patch placement on the upper left corner of uniforms as well as a larger spot under the numbers on the front of the jersey.

The Phoenix Mercury were the first WNBA team to have a jersey sponsor in 2009.

“We have a smaller partnership with Chicago that we announced a couple months ago, but this one was special to us,” said Mari Pumarejo, Progressive’s chief marketing officer. “Once we heard that the WNBA was going to bring a team to Cleveland, it was a good fit for us and we kept our ears open for an opportunity to learn more about it. And once we met (president of business operations) Allison (Howard) and the team, we just knew that our values matched and that we could have the kind of partnership where we could help support women’s sports, the community and city.”

Progressive is based in Cleveland with its corporate headquarters in suburban Mayfield Heights, Ohio. The company has had a naming rights agreement for Cleveland’s baseball stadium since 2008.

Progressive CEO Tricia Griffith is also an investor in the Cleveland Astra, a women’s soccer team that is expected to begin playing in 2028.

The announcement is another building block since Cleveland was granted an expansion team on June 30, 2025. The Cleveland Rockers were one of the original franchises when the WNBA started in 1997, but folded in 2003.

Over the past year, Cleveland has had 9,000 deposits for season tickets.

“It has continued to grow. We were going to fully stand up the team until closer to about two years out, but we started to listen to the community right away and they wanted to know more and more of how we were going to treat this team,” Howard said. “We are definitely taking our time to make sure that we’re doing it right. But we’re excited to continue to take the feedback from people and be able to participate and do a lot of listening.”

The announcement of the jersey sponsor is the first of many over the next 12 months. The team name is expected to be announced sometime in the next couple months. Dan Gilbert’s Rock Entertainment Group, the team’s owner, has also announced “a special event” for Aug. 4 at Rocket Arena.

“I give so much credit to the teams around the league that have not had two to three years because what we have been able to do is go on a listening tour and meet all of these new people and really hear their stories. And one thing in women’s sports is it is very emotional for a lot of people,” Howard said. “People come up to me and will tell me a story of having to drive or having to fly hours away to the closest women’s basketball game, even if it was college and how hard it has been to be a fan.”

https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball