Year one is a trust season. New leadership, new team, new coaches, new tone. We seed One Crest. Every Color. on every Courage surface starting now, build a small specialty supporter section the community can grow into, show up where the community already is, and lay the ground for a full Club Courage home in 2027. Come as you are. Cheer as one.
This V2 is the Apr 29 review version of the playbook. The campaign idea, One Crest. Every Color., was approved without revision. Three things shifted: (1) year one is reframed as a trust and reintroduction season, anchored in a small specialty supporter section rather than a full named Club Courage section, (2) Pride on the Pitch is deferred to 2027 due to the World Cup-driven calendar, replaced this year by a popup activation using the inflatable pitch around Durham Pride week, and (3) we add a community-presence layer of away-match watch parties and grassroots showings so the brand line lands by repetition before we ask for big commitments. The August 26 Flagship is unchanged.
Year one is the trust season. The Courage are running this campaign with a new front office, new coaches, and new players. The Triangle’s LGBTQ+ community has heard a lot of pride announcements from a lot of teams. We earn theirs by saying one thing on every surface, every game, year-round, and showing up where they already are. We seed One Crest. Every Color. across every Courage touchpoint starting now. We pilot a small specialty supporter section instead of a full named section. We add watch parties and community presence in the gaps. We protect the August 26 Pride Night as the year’s biggest moment. And we use the season to lay the groundwork for a full Club Courage home in 2027.
Primary KPI, recalibrated. Grow the deduplicated CRM audience from 1,000 today to 1,150 by October 31. A trust-building floor for year one. The 2027 plan presses higher.
One Crest. Every Color. lives on every Courage owned surface by July: website banners, ticket confirmations, in-stadium signage, supporter banner with the supporters group, social. Repetition is the campaign.
Watch parties, Pride booths, the Sept popup, and partner showings. Year one is built on showing up where the community already is. The stadium follows.
New leadership, new coaching staff, new roster. The community is meeting this Courage for the first time. Every campaign surface frames the club as it is now, not as it was.
One Crest. Every Color. on banner ads, the website, gameday brochures, in-bowl screens, ticket confirmations, social. Even people who never read a word will see it on every Courage surface.
Watch parties at the LGBT Center of Raleigh, partner queer venues, USWNT national-team viewing nights, Pride booths, the Sept popup with Stonewall. Belonging is built outside the stadium before it’s asked for inside it.
A small premium specialty supporter ticket inside the bowl, ideally tied to a section the community can grow into across the season. Modest scale on purpose. The full Club Courage named section moves to 2027 when the trust and the audience are there.
Pride Night vs Angel City FC stays the year’s biggest moment. Drag, glow, glitter, Capital Pride Band, queer-owned vendors, ceremonial coin toss, after-party. The night every other piece of the campaign rolls into.
Treat the Aug 26 Flagship and the September popup as content-capture moments for next year. Photo, video, fan testimonial, partner footage. By Q1 2027 the Courage have a library to launch the full Pride on the Pitch and the named Club Courage section from.
V1 set a +20% growth target (1,000 to 1,200). V2 recalibrates the year-one floor to +15% (1,000 to 1,150), reflecting the smaller specialty section pilot and the deferral of Pride on the Pitch. The Strict (2+ signal) view is still reported alongside, and the Broad audience is still the primary number we manage to. If the brand-line saturation work and watch-party presence outperform expectations, we’ll cleanly beat 1,150. If they don’t, year-one trust is still the win, and we set up 2027 to clear 1,300+.
One primary number decides whether this season worked. A handful of secondary numbers tell us how the primary number is moving, and let us steer mid-season.
A contact in Salesforce is counted in the audience if they meet both of the following:
We count the primary KPI on the broad definition (1+ signal). Alongside it we report a stricter, higher-confidence segment.
Ticket buyer with any single LGBTQ+ signal. This is the primary KPI: 1,000 baseline → 1,150 target (V2 recalibration). A wider net; the number we manage the season against.
Ticket buyer with two or more independent signals (e.g. rainbow merch and Out! Raleigh scan). A more conservative, higher-confidence subset. Reported alongside the primary for executive confidence in the methodology.
The 1,000 baseline represents an estimated 2–4% of the Courage’s distinct ticket-buyer base this season (based on ~4-6K per-match attendance across 12 home matches with meaningful repeat buyers). A realistic floor for a first-year explicit LGBTQ+ growth program.
