By Frank Dalleres
Rarely can a sports team have become as synonymous with a slogan or philosophy as the England men’s Test cricket side and Bazball.
It has proliferated every discussion of their successes and failures during the current Ashes series and since head coach Brendon McCullum, from whom the term derives, brought his buccaneering style to the England set-up last year.
Indeed, Bazball has become more famous than McCullum himself; Google returns three times as many search results for the term as for the New Zealander’s name.
Inevitably, it has also spawned a cottage industry in Bazball-branded merchandise, with dozens of items from T-shirts to hats and mugs catering to England fans who have bought into the fearless tactics and now find themselves in the grip of Ashes fever.
But you won’t find any of these on sale inside Old Trafford or the Oval in the remaining matches of the series, nor on England cricket’s official online store.
The England and Wales Cricket Board has not applied to trademark the term in the UK, a search of intellectual property records shows.
The only trademark that exists has been lodged in Australia, where a company called athleteID Pty Ltd applied to use Bazball for a wide range of products and services including cricket bats, as well as sports coaching, last month.
“In the age of sports stars, national and international boards and councils being aware of the role intellectual property can play in merchandising and market expansion, for example CR7 [Cristiano Ronaldo’s personal brand], it is somewhat surprising that the ECB has not taken the opportunity here,” Lakmal Walawage, a partner at JMW Solicitors in London, told City A.M.
One of the explanations put forward is that the term was not coined by McCullum or anyone else at England Cricket, but a journalist, Andrew Miller of Cricinfo, during a discussion on the Switch Hit podcast last year. That does not preclude the ECB from trademarking it if they wanted to, however.
“There is a trade mark law concept called bad faith, to prevent third parties from registering trademarks that originated from another,” added Walawage. “However, there needs to have been an intention to use that mark commercially [as a trademark] by that party, prior to the application date.”
Still, it is understood that the ECB has no intention of trading on the Bazball brand in future, primarily because McCullum has derided the term.
“I think from an ECB point of view it’s simply the case that he hates the phrase so they would be highly unlikely to move on it commercially,” said Neil Hopkins, global head of strategy at M&C Saatchi Sport and Entertainment.
So it seems it’s down the bootleggers and – ironically – enterprising Australians, to cash in on England’s untapped commercial asset.
