Possible new 51s name emerges
Trademark applications filed for Aviators
The Las Vegas 51s announced plans to rebrand for next season in April. Now, one of the front-runners appears to have been identified.
The owners of the team have filed 20 different trademark applications for what appears to be a potential new name for the club — the Las Vegas Aviators.
The Howard Hughes Corp. put in trademark applications for memorabilia, apparel and other items June 6. The applicant is listed as Summerlin Las Vegas Baseball Club LLC, an entity controlled by Howard Hughes Corp.
Team president Don Logan, who said he didn’t know about the applications until Monday, said they were filed to prevent cybersquatting and that Aviators remains in the mix, along with four or five other names. A Howard Hughes Corp. representative did not return a call for comment. “There’s a bunch of names submitted. One of the top submissions was the Aviators. And when you look through those and some of the other NAME
names, that will still remain nameless, apparently one of the things that people do, they call it cybersquatters, so we’re trying to prevent cybersquatters from getting it,” Logan said. “What they do is they go guess what your name might be, and then when you want to buy the domains and stuff, you’ve got to pay them for it. There’s companies that do that, so in an attempt to head off cybersquatters, that’s why they did it, and that’s why nobody knew about it.”
Some of the other names the team has identified are less likely to be squatted on, Logan said.
Detroithockey.net’s Clark Rasmussen reported last week that a lawyer with Howard Hughes Corp. had registered 16 web domains relating to the possible new name, including aviatorslv.com, lasvegasaviatorsbaseball.com and thelvaviators.com.
A Twitter account with the handle @ Lvaviators was opened this month, and so was a Facebook account under The Las Vegas Aviators, which is listed as a “Sports Team.”
Howard Hughes was an avid flyer during his lifetime. His crowning achievement was the Spruce Goose, the largest wooden airplane ever constructed. In fact, the 2004 motion picture about Hughes’ life was titled “The Aviator.”
“That’s an important element for the Hughes Corp.,” Logan said. “We’ve got
people involved in that at a lot of different levels. A big part of this whole endeavor is to really honor and promote the Hughes brand. … You want some cohesion.
“It’s got to make sense, and ultimately the investors in the company have got to understand that everybody is paying attention and really doing their best to promote the brand. The brand is very important.”
The 51s held a team-naming sweepstakes and received thousands of submissions from fans. Aviators was one of the most popular names the team received.
This month Logan said the team would narrow the choices down to five choices imminently.
“We want the fans to pick it,” Logan said Monday. “It’s something that the fans should get to vote on, and we’re going to do that.”
The first timeline called for releasing the team’s name in November, though Logan said recently he thought it would be sooner than that, because construction on Las Vegas Ballpark in Summerlin is underway, and a name would be woven into design elements, hats, memorabilia and other things would need to be produced.
“I think you’ve got to get the name done sooner,” Logan said. “The sooner you have the name done, then you can figure out more ways to integrate it into the different elements of the stadium.”
Contact Betsy Helfand at bhelfand@ reviewjournal.com. Follow @Betsyhelfand on Twitter.