The naming trends for Australian professional sports teams have come full circle, as fans and officials overlook vibe-driven monikers like Glory and the plurally-challenged Power or Storm to return to animals that bite, some 30 years after one of the great sports marketing revolutions took hold.
The three most recent expansion announcements in the NRL and AFL have revived classic animal mascots,through the Perth Bears, Tasmania Devils and Dolphins from Redcliffe.
The Tasmania JackJumpers spearheaded this return to more conservative, fauna-driven naming conventions for their entry to the NBL in 2019, even if the creature selected left mainlandersscratching their heads.
Paul Kind, chief executive of marketing agency Total Sport & Entertainment and a formerNRLexecutive, says that announcement signalled a shift in Australian sport. “My immediate reaction was, ‘oh my god, what have they just done, how have they gone from a blank sheet of paper and come up with JackJumpers?’,” he says.
“But I now give them a huge amount of credit for it. It’s got to feel like something local fans are proud to associate with, and the fact that it was uniquely Tasmanian connected with their community in a way that anyone who wasn’t from Tasmania could possibly imagine.”
The JackJumpers’ on and off-court success – selling out more than 50 home games in a row andwinning the NBL title in 2024– was closely observed by those working on the state’s AFL expansion bid.
“When the name of the JackJumpers was announced, there was a lot of pushback about that,” says Kath McCann, executive director ofthe club now known as the Tasmania Devils. “It’s become incredibly powerful, not just because of the attributes of the creature, but the philosophy of how they play and the success that they’ve experienced.”
Whilethe NRL’s Bearsand Dolphins were decisions by officials to resuscitate older brands, the growing appetite from fans for animals was highlighted by the statewide fan survey for the new AFL club run at the end of 2023.
Across 6,000 open-ended questionnaires, 68% of fans proposed the Devils. Critters also dominated the next most-backed options: 9% put forward the Turbo Chooks, otherwise known as the Tasmanian native hen and the subject of a lighthearted campaign, and 6% suggested the Tigers despite the existence of Richmond in the competition already.
McCann says there was a “long tail” of suggestions, but the state’s distinctive range of native fauna was the source of most – but not all – options. “The orange-bellied parrot definitely found its way into the list, the handfish – quite a few fish actually, the Trouts were in there,” she says. “The one that I thought was really interesting was the Auroras.”
In the race for NRL expansion during 2021, the Dolphins beat bids from entities dubbed the Firehawks – a bird that spreads fires to help it hunt – and the Bombers to become the NRL’s 17th team in 2023.
The Hunters has been mooted as a possible name forthe NRL’s PNG franchise joining in 2028, though a nationwide poll will help make the final decision. “It must be a name that at least 50%, 60% or 70% of the country supports,” PNG prime minister James Marape said last week. “It must not just be a name, there must be a motif behind the name.”
These discussions are a long way from a trend kickstarted by Perth Glory 30 years ago which opened up less precise, more abstract concepts as sporting nicknames. At the time an advertising executive called Jim Davies was responsible for the development of the new football club’s brand. According to WA’s Football Hall of Fame, he received over 800 suggestions which were whittled down to five: Flyers, Storm, Predators, Red Backs and Glory. The latter was chosen to differentiate an entity wanted to be known as “contemporary”.
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Arguably, a more creative outlook to naming conventions began even earlier, when in 1992 Adelaide basketball officials proposed the Lightning, a term both singular and plural. Although it was a novel name in Australian sport, the Lightning was actually chosen for its connection to history. William Light was the colonial administrator who in 1836 had chosen the city’s location, and the new WNBL side echoed the city’s NBL team, the 36ers. “We liked the connection and the history,” former Opal and Lightning legend Rachael Sporn says. “Then obviously, with lightning, you think of energy and power, so we loved the name right from the start.”
Not long afterwards, Melbourne Storm and Port Adelaide Power both appeared, debuting non-traditional, singular nouns in Australia’s most popular sporting competitions. Port Adelaide – known as the Magpies in the SANFL – were forced to look at creative solutions given the presence of Collingwood in theAFL, while the Melbourne NRL franchise launched a competition for suggestions.
Young fan Cameron Duncan was pronounced the winner. However, Duncan revealed on a Melbourne Storm online forum last year his entry was simply the first one picked out that matched the named already chosen by club officials. Duncan wasn’t able to attend the promotion where he was to be awarded his prize because he was watching the preliminary final defeat of his beloved Footscray in the AFL, now – for geographic marketing reasons – known as the Western Bulldogs.
WNBL club Townsville Fire and later Bendigo Spirit, A-League clubs Melbourne Victory, Brisbane Roar and North Queensland Fury, along with Super Rugby club Western Force, leaned into this fresh approach, which reached its zenith during the conception of the BBL.
Cricket Australia was desperate to distance the new T20 competition from the sport’s conservative roots, and adopted eight radical names, two of which were vaguely singular – Brisbane Heat and Sydney Thunder. Another two were weather-inspired – Hobart Hurricanes and Perth Scorchers. The Sydney Sixers echoed naming trends in basketball, but demanded some logical generosity in cricket.
Kind, who was working at the NRL in this period, says those unorthodox names reflected a specific marketing requirement. “The BBL teams had permission to be a bit off-the-cuff and a bit more ‘out there’, because they were trying to present cricket differently at the time, they were trying to tip cricket on its head,” he says.
At around the same time, NRL expansion side Gold Coast was finding its feet in the NRL. Their name the Titans had been selected ahead of the Stingers and Pirates,part of a brief theme of mythical beings like the GWS Giants and SE Melbourne Phoenix. “The Titans were never going to be the Dolphins,” Kind says. “They could have easily resonated with the Gold Coast community, but it wasn’t cool to be an animal back then.”