Brands love screwing up. Just look at The Hoxton in Dublin. But I’m in a Winter Olympics mood, so I’m focused on Bauer Hockey managing to spectacularly botch what should have been a simple interaction with a loyal customer. The fallout offers a textbook example of how corporate legal departments can destroy brand goodwill in seconds, and how competitors with better instincts can capitalise on those mistakes.
What did Bauer do?
Pavvy the Goalie is a Dallas-based TikTok creator who posts hockey content. She’s wasn’t a massive influencer (under 9,000 followers at the time), but she’s a genuine hockey gear enthusiast. Her entire goalie setup was Bauer kit, and she’d been using their gear since she was a kid. Fifteen years of loyalty.
When Bauer’s 2026 seasonal catalogue arrived in her post, she did what excited fans do: she filmed a TikTok showing off the new products and specs. Nothing controversial, no leaked information, just someone genuinely hyped about gear from a brand she loved.
Bauer’s social team spotted the video and slid into her DMs. The message? They were “interested in partnering” and asked for her email address. Pavvy, understandably, thought this was going somewhere positive.
The bait-and-switch
What arrived in her inbox wasn’t a partnership proposal. It was a legal threat.
Someone named Brandon from Bauer’s social media team sent an email claiming the catalogue content was their intellectual property. The message opened with friendly language about enjoying her content, then pivoted sharply into implying potential legal action if she didn’t take down the video.
This is where things get properly stupid. They baited her with talk of partnership, collected her contact details under that pretence, then used them to threaten her. Pavvy removed the video but replied, reasonably, that they “should have started it out with that and not that you guys wanted to partner with me.”
The internet does what the internet does
When Pavvy posted about this on 27 January, the response was immediate and brutal. Longtime Bauer customers flooded the brand’s social channels saying they’d switch to competitors. The hockey community rallied around her. This wasn’t just TikTok drama, it was a proper reputational crisis.
Bauer scrambled. They sent another email offering free product as an apology. Pavvy declined. Then, bizarrely, they posted an apology in a YouTube comment section on a video covering the controversy, rather than emailing her directly. Pavvy called them out for this too, which only made things worse.
Warrior’s perfect response
While Bauer flailed, competitor brand Warrior Hockey saw an opportunity and executed perfectly. They posted a single image: black background, yellow text reading “we would never,” tagged to Pavvy and signed by their social team.
Simple. Direct. Effective.
Warrior then reached out to partner with Pavvy properly. She accepted, and started creating content featuring their gear instead. Bauer lost a loyal customer and advocate. Warrior gained one. All because Bauer’s legal instincts overrode basic common sense.
But the funny thing is, it’s not just Warrior. It’s a free for all. Warrior, CCM, Howies and more are all hockey brands getting in on the action.
Why this matters beyond one TikToker
Pavvy represented exactly what brands claim they want: authentic, organic advocacy. She wasn’t paid to promote Bauer. She just genuinely loved their products and wanted to share that excitement.
Instead of recognising this, Bauer’s response was to treat her fandom as a legal threat. They prioritised protecting catalogue images (which they’d already mailed to thousands of people) over nurturing a relationship with someone who’d been championing their brand for free for over a decade.
The timing made it worse. Women’s participation in hockey is growing, and the sport is having a cultural moment with younger audiences. Alienating creators in that space, particularly female ones, is strategically daft.
As creator economy lawyer Ray Khan put it: “Blindly attacking a fan that’s promoting your products is just poor taste. There’s very little upside, but plenty of potential for backfire.”
For me personally, I’ve giggled every time I’ve seen Bauer on TV at the Winter Olympics. I come from Ireland. We only know Cooper helmets from Winter Sports and maybe CCM. But I knew nothing of Bauer – until now.
The lesson here
This wasn’t about copyright law or intellectual property rights. Bauer probably had a technical legal argument. That’s irrelevant.
The mistake was treating a superfan like an adversary. The catalogue was already public. Pavvy’s video wasn’t hurting them. If anything, it was free marketing to an engaged niche audience.
If Bauer’s legal team genuinely had concerns, the correct response was a polite DM explaining the situation and asking nicely if she’d consider taking it down. No threats, no deceptive “partnership” talk, just honest communication.
Instead, they chose the nuclear option, got dragged publicly, and handed a competitor an easy PR win. Warrior didn’t have to do much beyond not being hostile to their own potential customers.
The broader point: brands spend millions trying to generate authentic enthusiasm. When it appears organically, the absolute worst thing you can do is litigate it into oblivion. Especially when your competitor is watching, waiting to offer that person a better experience.
Bauer will recover. Big brands always do. But they’ve learned (or should have learned) an expensive lesson about what happens when legal departments operate without considering the human cost of their decisions.
