Josh Bogdan, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Good Sports Creative, spent the better part of two decades inside some of the biggest names in advertising. Golden State Warriors during the Steph Curry dynasty. Nike at Wieden+Kennedy. A century-defining rebrand for Major League Baseball. Then he did what a certain kind of creative eventually does — he left to build the thing himself.
Good Sports Creative launched in Portland, Oregon in 2024 and just turned one. The agency makes brand campaigns for teams, leagues and any brand playing in sports culture — sponsorships, athlete partnerships, events like the World Cup and the Olympics. MLB was one of its first clients. The name itself is a statement: this is all they do.
“We don’t have the layers that slow down processes,” Bogdan says. “We don’t have the teams with 20 people on calls that will have to justify their paychecks by weighing in on the work.”
From Draymond Green’s early days to Nike’s biggest stage
Bogdan’s first sports advertising gig was with the Golden State Warriors around 2011. Draymond Green, Klay Thompson and Steph Curry weren’t yet household names. His team created campaigns year after year — TV, social, radio, in-game — and got to know the players as people, not just assets.
That access was a different kind of education. Then Wieden+Kennedy came calling for Nike, and Bogdan went from running and gunning with a rising NBA franchise to the most marquee brand in sports. Tiger Woods. LeBron James. The Women’s World Cup. The Olympics. Sam Kerr.
Two very different worlds. Both shaped how he thinks about the work.
What Good Sports is known for: speaking the language
Good Sports lives at the intersection of sports culture and brands. Not sports-adjacent. Not sports-curious. Sports-fluent.
That fluency came from Bogdan’s years inside the ecosystem — from locker rooms to boardrooms, from athlete partnerships to global event sponsorships. When brands like Coke or Samsung needed their sports work to feel authentic, he was the one brought in. In 2022 he began running creative at Wieden+Kennedy for MLB and led their first rebrand in close to a century with the tagline “Baseball is Something Else.” When he launched Good Sports in 2024, MLB was one of the first clients to follow.
A good sign when your client leaves with you.
3 things Good Sports does differently
They speak sport. Not as a niche add-on, but as a native language. Bogdan’s career spans Warriors courtside access to Nike’s global campaigns to an MLB rebrand. That depth means the work doesn’t need translating for fans — it starts there.
They’re storytellers. Sports gives you the full emotional spectrum — triumph, heartbreak, tension. And tension is the part most brands are afraid of. “You need tension to be compelling,” Bogdan says. “It takes courage for a brand to have that tension in their work. But in sports, it’s inherent.”
They’re fast. Not because they cut corners on strategy or creative development. Because they only work with senior people who’ve been doing this for years and who work directly on the business. No 20-person calls. No layers. And they bring clients into the process early — into edits, into reviews — instead of disappearing for two weeks and gatekeeping the work.
The freedom to not compromise
Ask Bogdan why independence matters and he doesn’t reach for a manifesto. “We have the freedom to make decisions based solely upon our values. We don’t have to compromise our principles.”
That’s it. No four-level approval chain. No conforming clients to a rigid process. Good Sports flexes around scope, resources and timelines — customizing teams for each project so clients never pay for what they don’t need.
The clients feel it. Direct access to senior leadership. No layers between the brief and the people doing the work. The kind of flexibility that’s easy to promise and hard to deliver without an org chart getting in the way.
Why brands should call Good Sports
Good Sports doesn’t hire junior creatives. Full stop.
Everyone on the team has the experience to lead a bigger agency but chooses to still be a doer — hands on the work, not just overseeing it. “The people you are working with are the ones who have the experience to both lead a bigger agency but also know the work and create the work with their own hands,” Bogdan says.
Behind them: project managers, ops directors, producers, designers, finance. The infrastructure exists to let senior strategic directors and creative directors do what they’ve trained their entire careers to do. The agency believes in giving great people autonomy. It’s a philosophy, not a pitch deck bullet point.
Why talent picks Portland (and Good Sports)
The inbound interest is steady, and Bogdan thinks the draw is obvious: sports. “So many people are inspired by sports. That’s the first one.”
Second: storytelling. The tools that sports culture opens up — emotion, tension, competition — attract creatives who want to do more than push product. Third: autonomy without the inefficiencies of traditional agency life.
But there’s a catch. Bogdan hires slow. If you haven’t already done the work at the highest level, Good Sports isn’t where you’ll learn. “If you haven’t done it before, you’re not going to learn here, at least not for the next couple years.” The portfolio is the audition. The track record is the interview. If someone has grabbed great ideas many times in their career, they’ll do it again — if you create the fertile ground.
The creative jock identity
Ask Bogdan if he’s a weirdo, misfit or underdog and he lands on a fourth option: the creative jock.
“It’s the person who loved playing sports when they were younger, loved watching sports, but might have been scribbling in their notebook making cartoons of the other players. Or telling stories in the locker room. Maybe a little too weird to make it to the next level, but still loved it.”
Bogdan calls himself “a proud, above-average athlete” who never played beyond high school sports. But the love of competition stuck. At Good Sports, competitiveness isn’t a dirty word — it’s the engine.
Dear Dick’s Sporting Goods: call us, seriously
Bogdan’s CMO shoutout goes to Emily Silver, CMO of Dick’s Sporting Goods. The admiration is personal — he’s a parent of two eight-year-old boys, coaches basketball and tennis, sits on the board of his local Little League.
“I love what is happening with that brand,” Bogdan says. “Those stores are true community destinations. I love the values that they put out. And I think there’s endless stories to tell around youth sports — inspirational stories, funny stories.”
The pitch writes itself. A sports-only creative agency founded by a youth sports dad who wants to tell the stories of the brand that outfits his community. Good Sports and Dick’s Sporting Goods feels less like a cold call and more like an inevitability.
Learn more
Good Sports Creative
Josh Bogdan LinkedIn
Good Sports Creative LinkedIn
Good Sports Creative Instagram
Emily Silver LinkedIn
Contact: he***@****************ve.com
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
