Inside the New York Liberty’s year-round merch machine

It’s game day at Barclays Center in New York City, and the arena is bathed in a sea of seafoam green. The New York Liberty, the city’s WNBA team, are about to take to the court, and fans are on their feet — cheering, clapping and sporting the latest merch.

Everywhere you look, there are Liberty colors and logos: on jerseys, on baseball caps, on foam fingers, on varsity jackets, on backpacks. Throughout the stadium, kids clutch plushies of Ellie the Elephant, the team’s mascot and a fashionista in her own right . Other fans wear Liberty-themed bandanas and tear open Ellie “blind boxes” that house bag charms.

It’s merch mania, and it’s proving to be big business for the Liberty franchise. Team Store sales are up more than 80% year-over-year, both online and at physical outposts at Barclays, per data shared with Modern Retail. Each Liberty game, hundreds of people cycle through the main store, with some sizes selling out before halftime. The Liberty’s 2026 “Pride Night” shirt had a 100% sell-through rate, and the new Ellie bag charms are “selling like hotcakes,” said Chief Brand Officer Shana Stephenson. Overall, there’s so much demand for Liberty swag that the team brought on a dedicated VP of merchandise and retail, Jamillah Davis Hernandez, from Saks Fifth Avenue earlier this year. Continue reading this article on modernretail.co . Sign up for Modern Retail newsletters to get the latest on the shifting dynamics between retail’s old and new guards.