By Frank Pingue
(Reuters) -The National Football League’s Washington Football Team said on Wednesday they will now be called the Commanders following a lengthy review on how best to replace an original name that was widely seen as a racial slur against Native Americans.
The team, amid calls for racial justice and a threatened loss of sponsors, dropped their longstanding previous name Redskins in mid-2020 following a years-long campaign from critics.
The Commanders name was the end result of an 18-month rebrand process that the team said included more than 40,000 fan submissions, countless surveys, focus groups and meetings.
“As an organization, we are excited to rally and rise together as one under our new identity while paying homage to our local roots and what it means to represent the nation’s capital,” Team co-owner Dan Snyder said in a news release.
Snyder, who bought the franchise in 1999, had long fought off public pressure in the past to rebrand and went as far to say the club would never change their name.
Critics ramped up pressure on the team to change the name amid a nationwide reckoning on racism and police brutality triggered by the 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck.
Snyder eventually softened his stance after FedEx Corp, which owns the naming rights to the team’s suburban stadium in Landover, Maryland, urged the club to rebrand.
PepsiCo and Nike both followed FedEx’s lead and said they welcomed the call for a review of the team’s name.
The team that became the Redskins was founded in 1932 as the Boston Braves. Their name was changed to Redskins the following year and they moved to Washington in 1937.
The team have won three Super Bowls and are one of the NFL’s marquee franchises, ranked by Forbes last August as the league’s fifth most valuable franchise at $4.2 billion.
Many American professional and collegiate sports teams have nicknames on Native American themes. Major League Baseball’s Atlanta Braves and the National Hockey League’s Chicago Blackhawks have both defended keeping their names.
MLB’s Cleveland franchise said last July they would change their name to the Guardians from Indians after the 2021 season, a move that drew praise from Native American groups who had long viewed the old name as disparaging.
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; editing by Jason Neely and Christian Radnedge)
