Are you wearing a baseball cap with 'NY' or 'LA' on it? If you’re not, you probably know someone who does. Either way, you probably see dozens of them daily. 

It’s a logo that’s become part of our day-to-day aesthetic, though you may be interested to learn that NY and LA aren’t necessarily about the respective cities in the US.

Doesn't ‘NY’ mean New York? That’s the logo of the New York Yankees baseball team. And that ‘LA’? Nope, it’s not the city; it’s the official logo of the LA Dodgers.

In these two instances, the sports logo has transcended its original purpose to become a fashion accessory. While many Yankees and Dodgers fans may feel that non-fans have appropriated their teams’ logos, it highlights the sheer power of the logo in the 21st century.

A Short History of the Sport Logo

Identifying a point in time when the sports logo became a thing is problematic so that we won’t go there. We do know that logos evolved from letters or colors of a team, and they evolved from that point.

More formalized logos began to appear at the start of the 20th century. One of the oldest is the 1901 NFL logo for the Arizona Cardinals; the Yankees logo, cited above, was designed by Tiffany & Co. in 1909.

The logo as we know it didn’t become a thing until the 1950s with the advent of greater visibility via TV. Now, there was more emphasis on the logo; they became standardized and were preserved with copyrights, giving them an authenticity a fan could associate with.

A Symbol of Fandom

Except for team logos that have transcended their origins to become fashion items (e.g., Yankees, Dodgers), a team logo is a subjective motif. This means it will have a different meaning depending on whether you’re a fan of the team the logo represents, as the case may be.

So, for fans, team logos are akin to religious icons, but for the opposition, such symbols can illicit rage while being meaningless to anyone in the middle. But what happens when an outsider, such as another company, puts their logo alongside the team logo?

Consider the sometimes-controversial subject of online casinos sponsoring teams. Does that now mean that fans of a team see the sponsor's logo in a different light?

The short answer is yes, even if that doesn’t necessarily result in said fan suddenly getting into cleopatra slots. But it might mean that the fan will have an emotional connection to the company in question, and maybe it will inspire them to try out some of the games.

This by-proxy loyalty is priceless, allowing a business to attain an emotional legacy purely by association. It doesn’t end there; a logo that once represented a business concern can now transcend language and cultural barriers simply by being seen with a team’s sports logo.

Worldwide visibility

These days, the sports logo has become far more than the sum of its parts. Retake the Yankees/Dodgers model, where the logo has moved on from its earliest association with the team.

People relate to the cool factor of an NY/LA baseball cap because it has been seen adorning the heads of stars outside the sporting arena. Manchester United has become a global brand that is almost entirely separate from its local football fan base.  

For example, Floyd Mayweather and Miley Cyrus, although Hollywood celebrities, have both been spotted wearing Manchester United strips. This, in turn, changes how we perceive Manchester United, as its logo is now imbued with forces beyond its original meaning.

How influential are sports logos for their fan base?

Sports logos have always appealed to people with absolutely no connection with the sport in question. Logos for the Lakers and Chicago Bulls are displayed on kids' and adults' clothing in high-street chains across Europe, for example.

People want to be seen as a part of an institution that has provenance and made itself successful. A decade or so, a similar thing happened with punk and heavy metal bands when everyone was suddenly wearing a Ramones or Metallica tee-shirt. 

These people didn’t have to like these bands; they were merely following a fashion, just like the children wearing Lakers Pyjamas, or their parents' Yankees hats, or Man U tee-shirts. It seems everyone wants to have a slice of that contagious passion, which is summarised in a sports logo.