The business of Ellie the Elephant, the WNBA’s most valuable mascot

There’s less than four minutes left in the first game of the WNBA finals between the New York Liberty and the Minnesota Lynx—and the Lynx are ruthlessly cutting into the Liberty’s lead. The omnipresent Barclays Center DJ tees up a “Defense” chant for the Liberty fans. “Boom boom,” cue the drums. “Defense!” shout the fans.

Suddenly, an elephant climbs over a six-foot-tall metal safety divider into the stands next to a group of fans holding an “Ellie Fan Section” sign, and the chant changes. 

“Boom boom.”

“Ellie!” 

Ellie the Elephant, the Liberty’s iconic mascot, has become a cultural phenomenon, known as much for her fashion sense as her dancing and cheerleading. She’s also become a business in her own right, boosting the WNBA team’s bottom line. The Liberty increased the number of sponsors by more than 60% year-over-year this season. And Ellie, which became part of Liberty’s marketing efforts for the first time this year, played a key role. 

Since being introduced as the Liberty’s mascot in 2021, Ellie has gained more than 120,000 Instagram followers; performed with musicians such as Ciara, Justin Timberlake, and Mary J. Blige; made television appearances on programs such as Good Morning America and the Tamron Hall Show; and established herself as a key part of the WNBA franchise’s brand and business model. 

The mascot has also garnered attention from the media. “Have you ever seen an Elephant Twerk?” asked The New York Times in a 2023 profile. In July, Ellie graced the cover of Time Out, stomping on the headline “Belle of the Ball.” In a “get ready with me” story in Vogue about her outfit for game two of the finals, which was held on Sunday, Elle turned introspective. “Just like our talented players, I practice every day and I am passionate about putting my best and most authentic self forward at every Liberty game,” she told the publication.

When I meet with Ellie during the third quarter of the second Liberty-Lynx final matchup, she speaks with her body, rather than her words. With her signature waist-long braid styled with a white bandana, she wraps me in a warm hug and offers three kisses (I can hear the smooches through her mascot head). Needless to say, this is the first time an interview of mine has ever started in such a manner. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” I say, introducing myself. “I’m writing an article about you.” 

“Me?” she says, communicated via an easy-to-interpret gesture. Ellie holds both hands up to her chest before returning them to her hips in sassy curiosity. 

“It’s about the business of being Ellie,” I respond. “About all of your brand deals.”

Ellie slowly drags her right hand across her forehead using a limp wrist, a movement that those who follow her on social media understand means, “Periodt.”

“Could I get a statement?” I ask, understanding that the nail-biting game is still ongoing. The Liberty, and Ellie, are on the clock. 

Ellie lifts her right hand to her oversized elephant ear, thumb and pinky flexed, and dials the imaginary phone with her left.

“I’ll call you,” I politely accept, then watch Ellie sashay away in her trademark “00” jersey. I know there’s no way I’ll be able to get more time in her busy schedule. 

Few expected Ellie to become as busy as she is, not even the women who created her. “We didn’t envision that Ellie would be as big as Ellie is. But we’re happy that it happened,” says Keia Clarke, CEO of the Liberty. “The one thing we did envision is that we would let the Ellie character evolve. The performer who wears the suit would have some freedom.”

Clarke and Shana Stephenson, chief brand officer of the Liberty, helped build Ellie into something that could attract both audiences and sponsors to the team, which is in a position of strength. During the 2024 season, the Liberty posted an average attendance of 12,729 across the 20 regular season home games—a 64% increase from last season. This is the second year in a row that the Liberty has advanced to the WNBA Finals. 

The team’s mascot channels this on-court dominance. These days, Ellie is a top-of-funnel marketing strategy, an engine for brand partnerships, an events business, and a merchandise machine for the team. Thanks to Ellie, the Liberty have been able to unlock new sponsors. The mascot played a major role in marketing campaigns for Xbox, Bumble, and Hero Cosmetics. And while the team already has an official make up brand (NYX Cosmetics) and facial partner (Glowbar), Stephenson says that Ellie could one day have a skincare sponsor or even a handbag partnership.  

And then, of course, there’s Ellie’s relationship to fans, who call themselves “Ellie’s Herd.” “Overall, our strategy is: Try to attract a broader audience,” says Stephenson. “Ellie has been a great vehicle for us to achieve that. We’ve seen so many people who probably had little to no interest in the WNBA become introduced to our game through Ellie.”

How do you birth an elephant?

One reason Ellie’s rise has been so unpredictable is that she’s breaking entirely new ground. Most sports mascots are men, or as The Washington Post describes it, “dude coded.” Ellie, on the other hand, is unapologetically feminine and flamboyant. And she reflects the Black and Latinx culture that makes up much of the borough she represents. 

