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News July 27, 2021

Unofficial Cleveland Guardians Merch Hits the Market

Branded merchandise referencing the MLB team’s name change from the Indians to the Guardians is proving popular with some fans. A run on Indians merch is possible.

By  Christopher Ruvo

Cleveland’s Major League Baseball team, known as the Indians since 1915, announced on Friday, July 23, that it would be changing its name to the Guardians.

And almost instantly, there was merch.

Is it official MLB-licensed branded swag from the team? No. Word is that it won’t be available until after the current baseball season concludes, with no specific date yet available for a launch.

Nonetheless, everyone from local apparel decorators/merch companies to online sellers on sites like Etsy and Amazon were already retailing T-shirts, hats, stickers and more that either outright showed the new Guardians name and logo or, perhaps leery of potential copyright infringements, made none-too-subtle references to Cleveland’s forthcoming baseball Guardians without using the new logo.

Cleveland Guardians stickers on wood background

Guardians-themed stickers are available on Etsy.

Navy blue Cleveland Guardians hat

This unofficial Cleveland Guardians hat retails on Etsy.

GV Art & Design, a merch company with locations in Cleveland and the surrounding area, released a series of Guardians-themed T-shirts.

Blue Cleveland Guardians t-shirt

This Guardians-themed baseball T-shirt was part of series from GV Art & Design.

While the name change has its detractors, others are embracing it, as evidenced by the fact that the tees from GV were selling faster than proverbial hotcakes. A first batch sold out in less than 24 hours after the team’s name change announcement, GV noted in a tweet.

Fans took to Twitter to profess their love of the T-shirts:

The soon-to-be-former Indians get their new name from the Guardians of Traffic – historic, locally iconic pylons on the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, also called the Hope Memorial Bridge, which connects downtown Cleveland to Ohio City. The statues have long been used in local marketing and art. With the city’s MLB team claiming the name, questions have arisen about the use of “Guardians” by artists and small businesses going forward.

Case Western Reserve University Law Professor Aaron Perzanowski told IdeaStream Public Media that, given the prevalence of the Guardians on everything from posters to T-shirts already, it wouldn’t be a smart move for the ball team to come down hard on those using Guardians imagery. “Having the team’s lawyers going around telling local, small businesses to change their T-shirt designs and stop selling their artwork is a bad look,” he said.

That said, outright reproducing the MLB team Cleveland Guardians logo without proper licensing, as some sellers have done, would run afoul of copyright regulations. It’s notable that GV Art was careful to create a design that references Cleveland and baseball and the Guardians pylons without using the team’s imagery. The company even put a disclaimer that the product is not endorsed or licensed by any team or organization. 

The Indians announced the name change on Twitter in a video narrated by Tom Hanks. The name change came about, as ESPN explained, following “months of internal discussions triggered by a national reckoning by institutions and teams to permanently drop logos and names considered racist.” Team executives felt the name “Indians” fell into that derogatory category.

With the Indians changing their name, some sports business experts think there’ll be a rush among fans in the coming weeks and months to buy what will be the last of the official “Indians” merchandise.

Jason Chung, an assistant professor of sport management at the University of New Haven, told the Washington Examiner that he anticipates that fans who love the team’s longstanding name will make a point of gobbling up the merch before it’s gone for good. He also expects strong demand for Guardians merch. “I think there will be a surge on both, on the new end and on the tail end,” Chung told the Washington Examiner.