Login

JSS · 01-24-2019, 11:00 AM

Well, it's no secret that the Riot have been looking into a change of branding for some time now. Things were brought up before I got here and it continued when I arrived.

The Riot have been around for a while now. It's been 30 seasons since the Las Vegas Kings relocated to Seattle and rebranded to the Riot. In those 30 seasons, the Riot have won their only cup that's ever been won in the 55 seasons of the franchise exisiting. They've had some strong GMs in the past in GoB, Abdeezy and some others. However, things haven't been going too great these passt seasons with the Riot and that's no secret either. They haven't had the best of luck in terms of successs and because of that they have ganered a reputation. It's not a great one, it's one that no team would ever want.

I can't speak for past GMs of this franchise, but me and Toivo decided to look into a rebrand for this reason and for other reasons to. We spent a lot of time talking about which brands we could, which cities we could. We thought about a whole lot of different city and branding combinations. From the Athens Olympians, the Seattle Totems, the well known Seattle Spirits, the San Diego Stingrays, the Chicago United, the Brooklyn United, the Chicago Bruins, the Chicago Braves, the Arizona Devils. The point is, we thought about this a lot. We did not rush into this. We wanted the rebrand and relocation to be perfect.

Now obviously, our first choice for a rebrand was the Seattle Spiris. We thought there would be no way this would get rejected by HO and it did. So me and Toivo looked into another branding and it didn't take much longer to find something me and him both loved. We came up with the name Barracuda. It doesn't take a genius to know that there aren't any barracuda in Seattle so the name "Seattle Barracuda" wouldn't have worked. We first came up with the possibility of moving to San Diego however with 2 Californian teams already around we know chances were slim. We asked HO anyways and to no surprise, it got rejected. However, we had another city in mind if it got rejected. We looked into the beautiful city of Tampa Bay. Relocating to Tampa Bay would mean we would have to switch conferences for S46 too. We didn't know if it would get approved for that very reason, but with expansion coming around and divisions being introuduced we thought there could be a chance. We asked HO and we were hapily surprised to hear that it was approved. I would like to thank @TheDangaZone @TML99 @Dangles @adamantium and @Eggy216 for the opportunity to allow me and Toivo to have this team become a reality espically for moving teams around conferences and divisons to let us move to Tampa Bay.

Once we were told we were allowed to rebrand to the Tampa Bay Barracuda, it was time to find the logo. I hit up @Wasty and he was extremely pleasant to deal with this entire process. I showed him what I wanted and he came up with exaclty what I was thinking. The rest of the team and I fell in love with the logo at first sight. Seriously, thank you Wasty. It's a really great modified logo.

Now into what everyone came here for. The reveal...

[Image: TampaLogoDisplay.png]

I love the logo and I'm really glad the rest of the team did too when I showed them it. I couldn't be happier right now to show this to the rest of the SHL. This has been in the making for a couple of weeks now!

Now for the jerseys...

[Image: Jerseys.png]