ANAHEIM, Calif. — When the Anaheim Ducks announced an overhaul of their branding strategy in June of last year, it was hard to ignore the contrast with their next door neighbors.
There was no mention of the Los Angeles Angels. There didn’t have to be.
“We are distinctly not L.A.,” Ducks chief marketing officer Merit Tully said at the time, as the Ducks leaned fully into their Anaheim home. “We don’t want to be L.A. We are not from L.A.”
Tully carefully tiptoed around any Angels talk when he agreed to sit down for an interview in early January, before the Ducks hosted Angels Night at Honda Center. After all, they’re not his employer. And his team’s baseball counterparts were not what he was there to discuss.
But it is also impossible to divorce one from the other. One team changed its uniforms to orange to embrace its home county, calls itself the Anaheim Ducks, and is in the process of constructing an entertainment district that will generate revenue in the community.
Then there’s the other team — the tenants right next door who claim to represent a city 25 miles away. The venues are within eyeshot of each other, with the Ducks’ arena serving as the Angel Stadium skyline.
The Angels say the franchise distinctly is L.A., despite not playing there. It’s a team that, 20 years ago this month, added Los Angeles to its name, won a lawsuit brought by the City of Anaheim, and hasn’t looked back since. Even as many of their fans, and Orange County politicians, still wish they’d reconsider.
“It felt like a slight to a very loyal fan base,” said Anaheim mayor Ashleigh Aitken. “… Just because you can do something, doesn’t necessarily mean you should do something.”
The respective homes of the Los Angeles Angels and the Anaheim Ducks, in Anaheim. (Tom Szczerbowski / Getty Images)
The Angels declined to make team president John Carpino, who oversees all business decisions and operations, available for this story. Additionally, the Angels declined an interview request for any team marketing executives.
In Anaheim, it’s a tale of two teams. One that embraces the city in which it is situated, another that spurns it, at least when it comes to name. In January 2005 owner Arte Moreno renamed the Anaheim Angels the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. A decade later, “of Anaheim” was scrapped.
And all these years later, the change still resonates and frustrates. It now stands in even starker contrast to the Ducks, who have not so subtly taken the exact opposite approach.
“I think there is a presumption that a lot of people here — that they all just wished that they were from L.A. proper,” said Tully, reflecting on why he made that comment. “And it simply isn’t the case. And (our rebrand) gave voice to that. And people are excited that there is a voice for that.”
The Ducks and Angels have a positive working relationship. They were once both owned by Disney. And in the years since, each team has assigned one night to celebrate the other. In September, several Ducks players went to take infield drills with Angels manager Ron Washington. And earlier this January, three Angels legends were honored pregame on the ice.
The Angels are not the only major professional sports franchise in North America that plays in a different city from where they’re technically located. The Dallas Cowboys play in Arlington, Texas. The New York Jets and New York Giants both play in New Jersey. The San Francisco 49ers play in Santa Clara. The Los Angeles Rams actually spent 14 seasons from 1980-1994 at Anaheim Stadium, though the club had longtime roots in L.A.
But there are no other cases of a major team declaring their home to be a city already occupied by another professional team in the same sport. In this case, that is the Los Angeles Dodgers. And as many Orange County residents will tell you, their home is not merely a suburb of La La Land.
“I just think there was pride in being a city of 340,000 people, and having a team named after you,” said one Angels employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “And they wanted to hold onto it. I think the community felt something personal was taken from them.”
Twenty years ago, at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, the legendary Vin Scully got up to speak. Scully, then the Dodgers play-by-play broadcaster, greeted the crowd before then-Angels TV man Steve Physioc took the mic.
The two were close friends — always keen to share a glass of wine following every Freeway Series game. But Scully forced Physioc into an uncomfortable situation while poking fun at his good friend’s employer.
“He said, ‘Wouldn’t it be silly if we called it the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles,’” recalled Physioc earlier this month, trying his best to mimic Scully’s unmistakable drawl. “I kind of dropped my head in that moment, like, ‘Oh gosh.’”
“He thought it was silly. And looking back, it was silly. You don’t want to divorce yourself from your community.”
But the Angels were willing to move in that direction. So much so that they fought a civil action brought by the City of Anaheim, winning the month-long trial and subsequent appeal.
Curt Pringle, the Anaheim mayor at the time, said he received a fax from the Angels at 8 a.m. on Jan. 3, 2005, declaring their intention to change the name. It was sent simultaneously to news organizations, and arrived with no heads-up.
“They made a decision, and I think it’s a terrible decision, and it’s still a terrible decision,” Pringle said, reflecting in early January. “The lore is probably lost on people today, but not on people in the community.”
The City argued that the Angels were in breach of the 1996 lease agreement that required the team to be named after Anaheim. The team argued that it was in compliance with the lease because it kept “of Anaheim” in its title.
The Angels were once a genuine L.A. team. Upon their founding in 1961, they played at Wrigley Field in South Central L.A. for a year, before occupying the newly built Dodger Stadium — then called Chavez Ravine Stadium — from 1962 to 1965. In 1966, they moved to Anaheim and the brand-new Angel Stadium, and changed their name to the California Angels, which stuck until they became the Anaheim Angels in 1997.
Moreno’s decision to change that in 2005 was rooted in his background in billboards — his fortune amassed from owning and selling Outdoor Systems. Marketing to a larger audience was the purpose of the change, positioning his team squarely in the nation’s second-largest media market. Even if it was already occupied by a team that actually played there.
Even internally, other Angels officials didn’t fully love the change. Though there was trust in Moreno’s business acumen, one that overrode those doubts.
