Las Vegas NHL Expansion

[BBTV]

Vegas (big) Golds:

[bleuet]

Vegas Video

Vegas Casinos

Vegas Placeholders

 

No I got it

 

Vegas Outlaw Golden Knights

[BrianLion]

6 hours ago, bleuet said:

Couldnt refrain from doing it. I think it got the spirit!

 

I would buy a t-shirt with this on it, like RIGHT NOW!!!

 

 

[Cosmic]

17 hours ago, WavePunter said:

It's different enough imo that the two would never be conflated unless sold next to each other on adjacent racks at a sporting goods store, but the real issue for me is the fact that they are both more reminiscent of Spartan helmets than knight helmets (at least not the medieval knight imagery most of us are familiar with)

If you think someone could see the two on a shelf next to each other and be confused, that's pretty much the definition of trademark infringement.

 

That doesn't necessarily mean a total rebrand, though. Creighton's logo was opposed by the Toronto Blue Jays, and the solution was for Creighton to always staple their name to their logo to avoid confusion. Personally, I'd like to see Vegas get out of the Army's space a little bit more than that, though.

[tp49]

Also seems to me that Foley forgot some things from his military training namely the element of surprise.  I honestly wonder if there woud be this level of blowback if he hadn't espoused his West Point infatuation at every turn.  Seems to me that if he played his cards close to the vest instead of telling everyone he could what was in his hand Foley would have had a better chance of success.

[Thomas]

Guess the best thing to do now is call the whole thing off.

 

You like potato and I like potahto
You like tomato and I like tomahto
Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto
Let's call the whole thing off

[andrewharrington]

8 hours ago, rams80 said:

 

The Spartan helmet thing is why that's a problem.  I'm pretty sure Army's used that as an emblem for itself in some form or another for a long time.

 

More accurately, it’s a barbute, a helmet style of Italian design that was inspired by earlier Greek helmets. Army’s logo is Athena’s helmet, which, obviously, is an authentic Greek design.

 

 

 

[CreamSoda]

If you look at it this way, and the team decided to call themselves the "Crimson Tide" or "Golden Hurricane" both names would be rejected too.

 

why should golden knights be allowed to pass?

[docrocket]

[BeerGuyJordan]

On 12/10/2016 at 4:07 PM, tp49 said:

Also seems to me that Foley forgot some things from his military training namely the element of surprise.  I honestly wonder if there woud be this level of blowback if he hadn't espoused his West Point infatuation at every turn.  Seems to me that if he played his cards close to the vest instead of telling everyone he could what was in his hand Foley would have had a better chance of success.

This is the biggest stick the Army has, if it decides to pursue a suit. The Army ties have been shouted from the rooftops, from the beginning. Foley has approached the Army, been shot down, and then decided to tweak it and do it any way. The logo has a good shot of getting past the USPTO. The combination of ripping off the Army parachute team name, plus a similar logo to the organization that already told him no gives that Army a case that has a legitimate shot at shutting down Foley's IP.

[Cosmic]

On 12/10/2016 at 5:33 PM, andrewharrington said:

 

More accurately, it’s a barbute, a helmet style of Italian design that was inspired by earlier Greek helmets. Army’s logo is Athena’s helmet, which, obviously, is an authentic Greek design.

 

 

 

I agree and disagree. That is a route they could take to explain/defend it, but it's a cop out to say, "It's not based on historical thing A, it's based on historical thing B (which was itself inspired by A)."

 

Also, I think there are some mixed signals with the Vegas logo. Medieval knights were (almost exclusively?) using steel for their helmets-- obviously silver tone. The gold Vegas helmet makes it look more Army-ish and more Bronze Age in general.

[goalieboy82]

5 hours ago, docrocket said:

this is better:

[andrewharrington]

2 hours ago, Cosmic said:

I agree and disagree. That is a route they could take to explain/defend it, but it's a cop out to say, "It's not based on historical thing A, it's based on historical thing B (which was itself inspired by A)."

 

Also, I think there are some mixed signals with the Vegas logo. Medieval knights were (almost exclusively?) using steel for their helmets-- obviously silver tone. The gold Vegas helmet makes it look more Army-ish and more Bronze Age in general.

 

I mean, sure, those are concessions that sometimes have to be made when juggling inspiration from multiple sources, your own research, and the opinions of everyone involved. I’m just pointing out that because it resembles one thing doesn’t irrefutably mean that it isn’t another (especially when factoring in stylization), if only because of the way artistic influences originated, spread, and evolved over the centuries.

 

Granted, the average person’s knowledge of armor is probably not advanced enough to make the distinction, but when you really look at it with the goal of determining the type of helmet, apart from color, this is more likely to be a barbute than a Greek helmet. I mean, It’s not an accident that it lacks some of the ornate decorative features that were common in Greek helmets but omitted from medieval designs.

[IceCap]

51 minutes ago, andrewharrington said:

 

I mean, sure, those are concessions that sometimes have to be made when juggling inspiration from multiple sources, your own research, and the opinions of everyone involved. I’m just pointing out that because it resembles one thing doesn’t irrefutably mean that it isn’t another (especially when factoring in stylization), if only because of the way artistic influences originated, spread, and evolved over the centuries.

 

Granted, the average person’s knowledge of armor is probably not advanced enough to make the distinction, but when you really look at it with the goal of determining the type of helmet, apart from color, this is more likely to be a barbute than a Greek helmet. I mean, It’s not an accident that it lacks some of the ornate decorative features that were common in Greek helmets but omitted from medieval designs.

