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Lindsay sends link: http://www.wisegeek.com/which-professional-sports-teams-dont-own-the-domains-for-their-team-names.htm

The author of the article analyzes which pro sports teams own the domain for their team names, and which don’t. There are some interesting stats in the article: Only 27% of the NHL team domains were under official ownership by the concerning NHL teams! The NBA has the highest percentage of team domains owned with 80% of team name domains owned by NBA teams.

From the article:

Trademark domains are invaluable for many reasons. Obviously, strong branding is important, and that works hand-in-hand with garnering type-in traffic. Besides these, trademark domains are the easiest way for search engines to assess the relevance of a domain. For all of these reasons, we would expect professional sports franchises to recognize the value of having their domain and team name be the same. Especially in the case where there are multiple iterations of a team name–isn’t www.rams.com far preferable to www.stlouisrams.com, www.saintlouisrams.com, or www.slrams.com?

Trademark domains are not to be confused with generic domains! It is true that many professional sports teams use generic terms alongside their city name as team name, but this doesn’t mean that they have a legal right to use that generic domain. The article says that many of the team name domains were parked. Monetizing these domains is legal because these are generic term domains. Though, many sports teams have already made the right decision and purchased the generic domain for their team, for example: Hurricanes.com (Carolina Hurricanes), Wild.com (Minnesota Wild), Patriots.com (New England Patriots), Chiefs.com (Kansas City Chiefs), Pirates.com (Pittsburgh Pirates), Tigers.com (Detroit Tigers), Bulls.com (Chicago Bulls), Rockets.com (Houston Rockets) and many more. Click on the link above for the complete list of domains owned by pro sports teams.

(Thanks again for the link, Lindsay!)