The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Steve Carp is reporting that the quest for a new name for the Las Vegas NHL Hockey Franchise is proving elusive. In fact, for owner Bill Foley, it is becoming down right frustrating.
“We have a lot of names in mind but a lot of the ones I really liked are trademarked, so that’s a little bit of an issue,” Carp reported Foley as saying.
In the old days you simply named your team and that was it. There are St Louis Cardinals, Arizona Cardinals, the Louisville Cardinal. Now, however, everything trademarks and copyrights their name. In fact, speculators go out and trademark everything they can get there hands on, even buying up every potential Internet URL and web site name just on the possibility they can turn their ownership into a big payday.
We have a lot of names in mind but a lot of the ones I really liked are trademarked, so that’s a little bit of an issue
This is the part of modern society that drives me nuts. You can’t name your team what you want to, because someone owns the trademark, and to have the right to use the name you want to, you have to pay princely
extortion
fees.
And so you and I are stuck talking about “Las Vegas Hockey” instead of the Aces, or Knights, or Hitmen, or Scorpions, Mobsters, Outlaws, Heat, Storm, Road Runners, Atoms, Dry Heats, Bighorns, 86ers or any of the hundred and one other names that have been bandied about.
Infernos anyone? I could get behind that name.
In the end, it will cost the franchise a ton of money – money paid to whoever Bill Foley has to pay off to get the rights to the name. More money lost from sales of memorabilia and team gear unsold because we yet have even a color combination settled.
Of course, here in Las Vegas the nameless NHL franchise is quickly becoming a cottage industry. Practically every bar, web site and newspaper is running their very own Name the Team contest. Carp’s own Review-Journal is running a 64-name tournament where visitors vote in head-to-head vote-downs.
Las Vegas Headliners? Okay, maybe not a good name.
And since there is silence on the future of the Las Vegas practice facility, and coach, and a hundred and one other details, an unknown team name for our Las Vegas NHL franchise will just have to do for hockey fans to drink a cold one and debate what is in a name.
Hey Bill Foley, how about the Las Vegas Chukwallas?
.