The Winnipeg Jets are celebrating the team’s inaugural South Asian Heritage Night on Feb. 11 with

The team’s internal creative services team collaborated with agency Ethnicity Matters and local graphic designer Charmi Sheth, who contributed her cultural and design expertise to the logo and textile designs, taking inspiration from Rangoli, a traditional artform meant to bring happiness and good luck. The logo also includes motifs inspired by Henna patterning, as well as Bandhani designs. There was also guidance from Waseem Shaikh, creative director at Ethnicity Matters.

Outside of the logo design, the agency is providing strategic advisory to help the team engage new audiences, and how to comprehensively allow the organization to tap into the growth of the province, explains Bobby Sahni, co-founder and partner at Ethnicity Matters.

South Asian Heritage Night will include South Asian food, special guests, Bhangra dancing and drumming and influencers at the Canada Life Centre before the Jets host a game against the Chicago Blackhawks. The team will also wear warmup jerseys with the specialized logo, which will then be auctioned off in support of Punjabi Community Health Services Manitoba. T-shirts and hoodies with the South Asian Jets logo also went on sale through team stores last week, with a portion of proceeds going to the same non-profit.

There is varying degrees of depth an organization will go into to welcome multicultural audiences, Sahni says. Some franchises across different leagues will do some kind of recognition of holidays and observances like Diwali during games, but this event is more robust and part of a longer term strategy for the Jets and team owner True North Sports and Entertainment.

Earlier this season, the team also held Indigenous and Filipino heritage nights, which Sahni describes as resounding successes, noting that the Filipino night jerseys were tough to keep in stock. They featured an eight-ray golden sun surrounding the Jets roundel, the sun being a prominent symbol on the Filipino flag.

“It’s a hot, hot item, and they are getting orders from across North America,” he says.

Currently, Winnipeg is home to over 60,000 people whose heritage is tied to either India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. The hypothesis for a team doing this kind of outreach to those or any BIPOC community, Sahni says, is that as North America becomes more diverse, more teams and leagues will need to have strategies to engage new audiences, with the recognition that immigrants don’t necessarily have affinity for the NHL or other pro sports popular in Canada.

In addition to the game being broadcast in English on Hockey Night in Canada on Sportsnet on Feb. 11, fans will also be able to watch the game as part of the latest edition of Hockey Night in Canada: Punjabi Edition on OMNI.