The Renaissance Heart (complicated of skyscrapers with the Chrevrolet signal) by the Detroit River.
Roberto Machado Noa | Lightrocket | Getty Photographs
As cities throughout the nation vie for the subsequent Girls’s Nationwide Basketball Affiliation crew, the league quietly filed a trademark utility this week for the identify “Detroit Shock.”
The submitting, dated Thursday, notes the supposed use is for a basketball crew, merchandise, jerseys and in-arena signage that might seem on TV or radio broadcasts. It might provide clues into the league’s final determination for the placement of a brand new franchise.
On Friday, Detroit Pistons proprietor Tom Gores submitted a bid for the Motor Metropolis to host a brand new crew. The possession group could be led by Gores and likewise consists of Detroit Lions principal proprietor and chair Sheila Ford Hamp; former Detroit Pistons stars Grant Hill and Chris Webber; Basic Motors CEO Mary Barra; and Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff.
“Detroit is a sports activities city that loves its groups deeply and constantly exhibits up with unwavering ardour,” Gores stated in a press release.
The WNBA and Detroit Pistons didn’t instantly reply to CNBC’s request for touch upon the trademark utility.
The brand new trademark utility by the WNBA is the one submission from the skilled ladies’s basketball league since early December, in accordance with Josh Gerben, a trademark legal professional at Gerben IP, who is just not concerned with the precise submitting.
In contrast to different skilled sports activities leagues the place particular person groups personal their very own trademark filings, the WNBA holds the rights to all names and logos for the league’s franchises, in accordance with Gerben.
The Detroit Shock brand on a T-shirt.
Courtesy: Detroit Shock
“Circumstantial proof could be that [Detroit’s] is a profitable bid they usually’re very a lot planning on getting this going to have filed that trademark utility,” Gerben informed CNBC.
Nevertheless, Gerben stated the submitting may be a means for the league to guard itself towards “squatters” or others attempting to make use of the identify.
One other trademark utility was filed for the “Detroit Shock” by a person named Ryan Reed in July 2023, however that trademark has but to be authorized. An individual with the identical identify, purportedly based mostly in Detroit, identifies because the founding father of a ladies’s basketball league on LinkedIn.
The Detroit Shock have been a WNBA crew based mostly in Auburn Hills, Michigan, from 1998 to 2009. The crew gained three WNBA Championships in 2003, 2006 and 2008. In 2009, the franchise moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, the place they performed till 2015. Immediately, they play in Arlington, Texas, because the Dallas Wings.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert stated on the WNBA Finals in October that at the least 10 cities had expressed curiosity in launching an growth crew.
“We’re not in an enormous rush. We might prefer to convey it in ’27 or no later than ’28,” Engelbert stated on the time in regard to including a sixteenth crew.
Cleveland, Kansas Metropolis, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Houston, Austin, Nashville and Milwaukee are among the many places looking for to convey ladies’s skilled basketball to their cities.