Features

Crest of the river: The Pittsburgh Riverhounds brand story

Based in the sports-crazy city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Riverhounds faces stern competition for local attention. Jack Cousins sits down with the club’s president, Jeff Garner, to discuss the Riverhounds’ journey and the role brand design has played in its past and future.

Tell me a little bit about the Pittsburgh Riverhounds and how far the club has come over the years.

The Pittsburgh Riverhounds have been around for 26 seasons; we're one of the oldest continuously operating professional soccer clubs in the US. We currently play in the USL Championship, which is the second division, and have made the playoffs eight years in a row. Last year, in 2025, we advanced to the USL Championship final in Tulsa and won it. Seeing the excitement of our owner, Tuffy Shallenberger, and all the players, coaches and staff who had worked so hard to get there was a very proud moment for the club.

We also own and operate Highmark Stadium, which is on the South Side of Pittsburgh, right across from the city skyline and nestled under the Fort Pitt Bridge, one of over 400 bridges in Pittsburgh. We launched the Pittsburgh Riveters last year, a brand new USL W League team, and also operate a youth academy that attracts around 4,000 kids from across Western Pennsylvania.

We've come a long way in the last 26 years and now sell out more than 80% of our games. Highmark has such a great atmosphere, and it’s exciting to be one of the four professional sports clubs in Pittsburgh.

One area that’s particularly interesting with the club is its brand identity. What is the significance of using gold and black colours in Pittsburgh?

We used to have a blue logo due to a partnership between our academy and Everton in England, but that connection had largely been forgotten, so it no longer made sense. By 2018, the club had grown to a point where the previous design felt amateurish, and we wanted to take the club’s credibility to the next level.

In Pittsburgh, a number of teams over the years have tried to use colours other than the traditional black and gold, but none have really succeeded. Outside the city, people see those colours and immediately associate them with Pittsburgh. The challenge, therefore, is how to build your own identity within the broader identity of the city, which also includes the Steelers, the Pirates and the Penguins, while still differentiating yourself from those teams.

Pittsburgh has an incredible reputation as a hard-nosed, blue-collar, gritty city. Interestingly, our style of play on the pitch reflects that personality well. To express that in the brand, we adopted the hashtag #Grittsburgh last year, which proved very successful, with a strong connection among fans. We want to be seen as credible and professional while also bringing the city together.

What are some other ways you’ve been able to use design to connect with fans?

Our jerseys are one area where we’ve been able to be more creative. For a long time, soccer wasn’t widely accessible to people, but as that has changed, the under-40 audience has really embraced the sport.

We’ve looked at our kits as an opportunity to appeal to everyone. We leave our third kit open to the mood we are in, which allows us to express the city. We ask ourselves: “Can we design something for the Riverhounds that you might also see at a Penguins or Steelers game because it reflects Pittsburgh?”

In 2024, we released our first customised kit, the “Three Rivers” home kit, which incorporated a bridge into its design. It was incredibly successful, setting a number of sales records, and you still see them all over the city. This year, we released an Andy Warhol-inspired chromatic kit, which is completely different from anything else out there. It has become our best seller. It is driven by the younger generation, who love the colour and the fact that it still represents Pittsburgh.

I think these jerseys show how our branding as a whole has focused on continuity and credibility.

The club recently revealed exciting plans to expand Highmark Stadium to a 15,000-capacity venue. How will you ensure its design aligns with the identity of the Riverhounds, and Pittsburgh more broadly?

We need to maintain the uniqueness of our stadium and the experience it currently offers, with the Pittsburgh skyline, bridges, river, and the train that runs pitchside. The key question is how we preserve those elements, because they are what make the Riverhounds experience so special and distinctive.

How do we make it more modern while retaining the charm of the stadium? I think scale is part of that: 15,000 seats will still feel intimate and compact. From an opposition standpoint, I think it will also be quite intimidating to have our fans form a wall at either end of the pitch.

Overall, we recognise that the feel of the new design must retain the charm of the current stadium.

The last time the club underwent a stadium expansion it came with a new identity. Can fans expect new branding once the expansion is complete?

I would not expect new branding. However, as our team and resources grow, it allows us to look more creatively at branching out into different areas. The fans will always see our traditional marks – they will know who we are – but I think we will be able to deconstruct some of those design elements and use individual components of them. We actually did something similar for our 25th anniversary a couple of years ago, where we used the shape from the central shield of the club badge.

So I think you will see lots of opportunities to do things like that with both the Riverhounds and the Riveters, where we can be a bit more creative and push things a little further.