The 2025 Pride Bundle captured 96 distinct buyers in a single-match window. The 1,000 baseline expands that signal to a season-long audience by layering merch buyers, partner lists, and event scans. Growing it to 1,150 is still a major expansion of the 2025 Pride-specific footprint, while pacing year one for trust.
Every contact resolves to a single Salesforce record. Duplicate emails, phones, or ticketing records merge before counting. Salesforce is the source of truth. The baseline is frozen on May 9 and stored as a dated export signed by both teams. The October 31 count runs the same query against the updated record set.
What we do not count as the primary KPI. Social engagement, follower growth, and impression counts are measured as content-health signals, not as primary KPI evidence. The primary KPI is ticket buyers in the CRM, full stop.
The Courage already made the most honest version of this idea. The 2025 Pride crest showed one shield, one star, one “NC Courage” wordmark, and the full spectrum of color sweeping around the outline. That image is the strategy. We own one crest. We welcome every color. One Crest. Every Color. is the rally cry for everything we put out this season.
We are one club. One team. One crest. And we are telling the LGBTQ+ community of the Triangle that our stands are big enough for every one of their stories.
It is a claim, not an invitation. “Welcome” is polite. “One Crest. Every Color.” is the Courage saying this is how we are, year-round, and everyone is part of it.
On scarves. On tifos. On the Club Courage section signage. On social. In the chant book. In the halftime graphic. In one sentence on every ticket confirmation email.
The NWSL has led major US sports on LGBTQ+ visibility for years, and several clubs (Angel City, Portland Thorns, Washington Spirit) already carry strong community identities. The differentiator for the Courage is permanence and structure: a specialty supporter section now growing into a named home in 2027, ambassador captains, a Passport that ties partner activity to the fan journey, and a measurement discipline built on ticket-buyer data, not social impressions. Most clubs run a Pride Night. We are building toward a Pride home, one trust-earning step at a time.
The single piece of feedback we keep hearing about past pride moments in this market is the word performative. The Apr 29 review surfaced a related history: a 2019 player decision around a pride jersey that the club at the time did not lean into either way, and that lingered with a small but vocal cohort of long-time fans. None of that leadership, coaching staff, or roster is here today. Year one is not an apology. It is a campaign with a purpose, run by a different club, that says one thing on every surface and proves it by repetition. The campaign itself is the proof. Performative looks like one rainbow logo in June. Purposeful looks like One Crest. Every Color. on every Courage surface, every match, year-round, with the same partners and the same people.
We do not lead with “new club, new chapter.” That puts the past on stage. We lead with One Crest. Every Color. and let the work say it. Where the reset shows up is in the cast of the campaign: new players sharing why they wear the crest, new coaching staff in fan-touch moments, supporter-group leaders and partners co-authoring the section. Every color deliberately includes the team, the staff, the supporters, the front office, the partners. The Courage is one club today. Showing it that way is the reset.
One Crest. Every Color.
Owns the season. Signature headline.
Come as you are.
Opens the door. Banners, gates, merch.
Cheer as one.
What we ask the stadium to do. Already in the Courage’s own vocabulary.
The Courage’s LGBTQ+ home section.
Clarifies Club Courage on every surface.
Directional concepts. Final art developed against the creative brief.
Every initiative in this plan has been placed in one of three tiers. Tier 1 is the backbone of the season. If budget, bandwidth, or attention is ever constrained, protect these first. Tier 2 raises the ceiling. Tier 3 is stretch if time allows.
If anything in the plan is at risk, these four items are defended first. Without them the primary KPI cannot be measured and the year-one trust signal does not land.
These deliver the year-one trust curve. Each helps the 1,150 target, but unlike Tier 1A they can flex in timing or scope without breaking the measurement.
Strong leverage if we can fund them. Not gating the primary KPI, but each one amplifies Tier 1.
These were Tier 1 in V1. The Apr 29 review moved them to 2027 where the audience and the calendar can support them at full scale. We treat 2026 as the photo-and-video shoot.
A season-long plan needs rhythm. Pacing protects budget and protects the audience’s attention. Here is the shape of the season from April 22 to October 31.
Every other activity in this plan points at one of these. If budget, bandwidth, or decision-making is ever constrained, protect these days first.
