Not sure if I phrased the question right, but what makes me ask is the Utah Jazz basketball team. I know they used to be in New Orleans (I’m almost sure) where having a team called Jazz made more sense, but now they are based in Utah, which I only associate with Mormons abs MLMs. Couldn’t someone in Utah have just made up a new team instead of buying an existing one? Same with the Giants.
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Anyone can make a basketball team but not every basketball team can compete in the NBA. The NBA restricts teams competing in it to those who have purchased a franchise license from the league.
In theory, you could start a new team if you could convince the NBA to sell you a new franchise license. In practice, its really rare that they offer new franchises – there have only been 8 new teams added since 1976 and all of those involved a long competitive bidding process.
So the reality is that if your city doesn’t have an NBA team and wants one, the easiest way to get one is to buy an existing franchise from somewhere else and relocate it to where ever you are.
There’s nothing stopping the new owner of the team from changing the name, but NBA teams make most of their money from merchandise sales. A substantial percentage of those sales come from brand recognition, so changing the name results in some period of decreased sales while the new brand name is built up.
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