Tampa Bay Buccaneers 1 The Rebranding of Franchise: The Tampa Bay Buccaneers Tamara O’Donnell Sport Branding, JOUR 536-701 Professor Cliff Shaluta November 30, 2014 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 2 Abstract The Tampa Bay Buccaneers is the twenty-seventh franchise of the National Football League and have gone under a major shift in the brand recognition in recent years. Contributions such as a new stadium, new color scheme, and changes to management and leadership backed the branding efforts to change the identity of the organization with the media, fans, and city of Tampa. Malcolm Glazer and his sons headed the rebranding efforts for the franchise and would lead them into success for a number of years. As can been seen with the Buccaneers, a new image is not going to be captured overnight, but will happen through a number of small issue changes that contribute to the bigger picture. Ultimately, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were successful for a number of years and have continued their efforts to bring a positive organization identity to the city of Tampa, FL. Tampa Bay Buccaneers 3 The Rebranding of Franchise: The Tampa Bay Buccaneers The National Football League has teams located all over the United States, covering the different regions of the country one – sometimes two – teams at a time. The state of Florida happens to be home to three of these teams – the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Miami Dolphins, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have set themselves up to be known as an organization that has a positive brand association and brand value among fans, executives, the National Football League, and the media. In order to accomplish this, the organization has used “strong marketing practices, strong business practices, and innovative concepts” (Lee, 2010, p. 106). The organization takes into account the way the public will perceive the team as well as the stadium that the Buccaneers play in on a regular basis throughout the season. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers In 1974, the National Football League granted the twenty-seventh team franchise to the city of Tampa. The team would play at Tampa stadium, which was originally for the University of Tampa Spartans and would need to expand its seating capacity. In September 1976, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers officially played their first regular season game. Tampa Bay Buccaneers 4 Hugh Culverhouse was the original owner of the team and tried to bring the people of Tampa into the start of this franchise by letting them pick the team name and colors. Malcolm Glazer purchased the team in 1995 for a record $192 million. John McKay was the first head coach of the team and spoke about his five-year plan to have the Buccaneers competing with the top teams in the league (Lee, 2010). In 1996, Tony Dungy would take over as head coach and hold an overall winning record after five previous coaches recorded overall losing records. Dungy was thus part of a turn around for the Buccaneers as a franchise on the field in the “W” column. After many years, 2002 was a memorable year for Tampa and the Buccaneers as the team would win against San Francisco for the divisional title, beat the Philadelphia Eagles for the conference championship, and ultimately top the Oakland Raiders for Super Bowl XXXVII. From 1977 to 2001, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers operated out of the NFC Central (division), but from 2002 to the present have operated out of the NFC South (division). The logo is a pirate flag type design with the team colors of red, black, orange, silver, white, and pewter mixed in, along with a football at the bottom of the flag. The mascot is a pirate known as Captain Fear. The franchise calls Raymond James Stadium home in Tampa, Florida, with Lovie Smith being the current head coach as of 2014. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers add to the National Football League and provide a form of entertainment to the Tampa area as well as any fan of professional football. The franchise currently offers a brand identity that has positive references and associations after a transformation within the brand to strategic planning and careful consideration of those involved and those that would be affected. Tampa Bay Buccaneers 5 A Situation in Tampa The franchise has a number of difference challenges and issues to overcome before it would be become what it is today. Culverhouse would be sparing when it came to expenses and the team would not be able to compete at an elite level because of it. The team was unable to win at all in the very beginning and then consistently win as seasons went on. Many different small issues contributed to the overall all large challenges, but in the end the franchise overcame them. In order for a team to compete with the best in the league, it must be able to retain quality players, but the Buccaneers were unable to do so thanks in large part to Culverhouse being unwilling to pay those players a larger salary. Because of this, the team would continuously lose games and play an ugly version of football known as “Yucs Football” (Lee, 2010). Not very many people were attending games since the games would not end positively for the Buccaneers. Tampa Stadium, Buccaneer home until 1998, was not up to par with what a National Football League team should be playing in. The franchise needed a change that was visible to the public as well as ones that may be talked about but were not right out in front to see all the time. This would include the home stadium as well as practice facilities, team appearance and colors, and leadership within multiple levels and positions of the franchise. It would seem that the Buccaneers were essentially starting from zero and having to get to one hundred in what would seem like seconds. In reality, all the Buccaneers were doing was Tampa Bay Buccaneers 6 reestablishing themselves and putting out a new image of where the franchise wanted to be. The in between would be figuring out the steps to be able to keep that image. The Facilities The Tampa Bay Buccaneers made the move from Tampa Stadium to Raymond James Stadium in for the start of the 2008-2009 season, with the first regular season game being held on September 20, 2008 against the Chicago Bears. Raymond James Stadium is a place to be proud of; it is considered state-of-the-art and is up to date on technology features. Raymond James Stadium has a current capacity of right around 66,000 seats. As for practice facilities, training camp has been previously held at the University of Tampa, but recently was moved to Walt Disney’s Wide World of Sports facility in Orlando. The Orlando facility is less than ten years old and consists of everything a professional football team could need and more – i.e. two fields, weight room, swimming pools, kitchen, etc (Lee, 2010, p. 108). The changes to facilities and venues allowed the Buccaneers to more adequately ready themselves as a team to be able to compete with the best teams in the division, conference, and league. Top to Bottom Leadership Malcom Glazer and his family purchased the team in 1995 and would proceed to make changes that would be essential to the rebranding of the franchise. Tampa Bay Buccaneers 7 Glazer and the hiring of Tony Dungy as head coach would happen at the same time. Dungy would bring in a new coaching style that worked in the Buccaneers organization since he already has a strong and stable foundation that he was bringing with him. That and the backing of Glazer would help bring the franchise around into being one that was over .500 and would be making viable efforts to reaching the playoffs each season. And before that reaching the playoffs had only been a dream for the franchise. The front office also got a make over. In order for the success of the franchise and to have the same information and outlook in all different ways, Glazer selected his three sons to be a part of his legacy in Tampa through guidance and leadership. Changes to leadership and management and where the team kept its sights on would be valuable to the transformation of the team since it gave hope that those changes could happen and be accomplished, rather than just being a thought or a wish of what could be. A New Brand of Buccaneers To help change the appearance of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a new stadium had been built to impress and give the franchise every opportunity to succeed. Leadership changes were made to make things happen within the franchise and to hopefully bring a new sense of optimism about making things happen. Both of these improvements give way to other changes that the fans and public will identify most with…the appearance. Tampa Bay Buccaneers 8 The original team colors had been similar to the original owner – not leading the franchise in the right direction and very “out” with the fans. The team colors were changed from an orange sherbet with white color scheme to the current pewter, red, black, and white color scheme. The old color scheme had uniforms that were bright orange for home games, which have since turned into one of the throwback uniforms. The new uniforms have associations with the current color scheme featured uniforms on the darker side with hints of the brighter colors of red, white, and bits of orange. Another aspect of the team that the public identifies with is the logo.