Premium specialty supporter ticket goes live. Brand-line surfaces all queued up matchday: in-bowl signage, the supporter-group banner produced with Mary Pruder, web banners. Section Ambassadors in place. Kickoff Party at Ruby Deluxe before kickoff.
Why it matters: the audience meets the new Courage on this night. We do not announce a named home yet. We let people sit, see the line everywhere, and feel the welcome. The named Club Courage section launches in 2027.
The Center hosts. Diana M. running point. Rory and the street team out. Giveaways. The Courage shows up on the Center’s own ground first, before asking anyone to come to ours.
Why it matters: the Apr 29 review framed year one as a trust season. This is the first away-match watch party of the season, in a partner space, with a partner audience. The brand line travels with us.
Recommended venue: EOS Athletic Club (50%+ women’s sports on-screen, queer-friendly, prior partner) or a Triangle queer venue. Hosted by the Courage. Considered as either a standalone party or a ticketed ticket-bundle add-on.
Why it matters: bigger global moment than any NWSL match in June. The Courage hosting it locally is a real act of stewardship to the women’s soccer audience and the queer audience at once.
10x10 booth, drag performer cameo, Specialty Section ticket sales on-site, LGBT Center of Raleigh fundraiser check-in-progress reveal. Over 100,000 attendees across two days.
Why it matters: the single largest LGBTQ+ audience we will touch all year. Everyone walks past our booth. The brand line lives on the booth surface, the giveaways, and the booth backdrop.
Drag, glow, glitter, Capital Pride Band halftime, Lenovo Hero from the community, queer-owned vendor village, ceremonial coin toss with an LGBTQ+ leader, after-party at Ruby Deluxe with the same specialty cocktail carried over from the Kickoff Party. Test the dragon drum line moment as a 2027 content asset.
Why it matters: the year’s biggest moment, and the photo and video shoot for 2027. Everything we capture here ships as the launch creative for the full Pride on the Pitch and the named Club Courage section next year.
The 36 ft x 16 ft branded inflatable pitch, used elsewhere as the World Cup activation, runs as a popup with Stonewall Sports during Durham Pride week. Recommended setup: pregame on field 2 at WakeMed (speaker system already there) or a partner field if location is available. 2v2 fast-paced, lower lift than V1’s full Pride on the Pitch, but plants the seed.
Why it matters: a scaled-down version of the V1 idea that survives the World Cup-driven calendar. Photo, video, and partnership built here roll directly into the full 2027 Pride on the Pitch tournament.
Multi-day Courage presence at Durham Pride. Sponsorship scope being finalized this week (Diana M.). Passport partner stamps driven to completion. Recruitment push for the 10/17 Specialty Section seats.
Why it matters: post-Flagship momentum is fragile. Durham Pride re-activates Aug 26 attendees for one more home match before season-end and overlaps with the Pride on the Pitch popup window.
Ten pieces of work running in parallel across the season. Data has to be done first, because it measures everything else. Brand-line saturation runs second, because it is the campaign.
| # | Workstream | Why it matters | Primary owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Data stack & baseline | Tag behaviors that let us count LGBTQ+ ticket buyers. The whole primary KPI depends on this running first. | NC Courage CRM + Gaygency analytics |
| 02 | Brand-line saturation (V2) | Get One Crest. Every Color. on every Courage owned surface (web, ticket emails, in-stadium signage, supporter-group banner with Mary Pruder, social) by July. Repetition is the campaign. | The Gaygency creative + NC Courage marketing |
| 03 | Specialty Section pilot | Premium specialty supporter ticket inside the bowl. Section ambassadors (1–2). Welcome materials. Light Incident Protocol. | NC Courage · Jenn R + Abbey |
| 04 | Community partners | Activate LGBT Centers, Stonewall Sports, Harmony, Equality NC, Capital Pride Band, HRC100 ERGs, campuses, Great Merl Festival. | NC Courage · Jenn G |
| 05 | Watch parties (V2) | May 23 LGBT Center Raleigh, Jun 9 USWNT vs Brazil, plus partner queer venues for selected away matches. | NC Courage · Diana M. |
| 06 | June Pride presence | Out! Raleigh Silver activation, First Friday, Apex, Durham Youth. List-growth month. No NWSL home matches. | Joint |
| 07 | Player & staff storytelling (V2) | Identify 2–3 new-roster players willing to share why they wear the crest. Smaller-stage local LGBTQ+ media first, not mass-market. Build the cast for 2027. | NC Courage comms + The Gaygency |
| 08 | Paid media (Meta-led) | 90%+ Meta. Move tickets, build the list, fuel retargeting. Lighter month-to-month, heavier around 8/26. | The Gaygency paid team |
| 09 | 8/26 Pride Night Flagship | Drag, Capital Pride Band, Lenovo Hero, specialty cocktail, after-party. Dragon-drum-line tester. Photo and video shoot for 2027. | NC Courage events |
| 10 | Sept popup + retention engine | Inflatable Pride pitch popup with Stonewall during Durham Pride week. Bring-a-Friend, second-game offers, Braze nurture flow, 2027 launch list pipeline. | NC Courage events + CRM |
Meta (Facebook + Instagram) carries 90%+ of season spend. Google Display is deferred for 2026. Meta is our prospecting engine, retargeting engine, and conversion driver. A light CRM layer (Braze email and SMS) handles nurture and retention.