These characteristics are unique—and all by design. 

Before Ellie was the mascot for the Liberty, there was Maddie, a gender-less golden retriever cleverly named after the Liberty’s then home court, Madison Square Garden. After the team’s founding, in 1997, the Liberty played in the Garden during the summer months, drawing an average of 10,000 attendees per game. (In 2018, Madison Square Garden Entertainment CEO James Dolan moved the Liberty 30 miles outside of Manhattan, to the Westchester County Center, which holds just 5,000 spectators.) Billionaire business couple Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai bought the Liberty in 2019 and announced that the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, would be the team’s new home. Clarke, who had been at the Liberty since 2011 and was then serving as COO, brought Stephenson on full-time. 

The duo got to work on rebranding the team for its Brooklyn-based era, but their preparations were interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the WNBA to play the 2020 season inside a contained “wubble.” The Liberty had to wait until 2021 to finally make their Barclay’s debut.

With the rebrand came questions about what the mascot would be. At first, Stephenson and her team considered keeping the dog and simply renaming it with a Barclays-based pun, like Barkie. “But we thought that wasn’t creative. It was lazy,” Stephenson says. “And we would really be doing ourselves, our fans, and our community a disservice by not putting some real thought and strategy behind who this new mascot could be.”

They looked to the team’s new logo for inspiration. The rebrand had stripped the old Liberty logo of its Knix-related colors (blue and orange). The new one kept the original shield and torch icons, and leaned into the once-tertiary color of seafoam green. That color helped Stephenson and her team envision a different animal that could embody the team: an elephant.

While some might hesitate at comparing women athletes to elephants, Stephenson says that prospect didn’t give them any pause. “But we did have some lengthy conversations around an elephant being a symbol of a particular political party,” she notes. “And when we introduced Ellie, we did have some, I don’t want to say backlash, but there were some fans who were outspoken about it and questioned, ‘Why an elephant?’” 

The team says it’s a tribute to P.T. Barnum’s 1884 parade of 21 elephants across the Brooklyn Bridge, which reassured the public of its safety. And while an elephant may not traditionally be considered particularly ladylike, it reflects the strength and power of today’s basketball players.  

The team worked with an artist to bring Ellie’s features into focus. “We ultimately landed on Ellie being female and having lashes as the artist sketched Ellie out. And then through that process, the personality started to take shape as well,” says Stephenson, noting that the team looked to Brooklyn-born rappers and musicians for inspiration. “But it really started to blossom when we held auditions for the mascot.”

The Liberty held an open audition for a performer to play Ellie. They whittled it down to about 10 finalists—and then one.  

“The person that we know as Ellie today auditioned during that open audition, and just blew us away with their talent and with their interpretation of Ellie,” recalls Stephenson. “It was so different, so fresh, so raw. And we were like, ‘This is our person.’ And it also felt very New York, very Brooklyn in a way that we hadn’t seen before.”

The evolution of Ellie 

Ellie’s aesthetics have gotten bigger and bolder over the years. At first, Ellie had a small cowlick of hair. Now, she rocks a long braid, big hoop earrings, and a nose ring on the end of her trunk. Where she once wore the cartoonish costume shoes of most mascots, she now sports fresh pairs of Nikes (per a request from her performer). She carries a purse and receives celebrity styling. 

Her personality has also started to shine through. Stephenson recalls a moment during a 2022 game when referees were taking longer than usual to review a call. Ellie went off-script, jumped onto the center of the court, and started dancing to the crowd’s raucous applause. 

Since then, stories (and importantly, videos) of Ellie being Ellie have spread across Brooklyn and social media. Here is a non-exhaustive list of things fans have seen Ellie do while at a Liberty game: flirt with a security guard as he stoically stifles his laughter; pretend to lunge at the referee, forcing her handlers known as the “Stompaz” to hold her purse and hold her back; chat with, hug, and dance on celebrities like Alicia Keys, Julia Fox, and Spike Lee. 

This sense that you never quite know what Ellie might do makes her a powerful part of the Liberty’s events business. As sports leagues and teams adapt to the social media age, Liberty fans know that if they go to a game they’ll come away with a video they can post of Ellie doing something wacky. 

Meanwhile, Ellie’s own social media following is growing. Some of the most viewed posts from Ellie’s account are of her dancing—she’s an undeniably talented performer. One video of Ellie performing Tyla’s “water challenge” has been seen 5.3 million times. She also often uses TikTok’s voice effect feature to narrate her videos, hilariously capturing her personality—without revealing her identity.

Ellie now also has her own personal events business. You can hire her to attend your wedding, birthday, bat mitzvah, corporate event, etc. starting at $1,500 per hour and a half. She’s now done more than 10 paid events this calendar year. She also offers in-person group dance clinics for $75 per person. 

