CNN
—
Just hours before the New York Liberty tip off Game 1 of the WNBA semifinals, cameras are rolling to capture the arrival of one of the city’s most celebrated athletes.
Sporting a black-and-white printed Nike jacket, black leather shorts and silver bamboo hoops, she struts through Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on her “tunnel walk” — the basketball world’s equivalent of the red carpet.
With a $420 Jacquemus+Nike swoosh bag in hand, her hips sway with every step. She flirts with the camera, twirling playfully (twice!) before stopping, leg out, in a pose that would make Tyra Banks proud.
Even the rain outside can’t deter her. She uses her umbrella like a prop, pointing it at the camera like the season’s hottest accessory.
Some young fans are here to greet her. She’s bashful when one presents her with a beaded friendship bracelet in the Liberty’s colors, then does a little jig to show it off. After posing for a quick photo with the fan, she heads to the locker room to change into uniform.
The athlete in question isn’t Breanna Stewart, a perennial MVP candidate, or Sabrina Ionescu, one of the league’s most lethal shooters — both beloved starters on the Liberty squad.
It’s the team’s mascot: Ellie the Elephant.
When Ellie — now in her usual jersey dress — ventures into the stands a few hours later as the Liberty face off against the Las Vegas Aces, the crowd’s already electric energy intensifies.
Fans whip out their phones to record Ellie dancing atop the bleachers, swinging her signature braid (adorned with lights for the occasion) like a lasso. They scramble to take selfies with her before she makes a gravity-defying leap over the railing to interact with another cluster of fans.
“She’s unmatched,” says Neysa Lewis, a Liberty season ticket holder who’s wearing an Ellie the Elephant shirt for the game. “There’s no other mascot that could touch Ellie.”
It might seem unusual for a furry, anthropomorphic elephant to get a reception befitting the WNBA’s best players. But this 10-foot-tall pachyderm, with halftime performances and a larger-than-life-persona that are as captivating as the play, is one of the rare mascots to become a star in her own right.
The love for Ellie is not only a triumph for the Liberty, who are one win away from advancing to the finals for the second year in a row.
It’s also a victory for the WNBA, a league that only recently started receiving the attention long afforded its male counterpart.
Ellie the Elephant was born out of a rough few years for the Liberty.
The team’s original mascot was a golden retriever called Maddie, named for Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden, the Liberty’s home arena since the WNBA’s first season in 1997. Then in 2018, after putting the team up for sale, the Liberty’s then-owner James Dolan relocated the franchise to the suburbs — the new venue seated significantly fewer spectators and contributed to a huge loss of season ticket holders.
Joe and Clara Wu Tsai, co-owners of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, acquired the Liberty in 2019, and a year later, the team moved to its present-day home of Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The move, along with the Liberty selecting Ionescu with the No. 1 draft pick, offered a fresh start.
It was clear that a rebrand was in order, says the Liberty’s chief brand officer Shana Stephenson.
While brainstorming new mascots, Stephenson says Liberty CEO Keia Clarke learned about a late 1800s stunt pulled by circus showman P.T. Barnum, which involved marching 21 elephants across the Brooklyn Bridge to alleviate public fears about its stability.
From there, things fell into place. In 2021, Ellie the Elephant, a nod to Ellis Island, was introduced as the Liberty’s new mascot.
Stephenson says she wanted Ellie to be different from typical sports mascots — often buff, macho characters who dunk and do push-ups on the sidelines. Ellie was envisioned as female to reflect the Liberty’s strong and powerful women athletes, she adds.
She also saw an opportunity to reach new audiences by tapping into Brooklyn’s fashion, music and cultural scenes.
“Brooklyn drives New York culture. New York culture drives American culture. And American culture influences culture globally,” she says. “Knowing that this is a hub for such rich culture, it was really a key strategy of mine: How can we get younger? How can we become more diverse? How can we really be recognized as being authentic to what Brooklyn represents?”
Ellie’s persona and appearance is distinctly Black, femme and queer — something that can be attributed to a team of Black women behind the scenes, says Criscia Long, the Liberty’s senior director of entertainment.
Ellie has lashes and hair extensions; she wears sneakers and rocks hoop earrings on her floppy elephant ears. She carries handbags from the Black-owned Brooklyn brand Telfar. She gestures and speaks with a Black affect (heard only in Instagram and TikTok videos), punctuating her sentences with “tuhhhhhh” and “sis.”
All of that, Long says, helps cultivate a welcoming atmosphere for fans who might not otherwise be interested in basketball.
Back at the game, Ellie is working the room.
The Liberty have taken an early lead against the Aces, and spirits and decibel levels in the arena are as high as ever — it’s no wonder New York Magazine recently dubbed Liberty games “the best party in New York.”
Ellie, the team’s resident party animal, isn’t about to let that energy slip.
