Nick Bendel
What’s in a name?
October 30th 2008 05:15
Although Ms Capulet would beg to differ, the answer, as far as embryonic sporting organisations are concerned, is plenty.
This is a nation obsessed with sport- indeed, some would call it the Australian disease- to the extent that the marketplace is overflowing with leagues and teams and players. Establishing a presence in such a competitive marketplace is thus extremely challenging, so it is a vital that any new club adopts an appealing name, one that differentiates itself from its competition and ties itself to its region. North Queensland FC would do well to take note.
For those who don’t know, NQFC has been granted permission to enter an expanded A-League next season, in conjunction with Gold Coast United FC. According to the chairman, Don Matheson, the club will soon announce its nickname, which has been taken from 300 suggestions provided by the public. Let us hope it is an inspired choice, because turning a profit will be no mean feat when one considers that the club is to be based in a small city (Townsville), part of a fledgling competition, and chasing money at a time when locals and businesses will be unwilling to part with it.
While a good name can’t make a business, it can go a long way to breaking one. With that in mind, it surely can’t be long before the South Dragons go bust. When the club took its place as Melbourne’s second NBL team in 2006, it decided, for reasons known only to the board, neither to differentiate itself from its competition nor to tie itself to its region. The first mistake was to create an unnecessary turf war with the St George Dragons, one of Australia’s most recognisable teams. The second- and even more foolish- mistake was not to let prospective fans know where it was from. Yes, the club is south- but south of what? Although the NBL is struggling for credibility, grassroots basketball is booming, which means that there are a great many casual followers who might, under certain circumstances, be persuaded to attend a game. However, if these very detached observers think that the Dragons are a rugby league team, or if they’re unsure where this South that they’ve heard a little bit about is from, what are the odds that they’ll make it to the Hisense Arena in time for tip-off?
Logically, the team ought to have called itself South Melbourne. It should also have picked a nickname that clearly identified it with its market- something along the lines of the South Melbourne Trams, only less absurd. That way, more people would know, and more people would care. In the three decades since the NBL was founded, 11 clubs have folded, including luminaries such as the Kings and Bullets, and respected Melbourne identities such as the Magic and Giants, indicating that there is a dangerous shortage of people who know and care about the league. History therefore suggests that for the South Dragons to establish a sustainable financial base, a very steep hill needs to be climbed. Adopting a sensible name would not have flattened the hill, but it would have made the slope gentler; by adopting a senseless name, it has only become more precipitous. North Queensland FC would do well to take note.
Yet NQFC should also note that if the NBL provides negative examples, it provides positive ones as well. As far as names are concerned, the Cairns Taipans and Townsville Crocodiles chose wisely. To begin with, everybody knows where they’re from. Moreover, they are represented by animals that are meaningful to the people of Queensland’s north, and which are not shared by other Australian clubs. In that basic way, when Cairns and Townsville joined the NBL, an instinctive bond would have been created between the two teams and their public. Much work would have remained (and still remains) to be done- but at least a step, however small, was taken in the right direction.
For more positive and negative examples, Matheson and company need only look at the competition they will soon be joining. The poorest judges of a name seem to reside across the Tasman. The defunct New Zealand Knights imprudently selected a nickname that had nothing to do with being a Kiwi, and which created an unnecessary turf war with the well-known Newcastle rugby league team. Another error was to ambitiously adopt the entire country as its heartland; instead, the club should have called itself Auckland, as the only way to ensure its survival was to seduce the locals. The Knights’ successor, the Wellington Phoenix, at least had the wisdom to tie itself to its home city, but it again fell into the trap of adopting a nickname that does nothing to appeal to the emotions of the target market. Something such as the Wellington Sheep would have been infinitely more logical.
If the poorest judges of a name are New Zealanders, the best appear to hail from New South Wales. The founders of the Central Coast realised that for their club to survive, Gosford would be too small an area to be limited to, and thus they prudently opted to align themselves with the region. Another moment of inspiration came when they decided to adopt the Mariners moniker; given that the history and culture of the Central Coast is bound up in the sea, ‘Mariners’ establishes an instinctive connection with the region, in the same way that ‘Phoenix’ fails to do with Wellington. Credit must also go to the brains behind Sydney FC. The nation’s biggest city is full of clubs, many of which have drawn inspiration from the wild (Tigers, Sharks, Bulldogs, Swans, Marlins, etc). Consequently, it would have been confusing to position the new outfit as yet another member of the sporting jungle. Rather, a distinctive and revealing name was adopted, one that immediately let locals know where the club was from, and which code is was playing.
When NQFC enters the A-League next year, the intensely competitive sporting marketplace and the depressed economic climate will make the already demanding task of starting a new business even more demanding. Success will be dependant on many things, but none will be more important than winning the hearts and minds of the people of North Queensland. Commonsense dictates that a Townsville Tigers or Northern Knights is going to inspire none but the most impressionable. Pick a clever name, though, and a lot more people will be receptive to the message that NQFC will be desperately trying to sell.
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