Revival (sports team)

In sports, the term revival is an informal term used to indicate that a new club or franchise is using a name and/or colours of a previously active team. The previously active team may be defunct, temporarily suspended or may have transferred its operations to another city. The new team may be a new team or franchise, or it may be a transferred team taking over a previous team's colours and/or name. Sports teams names or nicknames are copyrighted in North America and elsewhere. Therefore, permission often must be granted from the owner or family of the defunct team.

Sports teams are organized in various ways and the term is used differently in different situations. A team can be simply not fielded for a season, but the parent organization still exists. A team and franchise can relocate to another city, and adopt a new nickname. At some point, sometimes decades later, a new team, with a new organization, then revives the team, name or colours in the original city. It may or may not be granted possession of the original team's history (team records, championships and the like)

A team can be members of a sports association that fields several teams. A team at one level may be discontinued, then 'revived' in another year, such as the Central Plains Junior hockey team in 2012, after the team did not field a team in the AAA midget bracket the previous season.

In professional sports in North America, there are several examples whereby a team relocated, taking its franchise and franchise history with it to the new city. The teams were renamed and used a new nickname. The revived teams were not granted possession of the old team's history.

The Milwaukee Brewers are named after an earlier club, which relocated to St. Louis, Missouri and eventually became the Baltimore Orioles, and a minor-league club named the Brewers. The Baltimore Orioles are named after an earlier club, which relocated to New York, New York and became the New York Yankees. The Washington Nationals are named after an earlier club, which relocated to Minneapolis, Minnesota and became the Minnesota Twins.

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