A jersey reveal that was meant to be a celebration for the Toronto Tempo swiftly turned into a whirlwind of accusations. Upon seeing the new jersey, fans couldn’t help but notice the major similarity between the Tempo’s new uniform and Unrivaled’s Vinyl team.

Whitney Bell, the chief marketing officer, had stressed how every design element was planned.

“Every detail of these uniforms is intentional. From the [color] story to the speed lines, we’ve created a design that brings our brand to life,” Bell stated in the official release.

The team said that the jerseys were based on Toronto’s identity and had Borealis Blue and Tempo Bordeaux with six speed lines that stood for the city’s boroughs.

Bell had a lot of faith in the design process because it was based on solid ground. The team worked on the look for a year, starting with a two-day intensive session in November 2024. The Tempo had closely watched the Golden State Valkyries’ successful launch, which brought in more than 22,000 season-ticket deposits and made the Valkyries the first WNBA expansion team to sell more than 10,000 season tickets. Bell even talked to the Valkyries’ marketing leaders to find out how getting involved in the community helped their sales. In 2024, WNBA sales went up by 72%.

But the careful planning couldn’t stop the viral reaction. Fans on social media pointed out how similar the Tempo’s uniforms looked to the Vinyl’s, and some even said that the Tempo had accidentally copied homework from the 3-on-3 league. The timing was especially bad because Unrivaled, which was co-founded by WNBA star Breanna Stewart, had already made Vinyl’s unique look before the Tempo was shown.

The controversy comes at a very important time for the franchise. Last week, the Tempo sold out their season tickets, which was one of their first big goals before the game in May. Bell said it was proof of how excited fans are, but the argument over the design could take away from that excitement as the team gets ready to start selling jerseys in January.

Fans call out Toronto Tempo’s striking resemblance to Vinyl jerseys

The Tempo was happy to show off its design, but social media told a different story. Fans on all platforms quickly linked Unrivaled’s Vinyl team, and reactions ranged from playful teasing to real confusion about how similar the two were.

The backlash was clear. A fan joked, “If that looked any more like @Unrivaledwbb Vinyl jersey you’d have to pay Stewie and Collier royalties lol lol lol,”  specifically naming Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, who started Unrivaled and own the intellectual property for all the team’s brands, including the Vinyl. The comment said that the design was so similar that it might be a copyright violation. Stewart plays for Mist BC, and Collier plays for Lunar Owls BC, and they are the business owners who would be owed royalties if their ideas were stolen.

Another fan called the jerseys “unrivaled leftovers, man,” which was a harsh way of saying they were late. The Vinyl uniforms first appeared in Unrivaled’s first season, which ran from January to March 2025. They were also shown off again in November 2025, before the Tempo’s reveal on December 16, 2025. Fans thought the Tempo design was just old pieces of the Vinyl look because it came out so long after the Vinyl look had already been seen.

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The details of the design made it worse. “So we just copying unrivaled like we’re not gonna notice a vinyl jersey when we see one lol,” one user wrote. The “record grooves” on the Vinyl and the “speed lines” on the Tempo looked the same. No matter how you spin it, parallel stripes are parallel stripes.

The color schemes made things even more confusing. “Is this not the vinyl jersey?” asked another fan, pointing out that both teams use dark mode styles. The Tempo’s Bordeaux (dark maroon) with neon Borealis Blue outlines is very similar to the Vinyl’s dark kits, which also have high-contrast neon accents on a dark base.