Prospecting → Retargeting → Conversion → Retention.
Reserve up to 10% of season spend for a test flight on TikTok or YouTube Shorts, aimed at younger queer audiences where video discovery runs hot. Tested as a controlled experiment in July against Meta benchmarks. Kept only if CPMs and engagement beat Meta.
Ensure “Club Courage”, “NC Courage Pride Night”, and “LGBTQ+ soccer Raleigh” queries route to the Club Courage landing page with solid metadata. Not a paid channel, but the zero-cost capture layer for warm demand Meta doesn’t reach.
Budget flexibility. If Meta CPMs rise sharply mid-season or performance lags the ROAS target, we reserve the right to shift up to 20% of remaining spend into TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or Google Search against event-driven keywords. Flagged to the Courage team before any reallocation.
| Month | Home matches | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| May | 2 | First campaign live ASAP (5/2 home match). Specialty Section debut support (5/16). Brand-line saturation creative live across all surfaces. |
| June | 0 (league break) | List growth + brand presence only. Watch-party RSVPs (5/23 + 6/9), Out! Raleigh opt-ins, July early bird teasers. No ticket KPI. |
| July | 4 | Ticket conversions for all four home matches. Specialty Section + 8/26 early-bird launches. |
| August | 3 (incl. 8/26 Flagship) | Largest monthly flight. Flagship saturation, retargeting, Specialty Section ticket push, after-party comms. |
| September | 1 | Pride on the Pitch popup RSVPs. Bring-a-Friend #2. Hispanic Heritage push. Durham Pride tie-in. |
| October | 1 | Specialty Section retention close. 2027 Club Courage launch interest list capture. |
Economics. Free tickets here are treated as an acquisition cost: the investment is paid back by measured repeat attendance, Bring-a-Friend list capture, and 2027 season-ticket conversion, not by ticket revenue on the night of.
A premium specialty supporter ticket inside the bowl, ideally seated together in a section with line-of-sight to camera and room for energy. Not yet a permanent named home. The section grows as a pilot through 2026, captured on photo and video, and re-launches in 2027 as the named Club Courage section once the audience is bigger and the trust is built. The brand-line treatment in-section is the same we use everywhere: One Crest. Every Color.
Year one runs with a much lighter ambassador model than V1’s paid captain program. One or two community leads who are already going to the matches act as Section Ambassadors. They greet first-timers at the gate, hand out the welcome card, and flag incidents to the named Courage staff contact. The full paid captain program scales up alongside the named Club Courage section in 2027.
Dedicated channel. Bio: “The Courage’s LGBTQ+ home section. Come as you are.” Three posts + one Broadcast Channel drop per week. One named owner (recommend Abbey). A single-channel commitment; if capacity is tight, fold into @nccourage.
Replaces any group-chat idea. Matchday hype, after-party addresses, early merch access, Passport partner announcements. Intimate, asynchronous, safe.
Short, warm, signed by a rotating Section Captain. What happened. What is coming. Where we are watching the next away match.
A simple web-based passport: members scan a unique QR at each partner venue or event and a stamp is logged against their phone number or email. No cards to print, no app to download. Full passport unlocks exclusive merch, early Flagship entry, or signed player items.
