Nets Elevate Secondary Logo to Primary?

[Gothamite]

 

30 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The Nets could win championship after championship and they'd still never approach the level of support that the Knicks have in the City and throughout the region, simply because they'll always be perceived as merely a Brooklyn team.

 

When you can demonstrate that they don’t have any season ticket holders in any other borough, then your assertion might be reasonable.  Until then...
 

30 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The Islanders and the Devils both won multiple Stanley Cups, yet remain on the far fringes of New York City fan culture, with negligible support throughout the City (notwithstanding David Putty), and wirh none at all outside each team's little enclave. The Nets are stuck in that same category.

 

No, they really aren’t.  
 

They are on the far fringes of New York City fan culture because they’re on the far fringes of New York City.  No New Yorker would ever claim a serious comparison between any of the boroughs and either Long Island or New Jersey.  

 

[IceCap]

9 hours ago, hawk36 said:

Maybe it's because I'm old, and in the 70s we used to yell, "NET" after releasing the ball and knowing (hoping) it would go in. So I always thought of the Nets as the action not the piece of equipment. Probably doesn't make the name any better (could be the Brooklyn Swish) but at least I didn't think it was the actual net. 

You're overthinking it. 

They wanted to follow the naming convention of the Mets and Jets, and "Nets" was the best they could do for a basketball team. That's it. That's the origin of the name. 

 

9 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Don't disregard what I mentioned about Brooklyn not having any suburbs. A Brooklyn team's entire home market is thus the borough itself only. That is about 2.5 million people, or the size of the Kansas City metropolitan area, which is one of the smallest metropolitan areas in major pro sports. It compares rather unfavourably to the New York City metropolitan area — the home zone of a New York team — which has about 20 million people. The Nets in fact left money on the table by identifying with Brooklyn rather than with New York City.

This assumes the name "Brooklyn" only makes them marketable to Brooklyn, and that everyone immediately outside of Brooklyn will reject them because of the name. I don't agree with that at all. 

 

"Brooklyn" has a brand beyond the New York City Metropolitan Area. A brand on par with a major city, even if it is just a borough of NYC. 

Beyond that though? I find it hard to believe that fans in Queens or the rest of Long Island will reject them because of the name. You keep saying "Brooklyn has no suburbs" but come on. There are parts of the NYC Metro Area that would traditionally be the Nets' market if they were just the New York Nets- Queens, Long Island- that have traditionally been the stomping grounds of NY's "secondary" teams. 

I don't see how "Brooklyn" keeps them from tapping into the same market the Jets, Mets, and Islanders do. 

 

9 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

By trading New Jersey for Brooklyn, the team has simply exchanged one type of marginalised obscurity for another...

That's not accurate at all. 
New Jersey is (perhaps unfairly) the butt of jokes. 

Brooklyn is the only sub-section of a North American city with enough cache to its name to work as part of a pro sports team's name. 

[TaylorMade]

All this talk about the the team being the Brooklyn Knights but no one has as of yet mentioned how that would have made the team name sound like "Brooklynites" (your opinion on whether that's good or bad may vary).

[Gothamite]

3 hours ago, TaylorMade said:

All this talk about the the team being the Brooklyn Knights but no one has as of yet mentioned how that would have made the team name sound like "Brooklynites" (your opinion on whether that's good or bad may vary).

That was half of the appeal!

[Around the Horn]

8 hours ago, TaylorMade said:

All this talk about the the team being the Brooklyn Knights but no one has as of yet mentioned how that would have made the team name sound like "Brooklynites" (your opinion on whether that's good or bad may vary).

That's why the Brooklyn Knight was the mascot.

[Mitch B]

I'm not well versed with the dynamics of Greater NYC sports fandom or consumerism, but I for one love the Brooklyn Nets branding.  It's retro, simple and cool.  I hate seeing the brand get muddied with all the alternate jerseys but that appears to be a sign of the times.

[El Scorcho]

As someone who doesn't live in the US, Brooklyn is a far more recognisable and marketable place name than half of the existing NBA teams. I don't think they've lost anything by not going with New York. New York belongs to the Knicks and trying to compete on that battlefield would have been a mistake IMO.

 

I think Brooklyn suited the theme they were going for, which is urban, hip-hop, streetwise. They knew they couldn't compete with the Knicks, so they went in a totally different direction and they've stuck to that direction really well, right up to the Bed-Stuy jerseys this season.

 

Compare them to the Clippers, who also have to share a city with a juggernaut established brand with a huge fanbase. The Clippers have just gone super generic with everything, where as the Nets have carved their own path, and going with Brooklyn ahead of New York was a big part of that IMO.

