San Antonio Spurs × Spurs Week Austin
Custom Inflatable Fan Fest Activation for the 2024 I-35 Series
Project Overview
Taking the Brand Into a New City
The San Antonio Spurs have been intentionally building an Austin fanbase through the annual I-35 Series, using Moody Center as a temporary second home. In 2024, Spurs Week expanded to a full week of activations across the city, with the outdoor plaza surrounding Moody Center serving as the Spurs Fan Fest environment before and during both games.
A home arena carries built-in Spurs identity. Permanent signage, familiar sightlines, branding baked into the architecture. The Moody Center outdoor environment had none of that. The team needed structures that could anchor open space, hold up across multiple activation days in Austin's March weather, and create natural gathering points for fans, including a lot of people attending their first Spurs event.
Why Inflatables: Portable, weatherproof, and high-impact at outdoor scale. Custom inflatables are one of the few structures that can establish full brand identity in an open environment with no permanent install required.
From Brand Assets to Inflatable Brief
The Spurs provided a full brand package as the starting point for design:
- Official Coyote mascot artwork with front, side, and back reference views
- Team Pantone color specifications across all Spurs brand colors
- Spurs wordmark and spur icon in vector format
- Jersey number references with CMYK and Pantone breakdowns
- Mirror ball vector artwork with repeating spur logo pattern
- NBA mascot detail summary documenting character proportions and guidelines
The brief called for structures that would work as an outdoor entrance system and as standalone fan interaction points. Each piece needed to read clearly from a distance, photograph well at close range, and hold up across extended outdoor deployment.
3D Modeling: From Flat Artwork to Inflatable Structure
Before any material is cut or printed, every inflatable is developed as a full 3D model. This is where flat brand assets get translated into forms that hold their geometry under air pressure, maintain graphic legibility on curved surfaces, and withstand repeated inflation cycles and multi-day event deployments.
Check out the Coyote mascot model below. Rotate and zoom to see how the character design was translated into a freestanding inflatable structure:
Arch Design Challenges
- Positioning the Coyote character at arch apex while maintaining structural balance
- Mapping mascot artwork across compound curves without distortion
- Panel segmentation that allows efficient manufacturing while minimizing visible seams
- Proportional scaling so the mascot reads correctly at arch height and at crowd viewing distance
The 26 mirror balls required a different approach: maintaining consistent spherical geometry while ensuring the repeating spur logo pattern aligned across panels with no rotation or drift across the surface.
Design Proofing and Client Approval
Production proofs are generated from finalized 3D models and submitted for client approval before any material is committed. For a licensed NBA client, every element needs to be verified against official brand standards before production begins: Pantone color rendering, logo placement, character proportions, all of it.
Why Proofing Matters: Every revision caught at the proof stage is a revision that doesn't happen on-site two hours before a game. For licensed sports clients, no material goes to production without sign-off on every graphic element.
Inflatables Production
With proofs approved, production moved to MVP Visuals' manufacturing team. Using commercial-grade inflatable materials and high-resolution printing, each component was fabricated, assembled, and finished according to the approved layouts.
The 26 mirror balls presented specific production considerations: maintaining consistent pattern registration across all 26 units, ensuring uniform spherical form, and achieving the mirror-finish visual effect across printed surfaces. When spread across a large outdoor lawn, visual inconsistency between units is immediately visible. Each ball was produced to match the others precisely.
Quality Testing Before Shipment
Every unit is fully inflated and inspected before it ships. For event deployments with hard game-day deadlines, there's no opportunity to identify a defect on-site. The QC process confirms:
- The structure holds its intended form under full inflation pressure
- Seam integrity throughout
- Artwork accuracy and color consistency against approved proofs
- Anchor point and hardware functionality
- Deflation and repacking verified for field deployment
Bring Your Mascot to Life
Turn your team character into a full-scale inflatable mascot built for events, entrances, and photo ops. Custom-shaped, Pantone-matched, and built for outdoor conditions.
Get a Custom Mascot QuoteFan Plaza Installation: A Branded Environment From Scratch
At the Moody Center outdoor plaza, the inflatable arch system created the primary branded entry experience for fans arriving at both I-35 Series games. The Coyote mascot at the arch apex served as an immediate visual anchor, recognizable from across the plaza and establishing Spurs identity well before fans reached the venue doors.
Outdoor deployments carry demands that arena installs don't. The arches needed to maintain their geometry in ambient wind, stay anchored on varied ground surfaces, and present consistently across changing natural light throughout the day.
What an Entrance Arch Actually Does
- Immediate Visual Anchor: The Coyote at arch height was recognizable from across an open plaza before fans reached the entrance.
- Establishes Territory: A branded arch signals that the space is intentional, not empty. It tells fans they're in the right place.
- Multi-Day Durability: Structures held through both game days without setup or adjustment between events.
The Field Reality: In an open outdoor environment, the entrance arch does double duty. It's wayfinding and brand moment in one structure — and it has to work before a single staff member says a word.
The Mascot as Fan Gathering Point
The life-size inflatable Coyote mascot did exactly one thing, and did it well: it stopped fans in their tracks. Throughout both game days, people gathered around it for photos and selfies — a natural concentration point that required no staff, no prompting, no setup beyond the inflate.
For many Austin fans attending their first Spurs event, the mascot gave them a tangible connection to the team. The same Coyote that shows up at home games in San Antonio, now standing in their city.
Why Fans Stop and Stay
- Photo-Ready by Design: A life-size character figure creates a natural, branded photo moment without needing staff interaction or prompting.
- Builds Dwell Time: Fans gathered, waited their turn, and lingered. That's time spent inside the brand environment.
- Brand Transfer: For first-time Spurs fans, the mascot is the handshake. It makes the team feel familiar before they've ever been to San Antonio.
What This Means for Events: Give fans something big to stand in front of. A life-size inflatable character generates branded content without a photographer, a booth, or a staffer running prompts.
Extending Branding Across the Outdoor Space
The 26 custom Spurs mirror inflatable balls were distributed across the outdoor lawn to extend visual branding beyond the entrance area. Spread across open space, the oversized spheres did real work:
- Carried the Spurs spur logo motif across the full footprint without permanent install
- Added visual movement and texture to an otherwise flat outdoor environment
- Encouraged fan exploration throughout the plaza
- Created additional photo moments throughout the space
At the scale of an outdoor fan plaza, branding that lives only at the entrance leaves most of the space visually unanchored. The mirror ball distribution ensured Spurs identity extended through the full environment fans were moving through.
Branding at Every Scale
- Fills Open Space: 26 units spread across a lawn turns dead plaza real estate into branded territory.
- Encourages Exploration: Fans moved through the space to interact with the balls rather than clustering at one point.
- Visual Consistency: Matching units across the space create a cohesive look that reads as intentional, not scattered.
The Spatial Logic: One structure at the entrance isn't enough for a full plaza. The arch anchors the entry. The mirror balls own the middle ground. Fans move through branding the entire time.
From Brief to Fan Experience
The Spurs showed up in Austin with a full brand footprint. Entrance arches, a life-size mascot, 26 mirror balls across the lawn — the fan plaza had structure, identity, and photo moments before the doors opened. For a team building a second-city fanbase, that physical presence is the work.
From brand brief through 3D modeling, production, and field deployment: this is what it looks like when an established sports brand moves into a new environment and treats the outdoor space like it matters.
