How New York City FC got its pigeon mascot

On a Sunday in late March, MLS fans packed into Yankee Stadium—the temporary home of New York City FC—to watch Thiago Martins, Aiden O’Neill, and the rest of the home team take on Inter Miami FC and Leo Messi.

Before the players took the pitch, though, all eyes were on the giant pigeon dancing in a pair of Timberland-esque boots at center field.

Sky Scraper, or Sky for short, is NYCFC’s pigeon mascot. The pigeon was officially introduced as the face of the club earlier this year, but it’s been circling NYCFC in an unofficial capacity essentially since the team started playing in 2015, according to VP of Marketing Lauren Scrima.

“It’s very perfect for New York,” Scrima said. “There was always some light discussion about, ‘Should we have a mascot?’ We’ve obviously seen what it can do for other teams, and now that we are so close to opening our own stadium and having passed that 10-year anniversary threshold, it felt like the right time to really seriously look at this.”

Any New Yorker knows that pigeons are polarizing animals, and while Scrima expected Sky to have some critics, after spending most of last year bringing the bird to life, she and her team have sky-high hopes of using the new mascot to drive fandom and revenue.

Birds of a feather

Making Sky the official mascot of NYCFC was an involved process, Scrima told us. The concept originally started years ago with a fan who regularly wore a pigeon mask to games—he’s in touch with the team and still dons the mask, she added.

Once NYCFC execs agreed they wanted an official mascot, there was still some disagreement over the animal, Scrima said. Ultimately, a fan survey asking people to write in what they thought the team’s mascot should be proved evidence enough that a pigeon was the right choice, she said.

“We got a lot of really interesting examples, like bodega cats, and rats, and slices of pizza, and apples,” Scrima said. “The list goes on and on, but pigeon was far and away the most popular, and, I think, the most obvious choice.”

To help bring Sky to life, the NYCFC team worked with Raymond Entertainment, a mascot consultancy founded by David Raymond, the “first inhabiter” of the Phillie Phanatic. They brought in a 2D artist to design creative options for the look of the mascot, had fans weigh in again, and then commissioned a local mascot and costume designer, Randy Carfagno, to make a suit of Sky. That part of the process involved sorting through fur swatches, eyeballs, and heads, Scrima said.

As for the name, fans and club employees got to give their two cents, and versions of “Sky Scraper” came up repeatedly, Scrima said. It’s a bit on the beak—beyond the reference to the urban buildings, sky blue is the primary color of NYCFC—but also a bit deep, with ties to the team’s 10th anniversary Excelsior kit, which was photographed at the Edge, a sky deck located in Hudson Yards.

The kit “was all about our ambitions as a team, always looking upward and onward,” Scrima said. “We did a lot of photography on skyscrapers and with players looking out into the sky…That’s a symbolism that we’ve used at the club for a little while, and now we have a mascot that embodies that idea that we’re always building to something bigger.”

Boots to fill

The team’s main objective in making Sky the official mascot was to foster fandom, Scrima said, especially among kids and families. A lot of that work happens on match days, but it also happens “out in the world,” she said, as demonstrated by mascots like the New York Liberty’s Ellie the Elephant.

“We looked a lot at that case study, and the ambition is to get even a little bit close to that in terms of the niche that Ellie the Elephant has been able to occupy,” Scrima said, adding that after about two months in the world, the engagement rate for content featuring Sky was almost double the club’s average. “Clearly, the content is resonating,” she said.

The “Ellie playbook,” as Scrima called it, is also a masterclass in using a mascot to drive revenue, particularly through brand partnerships. It’s something the NYCFC team is already working on: Sky’s footwear, for instance, is one of the “available categories” for partnership, Scrima said. Sky’s boots are modeled after Timbs, the work boots popular in New York streetwear culture, but the relationship isn’t official—yet.

Between engagement and revenue goals, Sky has a lot to accomplish for a teenage pigeon from the Bronx. But the bird—and the team—are sure to get an assist this summer thanks to the World Cup, which presents a major opportunity that NYCFC is looking to capitalize on.

“We are the home team in the city where the final will be played,” Scrima said. “What can we do to harness the fandom that exists for the World Cup and hopefully direct it toward our team?”