Should Edmonton pass on new name?
Rebranding CFL team makes good business sense, experts say,
What was once a murmur has become a roar, as a global discussion about race has poured new energy into calls for sports teams with Indigenous names to rebrand.
In Canada, the team in the hot seat is the Edmonton Eskimos, a 70-year-old Canadian Football League franchise — arguably the most successful in modern history — that has long taken the field under the banner of an outdated term for Inuit; one with murky, and arguably racist, origins.
The moral case for getting rid of the name has been made — Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, has summed it up as, “Inuit are not mascots.”
But some business experts say there is also a growing financial case for changing the name. Money talks and now that this controversy is hitting owners in the pocketbook, now is the time to rebrand.
“I think it’s really hard in sports to break with tradition, and to change what you’re comfortable with, and that’s what we’re all confronting with diversity issues in sport,” said Ann Pegoraro, the Lang chair in sport management at the University of Guelph.
“But sometimes part of changing the name is also changing with the times.
“Tradition has a place, but so do new fan bases, and reinvigorating your brand.”
Officials with the Edmonton Eskimos released a statement this week, acknowledging the feedback regarding the name.
“We will be seeking further input from the Inuit, our partners and other stakeholders to inform our decisions moving forward.”
It’s highly likely the behind closed doors conversations involve dollar signs. Observers say it would be almost impossible to put a price tag on renaming a team but some research suggests changing the name could have financial benefits in the long run.
One of the people looking into the financial fallout of these names is Mike Lewis, a professor of marketing at Emory University in Atlanta. In 2013, he examined the many NCAA basketball teams that have changed, kept or adapted First Nations mascot in the last decade or so.
While he controlled for variables, including success on the field, he found schools that remove the mascot take a moderate financial hit — usually lasting a year or two — but recover quickly.
Teams that removed the mascot actually made more money in the long run, he said.
“Over time, we’ve got genuine relationships with the teams that we’re fans off,” said Lewis, who also runs a sports fandom podcast called Fanalytics. Sports fans remember where they were during key games, how they felt when their team won the championship, and their bond with the team becomes very real, Lewis says.
“So when you’re going out there and changing the name of the team, there’s this huge kind of disconnect,” he said.
Still, he says the business case at this point should dictate a name change. There’s no question that the team’s under fire, already battered by the economic hit poised by coronavirus, is losing even more money to the controversy.
Belairdirect, a car and home insurance company and key Eskimos sponsor, has publicly declared that its continued support is dependent on a name change. South of the border, the Washington Redskins is at the centre of the storm, and Nike has pulled its merchandise from its website, and many newspapers won’t print the Redskins name.
“The question becomes, ‘what does (Redskins owner) Dan Snyder or whoever owner get out of fighting this battle? Well, they get to preserve their brand equity. They don’t have the cost of coming up with a new name, or all sorts of new signage and imagery. So that’s a plus,” Lewis said. The Edmonton Eskimos are no stranger to the debate over the name. Various sporting teams in central Alberta adopted the name starting in the late 19th century, and the current franchise formed under its banner in 1949.
Although the origins of the name is contested, it is commonly understood to be a twist on an Algonquian term meaning “eaters of raw meat,” and has long been considered offensive by many Inuit.
The debate was catapulted onto the national stage in 2015, when Obed, then freshly elected to the head of the national body that represents Inuit, wrote an opinion piece in a national newspaper, calling the name an “enduring relic of colonial power,” and calling for change.
The team said it was important to do its own research, and embarked on a consultation process that saw team officials meet with Inuit leaders in Iqaluit, Inuvik, Yellowknife and Ottawa.
This February, it announced that since Inuit held “a range of opinions” on the name, the team would keep it.
But with the renewed focus on the name, the team is engaging with Inuit communities again, and expects to report back to the public by the end of July.
Pegoraro, of Guelph, say people often overestimate the importance of a name, and points to other major league teams that have rebranded but kept their fan base.
“I don’t think that if they change the name, people will instantly stop being their fan,” she said.
Changing the name could welcome a new, younger demographic. “If we look at today’s fans who are 30 and under, they look at sports differently, and they don’t necessarily have the same avid attachment to one team,” she said.
Those up and coming potential football fans are keen on values: “We’re looking at a new group of people that are saying, ‘hey, if I want to be a fan of your organization, what do you stand for?’ ”
“I think we are seeing a change across sport right now,” Pegoraro said. “And I think what the Black Lives Matters movement has done is that it has brought us to the point where we’re like, OK, you’re all making these lovely statements — but we want to see more.”