If you like to watch TV series, it´s very likely that you have already watched HBO’s Game of Thrones, based on R. R. Martin books. Both the books and the series are a huge success. Yvan Degtyariov, an ukrainian artist, played with this pop phenom creating logos based on an imaginary football league where each Game of Thrones’ house is a team.

In the series, each house (or kingdom) has a unique personality and fight each other to reign this fictional universe. House Stark, for example, has a strong sense of justice and honor, and also has the wolf as its mascot. House Lannister is represented by the lion and has the motto “a Lannister always pay his debts”. In other words, they are very rich. And so on…

Find below three of these teams logos and an explanation about the link between this joke and sports marketing.

For those who watch the series, it strangely makes sense to imagine a championship between those houses. Each house represents a bunch of values and, during the series, the spectators just sympathizes with one or some of them.

In the sports world it´s the same. Each team has its own values and personality. In Brazil, for example, there are the football rivals Corinthians and São Paulo. Corinthians fans explore the underdog narrative as they are usually proud of titles conquered with a high level of difficulty. São Paulo fans, on the other hand, prefer to glorify their team´s infrastructure and professionalism. São Paulo´s titles are understood by the point of view of the club´s sovereignty.

Narrative´s differences like that appear in many rivalries between teams in Brazil and worldwide, and this issue is usually ignored by brands in the decision process of which team the brand should sponsor.

It´s common to forget that teams usually represent values that stand besides number of fans and market location, and that brands will probably  absorb something from that sponsorship experience. It´s important to say that there aren´t right or wrong values, but values that fit better with a brand.

I will propose a funny exercise for those of  you who have a difficult time realizing which values a sport team stand for. What about inverting this Ukrainian artist´s joke transforming the club into a kingdom. How is this kingdom? How does the king behave? What are their values? How do people tell their story?

That way you could transform your favorite sport championship in a Game of Thrones parody.

arts via io9