Physical stamp card is optional and can be offered at flagship moments, but the default is digital to keep the operational lift low.
V1 proposed three membership tiers. V2 collapses year one to a single paid Specialty Section ticket plus a free Club Courage interest list. The full three-tier membership ramps in 2027 alongside the named home section. Pricing is indicative. Ticketing team finalizes.
Year one’s entry door. Not a ticket. Just “count me in.”
Year-one paid product. Inside the bowl, in the pilot section.
Reserved for the 2027 launch alongside the named Club Courage home section. Year-one Specialty Section buyers get first right of refusal.
The +15% trust floor is won or lost in the 60 days after Pride Night. Most clubs let the Pride Night crowd leave and never come back. We do the opposite, and we use the Sept popup to give them one more chance to feel it before season-end.
Durham Pride is the Triangle’s second marquee Pride and it lands after the Courage Pride Night, which is strategically useful. Double down on-site. “You saw us in August. Here we are again.” The Pride on the Pitch popup activates inside this window. Recruit for the 10/17 Specialty Section seats.
Habit is what creates repeat attendance. Five rituals run at every home match:
Each risk below has a specific mitigation. No surprises.
Every line below is a Courage-funded line. Ad spend per the March 25 call. Other lines sit inside existing event budgets or can be sourced from partner trade or a written addendum if needed.
| Line | Estimate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Season ad spend (Meta 90%+) | ~$1,000 per home match × 12 matches | Paid directly by NC Courage to platform. Concentrated around 8/26 Flagship, lighter during June (list growth). |
| Out! Raleigh Silver sponsorship | Already committed | Booth, social, website, table, chairs included. |
| Brand-line surface production (V2) | $2,000 to $4,000 one-time | Web banner + ticket-confirmation email banner + in-stadium signage variants + supporter-group banner with Mary Pruder + gameday brochure stamp. Production-ready files delivered by The Gaygency. Print costs vary. |
| Specialty Section signage | $1,500 to $3,000 one-time | Wayfinding to the pilot section, welcome card print run, chant cards. Smaller than V1. |
| Section Ambassador stipends (V2) | $600 to $1,200 season | $50 / match × 12 × 1–2 ambassadors, or comped Specialty Section ticket per match. Year-one model is intentionally light. Full paid captain program returns in 2027. |
| Light Incident Protocol + ambassador onboarding | $500 one-time | 1-page guide signed by stadium ops + 30-minute onboarding. |
| Giveaways (pins, glow sticks, fans, stickers) | $4,000 to $8,000 one-time | Flagship inventory + Out! Raleigh booth stock + watch-party giveaways. |
| Capital Pride Band | TBD | Honorarium + logistics per band rate card. |
| Drag performers + Great Merl Festival package | TBD | Booking and riders via existing NC Courage event production. Festival package may bundle multiple performers under one negotiation. |
| Watch parties (V2) | $1,000 to $2,500 across 2–4 events | May 23 LGBT Center of Raleigh: in-house, low cost (giveaways + Rory). Jun 9 USWNT vs Brazil: $500–$1,500 venue minimum. Optional partner watch parties later in season. |
| Pride on the Pitch popup (V2, Sept) | $1,000 to $3,000 one-time | Inflatable pitch is already in the World Cup activation budget. Marginal cost is staffing, sound, giveaways, photography. Significantly lower than V1’s full Pride on the Pitch. |
| Aug 26 photo + video capture for 2027 | $3,000 to $6,000 one-time | Dedicated production crew at Aug 26 Flagship to bank the launch creative for 2027 Pride on the Pitch + named Club Courage section. New V2 line. |
V1’s biggest line was the full Pride on the Pitch tentpole, which is now deferred. V2 redirects part of that envelope into brand-line surface production (which is the campaign in year one) and Aug 26 content capture for 2027 (which is how year one pays year two back). Estimated total non-ad-spend outlay (V2): $14,000–$28,000 across the season, supplemented by partner trade and existing sponsor dollars.
Not a moment. Not a rainbow slapped on a Pride event in June or August. A year where the LGBTQ+ community in the Triangle sees the Courage as their team, walks into WakeMed knowing exactly where their seat is, and tells their people to meet them there.
Year one is the trust season. Say one thing on every surface, every match, year-round. Show up where the community already is. Set the 2027 Club Courage launch up to win.