This is an amazing story.
https://www.cleveland.com/guardians/2021/10/cleveland-guardians-roller-derby-team-sues-baseball-club-over-name-change.html
The way it's presented, that seems pretty brazen. I'm no expert in trademark / IP law, but two sports teams in the same city using the same trademarked name seems odd to me.
Now, the real question: how long can the roller derby team hold out in the legal fight? Who is paying their attorney fees?
Also curious, what would be an appropriate payout be to buy the rights, both before and after?
Article says four figures was offered, so my mind jumps to a nice round $5,000, but it could have been as low as $1,000. Whatever it is, even $10k, I'm probably turning that down too.
If it's owned by 1 person, or a collective, that changes things too. Personally I'd probably hope for something in the $100k-$250k range (and maybe some perks, like use of a suite or lifetime tickets or something). If I'm desperate, I'd probably sell as low as $25k and the cost for my own rebranding. Really depends on how much I'm using it though (and going to the website, they don't look active at all), even if I'm not using it at all though, not accepting less than $25k.
But now that the baseball team actually rolled this all out already and rebranded, I probably wouldn't settle for less than a $1m.
Reminds me of the Nissan case, but that was more to do with the website than the name. More like McDonalds and the Big Mac over in Europe.