[hawk36]

2 hours ago, El Scorcho said:

Compare them to the Clippers, who also have to share a city with a juggernaut established brand with a huge fanbase. The Clippers have just gone super generic with everything, where as the Nets have carved their own path, and going with Brooklyn ahead of New York was a big part of that IMO.

That's an interesting point. I wonder if the Clippers would be more popular if they were the Southern California Clippers? Basically say we'll take all outside LA as our fans. I don't know.

 

I believe in Italian soccer that's Lazio's deal. Both Lazio and Roma play in the same stadium in Rome but Roma is seen as Rome's team and Lazio is seen as the region's team.  

[Lights Out]

For all the praise of the Nets' marketing, their attendance is still shockingly low (only 21st in the league) and they have one of the smallest fanbases in the NBA. This is despite the fact that they've been in Brooklyn for many years now, just got Kyrie and KD, and the Knicks continue to be the biggest joke in pro sports. Clearly, what they're doing isn't resonating with many people.

[Gothamite]

3 hours ago, Lights Out said:

For all the praise of the Nets' marketing, their attendance is still shockingly low (only 21st in the league) and they have one of the smallest fanbases in the NBA. This is despite the fact that they've been in Brooklyn for many years now, just got Kyrie and KD, and the Knicks continue to be the biggest joke in pro sports. Clearly, what they're doing isn't resonating with many people.

 

It's because they have ranged from mediocre to outright sucking.   Performance matters in this entertainment-saturated town, where the local sports teams are up against a million other world-class competitors all vying for the hearts and wallets of consumers.

 

The Knicks can coast by on the advantage granted by their history and to an extent by their location, as corporations based in Downtown and Midtown can buy tickets for entertaining their clients (disclosure: my own firm has seats at the Garden and I routinely get emails letting me know they're all available for our personal use).  The Nets are starting from scratch, don't have the same central location, and have to produce on the court.  Which they haven't.

 

But their brand?  It's the one thing they have going for them, and they still move a ton of merchandise all over the world.  I would not doubt that tapping in to the "Brooklyn" brand is central to that.  Even with the Nets' attendance, their minority owner just paid a total of $2.35 billion to acquire full control of the team.  He knows more than anyone else what they're worth, and he just ponied up big.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

On 12/20/2019 at 6:28 AM, Mitch B said:

I'm not well versed with the dynamics of Greater NYC sports fandom or consumerism, but I for one love the Brooklyn Nets branding.

 

On 12/20/2019 at 8:56 AM, El Scorcho said:

As someone who doesn't live in the US, Brooklyn is a far more recognisable and marketable place name than half of the existing NBA teams.

 

On 12/20/2019 at 1:09 PM, Lights Out said:

For all the praise of the Nets' marketing, their attendance is still shockingly low (only 21st in the league) and they have one of the smallest fanbases in the NBA.

 

The Nets can sell merchandise in the Midwest and in Europe. But they can't fill the arena or draw a television audience. And that will never change no matter what they win.

 

 

On 12/20/2019 at 3:53 PM, Gothamite said:

It's because they have ranged from mediocre to outright sucking. 

 

Nope. When the Nets moved from New Jersey, they were on the way up. They had re-signed Deron Williams and had traded for Joe Johnson; and they had retained Brook Lopez, who was so good that the team wouldn't pull the trigger on trading him for Dwight Howard in his prime. The Nets surged from 22 wins to 49 wins in their first season after the move. Then the next year they acquired Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett in a trade which has since been ridiculed as one of the worst ever on account of the draft picks the Nets gave up, but which at the time was seen as a serious championship move by a solid playoff team.

 

The Nets were serious contenders for a title in their first years in Brooklyn, and made the playoffs for the first three years. Yet they never came close to the Knicks in attendance, including in 2014-15, when the Knicks won only 17 games. If the Nets were going to take Brooklyn from the Knicks, that's the time that we would have seen it. But the Knicks' visits to the Barclays Center resulted in crowds that were cheering more for the Knicks than for the Nets, just as had been the case in Newark and East Rutherford. (And the same was true when the Celtics visited.)

 

Also, the Nets' local television ratings were comically low, even when they were the only New York team fighting for, and making, the playoffs. This is puzzling only if one ignores the fact that the Nets are not really perceived by the region's fans as a "New York team", so no one in the New York area outside Brooklyn cares what they do.

 

 

On 12/20/2019 at 3:53 PM, Gothamite said:

Even with the Nets' attendance, their minority owner just paid a total of $2.35 billion to acquire full control of the team.  He knows more than anyone else what they're worth, and he just ponied up big.