“There was never a desire to go in and be L.A.’s team,” said the Angels employee, who had knowledge of Moreno’s thinking. “But it was as much the perception for others about being in a bigger market.”
The first meeting Pringle had with Henry Samueli came before Samueli owned the Ducks. They’d met about him managing the team’s facility. But the Orange County business leader fell in love with the team and eventually purchased it. His ownership excited city officials because they found an owner committed to the area and developed relationships with the people who ran it.
Conversely, Pringle said he had just one conversation with Moreno before the name change in 2005. He had an ultimately incorrect expectation that there would be an ongoing dialogue on the topic. Instead, that fax came in, and subsequently, so did the lawyers.
“I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding the friction between L.A. and other places,” Pringle said. “But L.A. is so dominant. And neighboring counties want to be out from under that shadow.
“There’s still that same desire to be seen as this enterprising, unique community, and that we are distinct from Los Angeles. Changing the name is really one of those daggers that was thrust on a lot of people who say, ‘We don’t want to be seen that way.’”
Growing up in Anaheim, U.S. Rep. Lou Correa was a die-hard fan of his local baseball team. The congressman’s elementary school teachers worked part-time at the ballpark. His friends worked summer jobs there.
It was a staple of his community growing up. The Angels were, in his words, all part of the socioeconomic fabric of the city of Anaheim. When their name changed, he was angry. “Why in God’s name are you doing this?” he asked.
“It was a big insult,” said Correa, who currently represents Anaheim in Congress. He was in the state legislature when the name changed. “We all took it personally. … When they changed that name, they lost a lot of credibility with a lot of people in the area.
“I would call it the moment that Anaheimers lost their innocence. Because from now on, it’s not about loyalty, it’s not about the fans. It’s about the bottom line.”
The Angels maintained very solid attendance numbers in the years that followed. While attendance has waned the last two years amid extended boxscore futility, the Angels drew at least three million fans per season for 17 consecutive years before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Former Angels players Shohei Ohtani and David Fletcher and former Angels player and broadcaster Mark Langston at Angels Night at the Honda Center. (Debora Robinson / NHLI via Getty Images)
But fan attendance hasn’t translated into fan satisfaction, and for some, like Jake Pineros, a 24-year-old Angels and Ducks fan from Corona, Calif., the Los Angeles name looms in perpetuity over their relationship with the team.
“It’s like he wanted to be Los Angeles and was ashamed of who his fans actually are,” Pineros said of Moreno. “The Ducks may be rock bottom. But at least they know who they are. They are proud to be from Anaheim. The Angels are embarrassed and directionless.”
“Arte ignored the fan base, ignored the history, totally blew it,” said Scott Freeman, a 55-year-old Angels season ticket holder of 13 years. “Never got the L.A. buy-in, and alienated local fans in the process. The Ducks played it smart. Respected the local fans, thereby endearing themselves.”
“Angels fans in Anaheim are die-hard, life-long fans,” said Angela Gonzalez, an Angels fan from Anaheim. “It’s in our blood, our culture. I wish Angels fans thought of our city the way our city thinks of them.”
The Ducks have made legitimate efforts with fans in myriad ways. Samueli is known as a prominent philanthropist in Orange County — opening a charter school in 2013 for underserved children in Santa Ana. The team is also constructing O.C. Vibe, a more than 100-acre entertainment district set to open around the arena in 2028.
Meanwhile, the Angels’ 2022 land deal blew up following an FBI affidavit accusing then-mayor Harry Sidhu of secretly providing the team information, and offering a better price, and asking for a $1 million campaign contribution in return. No one with the Angels was ever criminally charged, while Sidhu pleaded guilty to multiple felonies.
The relationship between the Angels and the city has been tepid at best. And even those Angels fans actually located in Los Angeles look on the L.A. branding with confusion.
“Ever since dropping Anaheim from the name, the Angels lost any chance of developing a culture,” said Jason Khoury, an Angels fan who was born and lives in Los Angeles.
“The Dodgers are L.A. Nobody in L.A., especially casual fans of the sport, are going to choose to support a team like the Angels over a team that represents their city so clearly.”
There are two avenues, as some politicians see it, for the Angels to return Anaheim to their name.
One is for new ownership to take over. Moreno will turn 79 this year, has no familial successors, and already put the team up for sale once. A new owner might change it back.
The other is tied to the uncertainty surrounding the expiration of the stadium lease, or any potential future sale of the land. The lease expires in 2029, with mechanisms in place to extend that to 2038.
The city, in theory, could require a name change for the Angels to renew the lease or purchase the land. Though, ultimately any power play like that could be risky.
“The stadium is probably the most valuable piece of municipal property that could be put on the market in the next few years,” said state senator Tom Umberg, who brought legislation opposing the name change in 2005, and launched an investigation in August, exploring whether the Angels violated the terms of their lease.
“When the new lease is negotiated, or any sale is negotiated, that should be part of the conversation.”
Between the lines, the two teams have their similarities. It’s been eight years since the Ducks had a winning record and went to the postseason. They haven’t finished above sixth in their division during that time. The Angels were last in the playoffs in 2014 and haven’t had a winning season since 2015.
In that way, the Ducks and Angels find themselves in a similar predicament. But outside the lines, one team has long won over its local fans, while the other has left many of its most loyal supporters wondering why fans in a city 25 miles away seemingly matter more.
“I’m going to promise you this,” said Aitken, the Anaheim mayor. “I’m going to go down swinging for the Anaheim Angels.”
(Photo of signage used for Anaheim Ducks Day at Angel Stadium: Meg Oliphant / Getty Images)
