What’s in a name change? The logistics of retiring and creating a team nickname (2024)

So your beloved sports team is going to change its name because of relocation, because of an owner’s rebranding whim, because it’s a slur, or for other reasons.

What does that mean from a nuts-and-bolts perspective for the staff that has to actually do the work of removing the old name from a seemingly endless number of places?

A lot of logistical work for a lot of people is what it means. And it’s typically an 18-month to two-year process to fully implement at a cost of millions of dollars, according to sports branding experts.

Let’s get this out of the way up front: The time and cost of such a change are immaterial for billionaire sports franchise owners and leagues with problematic team names. No one is weeping for team owner Daniel Snyder, who is estimated to be worth $2.6 billion and owns a $100 million-plus yacht equipped with an IMAX theater.

His NFL team is worth $3.4 billion (he paid $750 million for it in 1999), per Forbes.

“At the end of the day, Snyder has a company worth $2 billion to $3 billion,” said sports economist and consultant Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College. “If he has to spend $10 million or $20 million making all these changes and doing new promotion around the team, no one should feel sorry for him. They’ll be able to figure it out. Logistically it’s complicated, but in terms of the struggles other companies and individuals are facing right now, we don’t need to shed any tears for Dan Snyder.”

It’s Snyder’s employees, along with staff from the NFL headquarters and a bevy of suppliers, clients, and business partners, that will have to scrub the old name once a new moniker and logo are finalized. The team reportedly will retain its burgundy and gold color scheme, which will ease the rebranding burden somewhat.

Snyder has been the target of critics over his team’s name, which he has ardently refused to change until announcing on Monday a to-be-decided name is coming and the current name is now retired.

Snyder’s staffers aren’t alone in the rebranding work on the horizon. In Cleveland, the Indians have stated they are studying a possible name change two years after mothballing the widely criticized Chief Wahoo logo. The Chicago Blackhawks and Atlanta Braves have said no name changes are planned for those teams – but similar to Snyder, outside financial pressure from corporate sponsors and retailers could eventually force a rebrand.

Once the renaming decision has been made, the process is more than just polling the public and hiring image consultants and brand developers.

Here’s a quick rundown on the logistics involved in changing a team’s name:

For starters, there is the obvious: Player uniforms and equipment bearing the new name and logo (and possibly the team colors, if the rebrand is a complete overhaul) have to be replaced. New workout gear and clothing for coaches, staff and perhaps the stadium’s game-day staff have to be manufactured in cooperation with apparel makers such as Nike Inc. – a company that pulled Washington’s merchandise from its site recently.

Teams and leagues have in-house creative departments, but often rely on third-party branding companies to create names, logos, and other visual imagery.

Then there’s the signage and printed materials. A team’s name, logo and colors can appear thousands of places just in and around its home ballpark. It’s sometimes literally etched in stone, and team facilities use the name (as is the case of Snyder’s team headquarters). All of that will be replaced, even if it’s out of public view.

“In terms of the physical changes, these are offseason activities but there are a lot of applications you don’t think about,” said Conor O’Flaherty, managing director at New York City-based SME Branding, which has managed team and conference name changes. “Digital – that’s the easiest thing to do. The challenge is the physical. Is (the name) chiseled into concrete? When you think about a facility and when you walk around, you see that brand.”

A team has to ask itself: Will it remove old banners, trophies and historic paraphernalia that use the old name and logo as part of history displays? In the case of a relocation rebrand, that’s a simpler decision than a team shifting names because of racism or bigotry.

There also is a mountain of legal paperwork such as trademarks and copyrights, licensing agreements with makers of apparel, merchandise, and other retail services. That’s work often handled at least in part by the leagues, who ink the licensing deals (and revenue from which is shared among other teams, meaning all NFL clubs have benefitted from Snyder’s merchandise sales).

With online federal trademark applications easily searchable, teams often will file to control a slate of possible names (and sometimes have to battle in court for them) for rebranding or for other business functions such as stadium and arena names. They often leak.

“Franchises will move forward with trademarking a number of names to protect those, and perhaps to keep people guessing,” O’Flaherty said.

Teams also will have contracts, legal, medical, governmental and insurance documents to update, which is the work of attorneys and other front office staff.

On the technical side, team and league staff have to work to replace the old name with the new one on official websites, social channels, mobile apps – and not just on the team’s properties, but for all the other teams and the league itself. Email addresses have to be updated. Major leagues have direct access to companies like Twitter and Facebook, so that can hasten a transition process.

Also requiring updates: Mountains of advertising and marketing materials. Billboards. Tickets. Name badges. Business cards. Limited edition beer cans and cups. Entire team retail stores. And old logo merchandise has to be destroyed, recycled or donated. The list goes on and on.

Media partners such as local and national TV, radio and digital carriers of the team and league’s content have to get the new name, logo, colors, and lettering, meaning the rebrand update is work for more than staffers in Washington and Cleveland.

While there is a lot of work involved for low-level staffers, suppliers, partners, and consultants, it can be done, and has been done in many places.