 

The current owner, like the previous owner, is not from the area. He sees the Nets as a big deal, based on Brooklyn's name recognition around the country and around the world, just as some of our non-New Yorker commenters here do.

 

But the owner will soon come to understand, as the previous owner eventually did, that the Nets are very much not a big deal in the New York City sports scene. And the (unlikely) return to form of Kevin Durant is not going to change that fundamental fact.

 

So I hope that Tsai will be satisfied at having paid all that money for the privilege of selling jerseys in Berlin and Madrid. Because he's not likely to get much more than that out of his investment.

 

Major league pro teams' values usually trend upwards with time; so the Nets' value might very well appreciate somewhat. But, by the time the current owner tires of banging his head against the wall, he will be lucky to get out breaking even in adjusted dollars — unless he can find yet another sucker with unrealistic expectations that ignore the realities on the ground. 

[kroywen]

On 12/20/2019 at 1:09 PM, Lights Out said:

For all the praise of the Nets' marketing, their attendance is still shockingly low (only 21st in the league) and they have one of the smallest fanbases in the NBA. This is despite the fact that they've been in Brooklyn for many years now, just got Kyrie and KD, and the Knicks continue to be the biggest joke in pro sports. Clearly, what they're doing isn't resonating with many people.

 

Dare I say, they had a decent built-in fanbase in Jersey, and threw it away to compete in an area where the Knicks were already dominant? 

 

Long Islanders proved that they don't have much of an interest in making the trip to Brooklyn with the failed Islanders move. I live in Queens and it takes me half the time to get to MSG as it does to Barclays Center. Their old fanbase in Jersey has to take a long trek involving multiple train transfers (often directly under MSG, ironically) to get there. And of all the sports venues in NYC, Barclays has likely the worst access via car (MSG is right off the Lincoln Tunnel and the West Side Highway and has a slew of absurdly expensive private garages around it). Unless you live in core Manhattan or Brooklyn, Barclays is pretty much a bear to get to. I can't help but wonder if that's playing a part in the Nets' struggles as well.

[Gothamite]

3 minutes ago, kroywen said:

Dare I say, they had a decent built-in fanbase in Jersey

 

No, they didn’t. 
 

I bought same-day walk-up tickets to a Finals game, and sat in a half-empty section.  

 

[Around the Horn]

On 12/20/2019 at 1:09 PM, Lights Out said:

For all the praise of the Nets' marketing, their attendance is still shockingly low (only 21st in the league) and they have one of the smallest fanbases in the NBA. This is despite the fact that they've been in Brooklyn for many years now, just got Kyrie and KD, and the Knicks continue to be the biggest joke in pro sports. Clearly, what they're doing isn't resonating with many people.

The first year in Brooklyn they had great attendance and so much hype around the team. Then they shot themselves in the foot with that stupid Boston trade and just never recovered.

[Lights Out]

10 hours ago, Around the Horn said:

The first year in Brooklyn they had great attendance and so much hype around the team. Then they shot themselves in the foot with that stupid Boston trade and just never recovered.

They were 16th in attendance their first year in Brooklyn. Slightly better than where they are now, but not great by any stretch of the imagination.

 

People have criticized the Clippers' marketing by comparison in this thread, but at least when the Clippers are good, they're top 10 in attendance. They also had a long sellout streak during the Lob City days. With the Nets, hype, stars and on-court success don't seem to move the needle very much in terms of getting people to show up to games. I'm not sure what the solution is, but their current strategy isn't working.

 

Maybe their ticket prices are too high? I know one of the Clippers' biggest selling points has traditionally been having more affordable tickets than the Lakers. I'm not sure what the Nets' prices are like, but if they're charging the same prices as the Knicks for a product without the generational loyalty and local cachet that the Knicks have, they're not being realistic.

[The_Admiral]

Hey, the ugliest or second-ugliest building in New York ain't gonna pay for itself.

[spartacat_12]

On 12/19/2019 at 12:10 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The Nets in fact left money on the table by identifying with Brooklyn rather than with New York City.

 

The Nets could win championship after championship and they'd still never approach the level of support that the Knicks have in the City and throughout the region, simply because they'll always be perceived as merely a Brooklyn team. The Islanders and the Devils both won multiple Stanley Cups, yet remain on the far fringes of New York City fan culture, with negligible support throughout the City (notwithstanding David Putty), and wirh none at all outside each team's little enclave. The Nets are stuck in that same category.

 

Calling them the New York Nets wouldn't change the fact that they're a second tier team in the city, the same way that the Mets play second fiddle to the Yankees despite being a "New York" team. The Clippers & Angels use "Los Angeles", but are still far behind the Lakers & Dodgers in the market. 

