The Great Dane
First Grade
- Messages
- 7,960
I totally disagree, that is the only thing that really matters...
Everything else (board members, people behind the scenes, business structure) is entirely playable and entirely changeable between bids.
The one constant that the NRL will have to live with is the brand; THAT is want fans see and that is what they connect with.
If DSmith and the ARLC wanted to (which they probably will considering the hand they have had in reshaping so many current clubs) they can form and change the bids in any way they want. If the bid doesnt like it, the ARLC can move onto the next group.
The only lasting thing that distinguishes one bid from another (besides location) is the brand...
I agree that the brand of new teams will be very important to the NRL because as you say the brand is the thing that the fans interact with and the main thing that they connect and buy into, it's the brand that associates the club with the NRL and the vehicle by which the NRL grows their business, the sport as a whole and slightly ironically their own brand.
However your suggestion that brands cannot be changed or manipulated once they are put in place is absolute BS!
Firstly there's such a thing as a re-brand, plenty of businesses do it including sports teams. As you know both the NRL and Panthers have recently undergone minor re-brand.
Secondly brands naturally change and adapt with time, but we will not get into that right now.
Finally the NRL and ARLC could manipulate the bid teams brands if they wanted to simply by doing what you said above.
The NSWRL manipulated the f##K out of the Raiders bid brand (mostly for the better IMO), the first proposed name for the bid was the Queanbeyan-Canberra Blues, they said Queanbeyan couldn't be in the name, sky blue couldn't be the main colour because that was Cronulla's main colour and that the team couldn't share the name Blues with the NSWs Blues. Then we changed the name to the Canberra Raiders with a the ACTs blue and gold as the team colours, they said no because we couldn't share our main colours with Parramatta and then finally they agreed with the lime green Canberra Raiders brand that we all know and love.
Just quietly I think a few teams that joined the NRL since then would be a lot better off if the people in charge had taken as much time to make their brands unique and interesting as they did with the Raiders, the Titans wouldn't be called the Titans and have a logo of a gladiator/hoplite/whatever the hell that's supposed to be, that's for dammed sure.
So the current names of bids aren't that important in the grand scheme of things and most certainly can be changed.
The arlc are going to be far more worried about fincial sustainability, tv revenue and future growth potential than what the bids have decided to call themselves.
I think you'll find that all those things can be and are effected by the brand.
The brand is just as important as all those things that you name above.