The Cleveland Guardians vs. The Cleveland Guardians

Remember a few months back when the Cleveland Indians announced their new name for next season? Well, it turns out, there’s an existing Cleveland Guardians — a roller derby team — and they still haven’t worked out a deal. Here’s Kyle Jahner, reporting last week for Bloomberg Law:

The baseball team allegedly reached out to the roller derby team in June, more than a month before its announcement of the Guardians re-brand, according to the complaint. The derby team asked the team to make an offer, and the team offered “likely no more than fifteen minutes of annual team revenue,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit estimated $290 million annual revenue for the Indians, implying an offer of about $8,300. The derby team alleged that it rejected that offer and countered, but the baseball team didn’t respond.

This, of course, follows upon Facebook’s potential legal problems with existing companies named “Meta”. Why cheap out with a lowball offer? It makes no sense. It’s certainly possible that the roller derby team’s lawyer is being hyperbolic regarding “likely no more than 15 minutes of annual team revenue”, but whatever the baseball team’s offer, they could have made both sides happy by now. And if the offer really was in the ballpark of $8,300 — sheesh. That’s just stupid.

★ Thursday, 4 November 2021