It’s a far more comprehensive process in 2020 than when, say, the New York Highlanders became the Yankees in 1913, when the New York Titans rebranded as the Jets in 1963, and when the Houston Colt .45s were renamed the Astros in 1965.

In recent years, there have been a handful of significant major league rebrands, such as the Washington Bullets becoming the Wizards in 1997; the Houston Oilers relocating to become the Tennessee Oilers in 1997 and then the Titans in 1999, and the New Orleans Hornets becoming the Pelicans in 2013.

Other entire sports organizations have changed names with little trouble. Pro wrestling’s WWE was known as the WWF from 1979 until 2002, when it lost in court to the World Wildlife Foundation.

Complete rebrands often occur when a team relocates to a new market, such as the Montreal Expos becoming the Washington Nationals in 2005 and when the Winnipeg Jets relocated to Phoenix as the Coyotes in 1996. And the Browns, of course, became the Baltimore Ravens in 1996 – a name change not without problems – while the NFL opted to retain Cleveland’s name, colors, logos, and history for the replacement team in 1999.

Perhaps the most common rebrand stems from nicknames that are offensive to Indigenous peoples, as name changes have been made many times for high school and college teams. O’Flaherty said his SME Branding agency has managed the University of North Dakota’s change from the Fighting Sioux to Fighting Hawks in 2015. It did the same in 1994-95 for St. John’s University’s switch to the Red Storm and the 1997-98 Miami University (Ohio) change to RedHawks (the team had shared the same nickname as Snyder’s NFL team).

Ending negative connotations or outright racism is critical in the 21st century as a business imperative, regardless of the work and cost involved. And picking the best replacement name is nearly as important, branding experts say.

“It’s not as simple as changing a name and logo. It goes to the heart of what these franchises are and what they present,” O’Flaherty said. “How do different groups perceive these names? How do they resonate?”

Even with an enormous punch list that will take years and cost millions, a name change functionally begins with the decision on what to call the team. Franchises and leagues have to tread carefully to find a popular but inoffensive name and logo and branding experts say fans need to feel like part of the process. No one wants to go from a problematic name to a silly or dumb name that brings a fresh wave of scorn (particularly if the team is mediocre or worse when it comes to wins and losses, such as Snyder’s team).

“Not engaging the fan base and stakeholders and building something true to the franchise … doing it in isolation is risky,” O’Flaherty said. “It’s a much more complex process than people think.”

A rebrand also affects team and league business partners, particularly apparel makers and retailers that help generate billions of dollars in shared revenue.

“Despite all of the progress that has been made by Fanatics on time-to-market issues, there still are long lead times for retail-based products,” said Jonathan Jensen, a sports marketing expert and professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Taking weeks and months to get new merchandise in front of fans, while the old stuff is unavailable, means a revenue stream is cut off at a time when a global pandemic has siphoned billions from live sports.

Bureaucracy can make a rebrand messy, too. Jensen pointed at the often-traveled Rams as an example of licensing issues. The team started in Cleveland in 1937, moved to Los Angeles in 1946, then to St. Louis in 1995 before returning to L.A. in 2015.

“In the NFL specifically, this came up a while back when the Rams wanted to rebrand upon moving (back) to L.A. but the NFL wouldn’t let them immediately move away from the St. Louis-era gold on their jerseys, which led to the unfortunate situation of the helmets being royal blue and white, yet the uniforms still were navy and gold,” Jensen said. “Everyone agreed it was not a good look, yet the team’s hands were tied. They eventually just decided to postpone the rebrand until they moved into their new stadium this fall so it all could be debuted together.”

The league could expedite Washington’s rebrand because of the offensive nature of the current name.

So what do the teams and leagues that have to do the work have to say about the logistics of it all?

Not much at the moment.

Sean DeBarbieri, director of communications for the soon-to-be-renamed Washington NFL team, said via email that the team isn’t making anyone available to talk about the process of changing the name until the internal review process is complete. It’s unclear when that might be.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league isn’t discussing the name-change process at this point. It is known the league must approve any name change.

Cleveland Indians spokesman Curtis Danburg said they are not commenting beyond their initial statement about a possible name change. While MLB hasn’t commented, rebrands are known to require league approval and help is provided via MLB’s design services, legal and marketing arms. All of the leagues have such in-house units to help the process.

The NHL declined to comment.

A bit more is known about the NBA process.

The league requires a Board of Governors, i.e. owners, vote on any name change, and the process must begin 28 months before the start of the season in which the change occurs. The NBA manages the identity-change process for teams and all affected licensing, retail, and broadcast partners. It makes help available for the team’s in-house creative department and any outside branding agency hired for the process.

The NBA also handles copyright and trademark filings domestically and internationally as well as the process for searching and securing domain names for any new website or future digital use.

Whatever the approval process and logistics, the moment has arrived for teams like Washington to make the change and then stand by the new name.

“I think now is the time. There are some fans who always will be against it because their feeling is nothing is wrong with these names,” O’Flaherty said. “Fans, regardless of the name or design, will push back on it. The team needs to be prepared to push back. These changes have been happening across the college sports world for much of the last 20 years in the sports world.”

(Top photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)