NFL’s D.C. Team Walks Name-Change Path That May Run 10,000 Miles
- Even sports teams go to extreme lengths to hide new names
- Tonga and Mauritius are popular spots to file for trademarks
The Washington Football Team celebrates after getting an interception against the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey Jan 9.
Photographer: Dustin Satloff/Getty Images
The Washington Football Team has teased its long-awaited rebranding for months -- but good luck to anyone trying to uncover the NFL club’s new name before next week’s official announcement.
Sports franchises and other businesses resort to extreme measures to keep interlopers at bay ahead of a big trademark announcement. Protecting a new name can mean using innocuous-sounding limited liability companies and registering in far-off nations that don’t have easily searched databases, such as Tonga or Trinidad and Tobago. Cleveland’s Major League Baseball club filed in Mauritius when it renamed the team the Guardians.