Sports team names

[Starman]

The Cleveland MLB team has the same name as a rollerball team, which sued when the name was announced. The standard is confusion in the marketplace.

As I recall they came to some kind of nominal settlement: the rollerball team gets to keep using the name on their uniforms and they get a fistful of box seat tickets or something. I don't think any duffel bags of cash were involved.

 

[da man]

The Cleveland MLB team has the same name as a rollerball team, which sued when the name was announced. The standard is confusion in the marketplace.

Rollerball?

Is Jonathan E still playing?

JONATHAN! JONATHAN! JONATHAN!

 

[Starman]

I understand that merch sales are incredibly important. The name and mascot-logo has to sell, even if it's something so f'king stupid that it makes no sense. Anything that resonates to sell all the different caps-unis and isn't "offensive" to someone gets selected.

But I've never figured out why teams don't select an easy one like Cleveland Spiders (or, maybe, Rocks), with an updated logo, mascot, colors, all the things that fit into the minor-league mold to sell merch AND have a historical connection (that isn't "offensive" to someone).

Oakland moving to Vegas obviously wasn't going to pick the 51s for anything and probably won't have a throwback with that. Oakland changed 51s to Avaiators and now has a dumb logo that looks like a neon Clicker from The Last of Us. But at least the 51s was funny and a connection to the area.

Rocks or Spiders would have been great either way in Cleveland.

I might have gone with "Lake Freighters" simply for the potential of nautical-sailor mascots, logos, sea-chantey theme songs, etc etc.

 

[micropolitan guy]

I don't really think the Cleveland franchise would have to pay Richmond anything to use "Spiders" unless their new colors and logo were glaringly similar (they might have to change team colors but that wouldn't seem too hard). I think there is a roller derby team or travel volleyball or something called the Cleveland Rocks, and obviously you'd have to come to some kind of agreement with Ian Hunter, but Drew Carey did it, so why not?

Richmond's colors are also blue and red. Just like the Indians/Guardians.

How about the "Fully Loadeds" for Cleveland?

 

[HanSenSE]

Richmond's colors are also blue and red. Just like the Indians/Guardians.

How about the "Fully Loadeds" for Cleveland?

Great launch angle and exit velocity on that one. Touch them all ...

 

[Twirling Time]

Remember when it was edgy to have a team name that was singular and not plural?

 

[swingline]

Talk about web gems! How about that!?

TWIB Notes, RIP

 

[Starman]

Richmond's colors are also blue and red. Just like the Indians/Guardians.

Again, changing team colors would probably be about the least difficult part of the equation. In keeping with the nautical/aquatic theme, I'd go with something like Deep Channel Blue, Shallow Shoals Green and Shoreline Sandy Gold, trimmed of course with Whitecap White and Basaltic Black.

How about the "Fully Loadeds" for Cleveland?

Ehhhh. If I'm thinking about an iconic anthemic song we want to have crowds chanting before games and in the seventh inning stretch, a mournful keening dirge about a doomed ship taking its entire crew to their deaths might not be the best way to go.

 

[Huggy]

Had a random thought - and wondered why the NY hockey team is called the Rangers. It has nothing to do with Central Park, but the first owner's name was Tex Rickard (also owned Madison Square Garden) and the team became know as "Tex's Rangers" before formally adopting the name.

My larger thought was this - if I'm a lawyer, I'm going around to the heirs of dozens of sportswriters and copy editors who created team identities now worth billions of dollars back when teams may not have had formal names - and don't get me started about college sports. The list is endless. And I doubt any of these sports journos received a dime for coming up with the name.

Now teams hire branding consultants for six figures, back in the day it was just trying to come up with a witty headline or turn of a phrase.

When I was doing research at work for a project for the NHL's centennial in 2017 I came across a letter from MSG to the NHL saying they were planning to name the new team the New York Giants. Obviously that didn't happen but I couldn't find any follow up documentation to indicate that decision might not have sat well with the baseball team.

When the Blue Jays began Labatt, which owned the team, hoped fans and media would refer to the team as the "Blues" after one of its landing brands, but it was Jays right from the start.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

When I was doing research at work for a project for the NHL's centennial in 2017 I came across a letter from MSG to the NHL saying they were planning to name the new team the New York Giants. Obviously that didn't happen but I couldn't find any follow up documentation to indicate that decision might not have sat well with the baseball team.

The baseball team already had two football teams essentially named after it; one of whom failed after a few games and the other one that had just started the year before and was on shaky ground because Red Grange was starting another league, which included a New York Yankees football team.

Kinda funny in 1926, there could have been three New York Giants teams (MLB, NFL and NHL) and two New York Yankees teams (MLB and AFL).