“She really does just keep trying to get people energized and keep people excited about being here,” says Susannah Pasquantonio, who sports a black T-shirt with various Ellie faces and the words “New York’s Finest.” “She’s absolutely contributed to a good experience when they’ve been through some ups and downs in a game.”
From tipoff to the final buzzer, Ellie is constantly on the move, entertaining as many fans as she can. She protests when the referees make bad calls. She twerks, does headstands and maneuvers over railings in an incredible feat of athleticism.
In a matter of seconds, she’s somehow made her way across the arena — Robert Taylor Jr., one of the “Stompaz,” Ellie’s team of personal handlers, says he burns more than 1,000 calories following her around the arena each game.
Arvetta Drumgold, a longtime Liberty season ticket holder, says the energy at Liberty games is “on another level” from where it started. Attendance at home games increased about 64% from 2023 to 2024, and season ticket membership is up 130% year over year (a development that has led to a sizable price hike for the 2025 season).
Those trends are also reflected more broadly in the WNBA.
Building on the steady growth of the last few years, the league smashed viewership and attendance records this season. That’s at least partly due to creative efforts by franchises such as the Liberty to bring in new audiences — efforts that include Ellie.
“It’s opening up what the mascot can be in really interesting and welcome ways,” says Travis Vogan, a professor at the University of Iowa who studies sports and culture. “And it complements more generally what the WNBA has been up to more recently.”
Since she was introduced, Ellie has transcended from a beloved local sports mascot into a cultural icon — thanks to the Liberty’s social media savvy.
Videos of Ellie’s riveting halftime performances, in which she cosplays as Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige and Lil’ Kim, have attracted a sizable audience on social media (she currently has 113,000 followers on Instagram and more than 178,000 on TikTok). Ellie’s participation in the viral Bongos challenge prompted Cardi B to say she “put me to shame.”
Ellie’s fashion sense has earned her coverage in Vogue. Earlier this summer, she graced the cover of Time Out New York. She’s landed sponsorship deals with skin care brands and inspired a new colorway of sneakers.
“Ellie has such a huge presence on social media and has allowed us to reach fans globally,” Stephenson says.
That global reach is significant for women’s basketball, which has historically struggled to garner the visibility of male basketball players. Ellie’s massive following and her promotion of the Liberty beyond gameday helps bridge that gap, Stephenson says.
Much of Ellie’s persona and social media presence comes from the performer inside the suit, says Long. She credits the performer’s Brooklyn background and deep understanding of pop culture with Ellie’s broad appeal.
That’s as much as she’ll say on the topic. The Liberty are notably tight-lipped about Ellie’s true identity, giving way to wild speculation about who it might be. Some fans have theorized that Ellie is played by a man. Others have posited that Ellie is actually a rotating cast of performers (a theory Stephenson debunked, noting that the same person has portrayed Ellie since the character’s introduction in 2021).
“I talk all the time with my friends about who Ellie is or how many Ellies there are,” Pasquantonio, a fan at Game 1, says.
“It’s like ‘The Masked Singer,’” adds Lewis, nodding to the popular reality TV series that features celebrities performing songs in disguise. “Who really is Ellie?”
As intriguing as the question is, both Pasquantonio and Lewis are at peace not knowing. The mystery, they say, is part of the magic.
She’s building enthusiasm for the Liberty — and the WNBA
Ellie brings more to the Liberty franchise than pure entertainment. She keeps fans engaged, and crucially, she makes money, too.
The gift shop in Barclays Center has a wall lined with Ellie merch: On this particular afternoon, there are Ellie pennants, pins and magnets. A new, seafoam green Ellie shirt is on display on a mannequin at the front of the store. The Ellie plushies, which several kids at the game are toting around, and the Ellie braid that were on sale earlier this season have long sold out.
“From a fandom perspective, it seems to be increasing engagement with the team and, by extension, the league,” Vogan, the University of Iowa professor, says. “I wouldn’t be surprised, given the success of Ellie, if other teams create mascots that are operating out of a similar mold.”
Other WNBA teams have indeed been in touch about how they can replicate Ellie’s success, Stephenson confirms. Whatever the secret sauce, it’s clear that the Liberty have achieved something special with Ellie.
“I would go to a NY Liberty game just to see Ellie!” one user commented on a TikTok video of Ellie performing as Mary J. Blige.
Another wrote: “I gotta hop Amtrak and catch Ellie in action.”
Lauren Ludwig is another recently converted fan. Game 1 of the semifinals was her third Liberty game — she attended her first-ever game this season after recently moving near Barclays Center, and the atmosphere has kept her coming back.
“There’s so much energy, and all the other factors like Ellie and the dancers and the vibes,” she says. “Everyone’s so happy, and it’s so fun.”
That’s a key part of the strategy behind Ellie, says Stephenson. Come for Ellie, stay for Ionescu, Jonquel Jones and the other athletes on the Liberty’s roster.
Judging by the rapturous crowd in attendance, the strategy seems to be working.
