Sporting Kansas City: Well, It's A Name

Ultimately the fans of the Kansas City MLS team will decide whether or not their new name — Sporting Kansas City — is a good one.

Either they'll come to overlook its clunkiness the way Real Salt Lake supporters have overlooked their team's moniker or they'll reject the name by ... well doing what exactly? Has there ever been an instance of U.S. sports fans refusing to support a team based solely on their name choice? Has there ever been a study suggesting a team's name has a direct correspondence to merchandise sales that last beyond the first few months?

The reality is people will love the new name or be ambivalent about it, but they probably aren't going to start burning their season tickets or refuse to support the team over it.

Like most rebrandings, there has been an immediate reflexive response. There are plenty of critical comments about the name on the team's "Big News" Facebook page. Lots of pundits are having fun with the fact that for most of the day, even after the official announcement, sportingkc.com sent you to the FC Dallas homepage (it's now fixed). The name has spawned a sometimes hilarious, sometimes trite Twitter hashtag — #futureMLSfranchises — that has produced names like Fresnobahce, Atlas Shrugged de Orange County, Key West Ham United and Bayern Muncie.

You can rest assured this all will pass.

By the start of next season, this relaunch is going to be judged in much more real terms than the quality of the name, crest or uniform. It's going to judged by results.

The Wizards name had some history, that should not be ignored. They won a MLS Cup and Supporters' Shield in 2000, they won a U.S. Open Cup in 2004, they won three conference championships. I understand why fans of the team are upset about this name change.

But the team was also a failure at the box office. The Wizards failed to average as many as 13,000 fans a game in all but two seasons and their best season (15,575 in 2003) was not even close to the league-wide average this year (16,675). More than anything, that is the thing OnGoal is seeking to change.

To that end, the ownership group is well on its way to building a spectacular new stadium, has signed Omar Bravo as a Designated Player and appears to have made real inroads toward creating genuine soccer culture in Kansas City. The rebranding is tied into all of that.

How the fans respond to issues like those — more than the name itself — will determine this effort's success or failure.