“We’ve had two or three dance clinics. They sell out in 24 hours. We literally say ‘Ellie’s gonna do a dance clinic with 60 spots, and it’s gone like that,’” says Clarke with a snap of her fingers. “They’re typically for kids, but we had an adult show up and refuse to leave once so we let them participate. But you know, people all over the country follow Ellie on social.”

Stephenson credits Ellie’s performer, who has gone above and beyond the duties expected of your everyday mascot. “The performer is very involved in pretty much every aspect of Ellie. It’s definitely beyond a 9-to-5 job,” she says. “To think that this performer just shows up, puts the costume on, dances at halftime, and then goes home and lives their regular life is a disservice to the effort, the amount of hard work, the time, the commitment that is really dedicated to being Ellie.”

Much speculation has been made of the identity of Ellie’s performer. Reddit threads full of internet sleuths dedicated to “Ellie Gate” have even proposed that Ellie could be played by multiple performers. 

Still, the Liberty steadfastly protects Ellie’s identity in order to preserve her privacy. “If people knew, Ellie wouldn’t be able to go anywhere or walk down the street,” says Stephenson. “I personally love the social discourse and debate around the person in the mascot and their identity. Is it a male or a female? Is the person Black or white? Is the person gay or straight? I think it’s great, because it speaks to how broad Ellie’s appeal is and that everyone wants to claim some part of Ellie to be themselves.”

And while Ellie remains the intellectual property of the Liberty, Stephenson assures me that the performer who plays Ellie has been given a significant raise over the past several seasons. 

Money moves

Last Halloween, if you walked the streets of Brooklyn, you very likely stumbled onto a number of people—and pets—dressed as Ellie. Indeed, Ellie has such a cult following that fans began making their own Ellie costumes and merchandise to wear to games last season.

The trend was a clear sign that the Liberty needed to create more Ellie-theme merch. The team already had an Ellie plush toy in production, but they quickly added an Ellie braid, as well as children and adult clothing. Overall, the Liberty’s in-arena merchandise sales on game days is up 99% year-over-year and e-commerce merchandise sales are up 135%. The Ellie braid and doll sold out in one day. 

“I’ve gone to more games this year and I would definitely say that Ellie had something to do with my excitement,” one fan wearing an Ellie T-shirt and a long blue Ellie-inspired braid tells me at the Liberty-Lynx playoff game. “I love that Ellie is representative of what the Liberty stands for, which is strength and beauty and fierceness and equality and queerness.”

Ellie’s also become a draw for brand partners. Ellie worked with Nike on a custom pair of Sabrina Ionescu sneakers, the Sabrina 2 By Big Ellie. (Ionescu is the Liberty’s star guard.) She took part in an extensive pirate-themed activation for sponsor Xbox’s new Sea of Thieves game. Ellie produced content for Liberty sponsor Bumble: a TikTok and Instagram video that shows her swiping the app in search of her own love match. She touts on social media that she gets to work each day by using Lyft. And in September, she even got a facial at Glowbar, “the official facial studio of the New York Liberty.” 

When the team announced a multi-year deal with Off White in September to become the Liberty’s “official style and culture curator,” it was only natural that Ellie was among the first to model the the debut product of the partnership, a custom Swarovski crystal-clad varsity jacket. 

Demand for Ellie is so strong that the Liberty’s business team has created a “rate card” for the mascot so the team can field offers from brands that want to partner with Ellie specifically. However, the team balances these offers with an overarching strategy of using Ellie to attract brands into partnerships with the entire Liberty franchise. Their general principle: Brands need to be partners with the Liberty in order to be associated with Ellie. 

“We recognize that there’s a lot of brand value to be gained from associating with Ellie or partnering with Ellie, and we want to monetize that as much as we can,” says Stephenson. “But we also understand that Ellie is New York Liberty intellectual property. If you want access to Ellie, you also have to [partner with] the Liberty as well.”

It appears that Ellie has now become such a key part of the Liberty marketing effort that she can relieve players of some of their burdens. Women athletes are often held to higher expectations that they will be exemplary role models. Many are expected to stay late after games, autographing jerseys and signs for fans. And they’re often forced to do a lot of promotional work, making public appearances to tell their stories and sell their teams’ products. Ellie is able to take on some of these responsibilities, allowing the athletes to focus on being just that—athletes. 

As the 2024 WNBA season comes to a close, Clarke and her team are taking stock of how much the team and Ellie has accomplished. A major priority for the off-season? Calculating exactly how much Ellie is worth. 

“The opportunities for Ellie right now are limitless,” says Stephenson.