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August 1, 2008
The Brooklyn Ratners or the Ratner Nets? What if team names in the U.S. were more like those in Japan?
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder continues his conversation with Field of Schemes author and blogger Neil deMause.
Q. I noticed in your book that you think a more honest approach to the names of sports teams would be the Japanese one, taking the names of owners, so we'd have the Steinbrenner Yankees or the Turner Braves--or, I might add, the Ratner Nets.
[Japanese team names include the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, named for major shareholder Nippon Ham, and the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, named for SoftBank.]
A. The teams are named for the corporations that own them. But then so are the New York Red Bulls, because they’re owned by Red Bull sports drink. The WNBA Connecticut Sun are owned by the Mohegan Sun casino and play there, basically bought and moved there to be a selling point for the casino.
There was talk at one point of moving the Grizzlies, when they were moving to Memphis, where FedEx is based, and naming them the Memphis Express, and that would be part of the naming rights deal.
...Q. So, in Brooklyn, [if the Nets move,] it should be the Brooklyn Ratners?
A. Maybe the Brooklyn Barclays. There’s no reason not to do that, except I think there’s still a little bit of squeamishness among fans about having that much of a corporate name. You could be wearing this on your hat and shirt, you don’t want it to be just a corporate logo.
Posted by eric at August 1, 2008 8:50 AM