Team President Jason Wright discuss the team's new name, Washington Commanders, how the organization is paying homage to its history while forging a pathway to its future, the process to rebrand a sports franchise of this magnitude and how they are finding innovative ways to enhance the fan experience with Bloomberg Quicktake's Jason Kelly.
The Washington Commanders and the NFL are at odds once again, this time over a proposed change to the team’s new crest.
At the unveiling two weeks ago, the team presented the crest, an homage to its history, with the dates of its five world championships listed.
But fans noted that the dates were the years of the Super Bowl games themselves, not the seasons that preceded the titles.
For instance, the crest says 1992, but the title is commonly credited to the 1991 Redskins team.
According to a source, the team tweaked the crest, changing the years to the Roman numerals of the game.
However, all changes to logos and team identities have to be presented to the NFL for league approval, and the NFL declined Washington’s request.
That’s left Washington in limbo as it works on how best to present its new merchandise to fans.
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A person with knowledge of the situation said the team still is brainstorming ways to tweak the crest to reflect the fan feedback that has been received.
The NFL holds copyrights over a number of elements related to the Super Bowl, including the names of the games, as denoted by the Roman numerals.
There is no other team logo that uses those identifiers, and the NFL requires any merchandise with Super Bowl identifiers to be cleared through the league.
Spokespeople for the NFL and the Commanders both declined to publicly comment on the topic.
The issue comes amid a much larger disagreement between the team and league over disclosures of documents to a U.S. House committee investigating team owner Dan Snyder’s involvement in sexual harassment allegations.