 

The Nets decided they'd rather be the #1 Brooklyn team instead of just being the #6 or 7 New York team. That doesn't mean they are incapable of carving out their own niche fanbase outside of the borough, it just means that they have a unique signifier that separates themselves from the other teams in the city.

[Gothamite]

And don’t forget, they still sell a hell of a lot of Brooklyn-branded merchandise. Have since the start, when they sold more stuff in one single day than their entire last year in New Jersey. 
 

 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

1 hour ago, spartacat_12 said:

Calling them the New York Nets wouldn't change the fact that they're a second tier team in the city, the same way that the Mets play second fiddle to the Yankees despite being a "New York" team.

 

Anyone who was here from the mid-80s through the early 90s will know that it is absolutely possible for the Mets to eclipse the Yankees and to take over the town.

 

From 1983 through 1988, the Yankees were one of the best teams in the American League, averaging 90 wins per year. But no one knew it, on account of Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Keith Hernandez, Ron Darling, and the rest of the colourful Mets, who drew all the coverage. The Mets won even more than the Yankees did, averaging 95 wins a year from 1984 through 1990, earning two division titles and a World Championship, and participating in exciting pennant races in some of the years that they didn't win their division.

 

As a consequence, the Mets were by far the dominant team in town. This disparity reached its height in 1990, when the Yankees came in last, while the Mets contended all year, being in first place as late as September, before finishing second. Attendance reflected this, as the Mets outdrew the Yankees by 700,000 in  both 1989 and 1990.

 

The point is that the entire question of which team is dominant was based on the relative quality of the teams, and on the size of their personalities. Even the good Yankee teams of that period (e.g.: the 1985 team — featuring Mattingly, Winfield, Henderson, Guidry — which was eliminated on the season's next-to-last day) were overshadowed by tiresome Steinbrennerish madness, with the firings of Yogi, Billy, and Piniella; and plenty of fans turned their backs on this circus. Meanwhile, the Mets had a brilliant leader in Davey Johnson and exciting young stars, and kept on rolling, even despite highly-publicised squabbles amongst Hernandez, Carter, and Strawberry. These Met teams were embraced by the media and by the fans; and so the Mets were on top.

 

It is sometimes suggested that the two teams' fans are divided geographically as in Chicago, with the Mets' fan base being primarily in Queens and on Long Island. But, speaking as someone who grew up in Queens in the 70s as a Yankee fan surrounded by other Yankee fans, I can dispel this. In reality, both teams appeal to fans throughout the entire City. Right now the Yankees have more of these fans. But the Mets had more of them in the years immediately following 1984, and also in the years between their first two trips to the World Series, 1969 and 1973. And one day, eventually, the Mets will once again have more fans than the Yankees, and will take over again, even despite the Yankees' incomparable history.

 

By contrast, with the Knicks and Nets, the matter is not cyclical. There is literally nothing the Nets can do to take over the town from the Knicks in the way that the Mets took over the town from the Yankees on several occasions. Championships won't do it; star players won't do it; the Knicks sucking won't do it.

 

The reason is simply that, even in the best possible circumstances, the Nets can never appeal to as many people as the Knicks do. And this is down to the Nets being tied to one section of New York City, and thus having zero appeal to the vast majority of the fans in the City and in the larger region (even if some yokels in other parts of the country consider "Brooklyn" cool).

[spartacat_12]

42 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

By contrast, with the Knicks and Nets, the matter is not cyclical. There is literally nothing the Nets can do to take over the town from the Knicks in the way that the Mets took over the town from the Yankees on several occasions. Championships won't do it; star players won't do it; the Knicks sucking won't do it.

 

The reason is simply that, even in the best possible circumstances, the Nets can never appeal to as many people as the Knicks do. And this is down to the Nets being tied to one section of New York City, and thus having zero appeal to the vast majority of the fans in the City and in the larger region (even if some yokels in other parts of the country consider "Brooklyn" cool).

 

The Yankees are literally known as the Bronx Bombers, yet they're the most popular sports team in the tri-state area, so this logic really makes no sense. A team's appeal has almost nothing to do with the specific geographic indicator they use, there are tons of other variables that determine it. The Raptors & Blue Jays appeal to an entire country without being called the Canada Blue Jays/Raptors, and the Coyotes switching from Phoenix to Arizona didn't magically fix their attendance issues.

 

I'm not saying the Nets will definitely overtake the Knicks in terms of popularity in NYC, but to say it can never happen is ludicrous. If Dolan keeps running the Knicks the way he has since taking over, and Durant & Kyrie manage to turn the Nets into perennial contenders, there's no reason why the two organizations can't at least be on level ground at some point.