Granted, I know more about knights and medieval European history than your average fan, but my mind still goes to "Spartan helmet" and not a barbute, or any other type of knightly headgear. 

 

It's serviceable as a barbute, but the Army Black Knights clearly use a Spartan helmet. And the similarities to that logo, in terms of colour and design, make me think "Spartan" and not "barbute."

Essentially you can blame Foley's massive Army boner for me not giving his logo the benifit of the doubt.

 

That, and I would have preferred a great helm, armet, or bascinet

[_RH_]

9 hours ago, CreamSoda said:

why should golden knights be allowed to pass?

[WavePunter]

On 12/10/2016 at 3:58 PM, Cosmic said:

If you think someone could see the two on a shelf next to each other and be confused, that's pretty much the definition of trademark infringement.

 

That doesn't necessarily mean a total rebrand, though. Creighton's logo was opposed by the Toronto Blue Jays, and the solution was for Creighton to always staple their name to their logo to avoid confusion. Personally, I'd like to see Vegas get out of the Army's space a little bit more than that, though.

People get Alabama and the Atlanta Braves confused all the time due to similarities, especially when the context would suggest one over the other.. I'm simply saying that the ONLY way these two could possibly be conflated is if they were grouped together in a way such that an uninformed customer would assume they were part of the same group of team hats, and that maybe they had come out with an update or new secondary mark they were previously unaware of.. If one's stuck in with NHL hats while the other is mixed into the college caps, I can't see any way they would be confused.. Also, as standalone logos, I don't see any issues.. 

Yes, they're both gold helmets on black shields, but they really look nothing alike..

[Gothamite]

42 minutes ago, WavePunter said:

Also, as standalone logos, I don't see any issues.. 

Yes, they're both gold helmets on black shields, but they really look nothing alike..

 

Sure they do.  You just told us why they do. 

[The_Admiral]

Small notes I didn't know where else to put:

 

Population Explorer is a neat little toy that lets you draw circles or polygons on a map and see how many people live in a given area.

 

I started with Hartford. Within a 25-mile radius (well, 40.25 km) of the Hartford Civic Center, there are 1,790,171 people. Within ~50 miles, there are 3,965,083, but the 50-mile radius clips the tippity-top of Long Island so subtract 7,124 for a total of 3,957,959. Down in Raleigh, there are within 1,570,211 within 25 miles of NC State's arena, and 2,471,370 within 50 miles. Quick number-crunching says Hartford has 114% of Raleigh's 25-mile population and 160% of Raleigh's 50-mile population. Of course, this is the rawest of raw data, so you have to consider that among those numbers are Bruins/NYC3 fans who are unreachable as anything but road fans, or myriad Buffalo/Pittsburgh transplants who are unreachable as anything but road fans, or people who just plain don't like hockey. Then you'd have to consider RSN footprints, which would be ~14.7MM for the Carolinas and ~14MM for New England minus Fairfield, and then whittle those down as you will.

The upshot would appear to be Hartford-New Haven-Springfield MA and Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill are about the same in terms of relevant population. One can intuit that any edge Raleigh has in terms of market exclusivity vis-a-vis the crowded Northeast would be offset by the number of people who wouldn't figure into the hockey market at all (cough, cough, like, all of South Carolina). Knowing what we know now about the value of owning RSN equity, as the Whalers did with then-SportsChannel New England, the better bet for the Whalers would have been to ride out their arena issues and devote themselves to maximizing a flawed but valuable market. Of course, Karmanos never wanted to ride anything out; he pretty obviously bought the Whalers with the intent of relocating them to Auburn Hills, and only settled on Raleigh-via-Greensboro when the league nixed Auburn Hills and an abandoned aircraft hangar outside Columbus. So yeah, Raleigh sucks, don't ever bother defending it or you also suck.

On to Las Vegas, you have 2,013,508 within 25 miles, and in what looks for all the world like an error, 2,061,862 within 50 miles. We don't yet know what the RSN situation will be for this team, but we can safely assume it'll be a subfeed of Fox Sports West or possibly Root Sports Utah rebranded to Mountain West or something. So if it's at the max Nevada and Utah straight-up, that's just under six million. Not really great.

 

Over to Quebec City, there are 860,904 people within 40.25 km (c'est Canada), and 1,038,876 within 80.5 km. But let's add a 100-mile circle, figuring that Canadians are willing to drive stupid amounts of time, and there are 1,769,817. Las Vegas gives you 2,250,200. Still not huge for Quebec, but we weren't expecting huge, just a higher percentage that cares about hockey. The real value of the Nordiques would be in RSN footprint, which, presuming reciprocity with the Habs in Quebec and the Maritimes, would hit 10.3 million (to boot, the Habs add eastern Ontario in English and the whole country in French). 
 

So by my computer-aided napkin math, I would have to say both of the old WHA towns still have more to offer than Las Vegas, the old XFL town. The Quebec Nordiques also wouldn't find themselves hassled by a liberal-arts college and the United States Army, and non-Howard-Baldwin-based Hartford ownership would have been able to press play on a video.

[goalieboy82]

11 hours ago, _RH_ said:

[WavePunter]

11 hours ago, Gothamite said:

 

Sure they do.  You just told us why they do. 

I just told you that they're comprised of various items, which happen to include two that are similar.. However, the shields are visually different, from shape to outlines to shade of gold (which is quite different); and the helmets are very different in a number of ways [orientation, overall shape, crest on top of West Point helmet logo, additional colors (white and grey) in Vegas logo].. Not to mention the additional items (sword and star) in the West Point logo, and overall composition of the two..