The design of the US team emblems is interesting: three of them are very "American sports logo", with big bold corporate-y logos, while two of them are so close to the design of a couple of British team emblems to the point of verging on plagiarism. It seems to inadvertently express the strange cultural position of American soccer, one the one hand trying to make the sport accessible to an American audience, on the other hand trying to invoke the prestige and tradition of European soccer.
And then the sixth one looks it's some sort of North Pole death metal militia. Don't really know how to fit that into my grand schema.
It was tough to follow which crests you are talking about, since there are only 4 American crests on that map.
I assume one of the "Close to a couple British teams emblems" crests is the New York City one, which is a team in part owned by the same group that owns Manchester City. Their logo is essentially a merge of the Manchester City and New York Yankees logos.. Sort of, look at both of them and you'll see it. NYCFC is owned by Man City Group & The Yankees, which is why they "went there". Which was the other "English ripoff" logo?
The Seattle Sounders logo (the green one with the tower) is probably one you refer to as "American sports logo". This team has existed since the 1970s and has a passionate fan base which would probably riot if the front office strayed too far from the club's branding and history. They've kept the same name all these years, even as many clubs in MLS rebrand to be more "modern". The Seattle logo also includes elements taken from older versions of the crest. I don't think they've updated this crest in over a decade, but I could be wrong. If they update it again, you can bet it will look "something like that".
^^ I managed to figure out these 2 logos you were referring to. Commenting on some others I wasn't sure about below:
The crest in the top-right that has a crossed out R. That's a recent rebrand. It used to be a very cartoony logo that just barely resembled a football crest. It was more like a .. flag drawn with crayons. They rebranded to this new logo a couple years ago IIRC.
The logo right beside it that looks like a butthole is Montreal's new logo. Everybody hates it. Their old crest was more european looking, basically, and quite liked. But they suck so they rebranded again and now have a butthole for a logo.
The H logo is a Canadian Premier League crest, a new league that's just about to kick off its 4th ever season. Clubs in the league designed all their crests all at the same time (aside from the expansion clubs which came later), and you got a mix of mainly European-inspired crests, but also some unique ones like that one. I believe the inspiration is logos like.. the new Juventus one, for instance. The club also has a secondary logo with a hammer, and a secondary crest that has both the hammer and the H on it.
So yeah.. In the U.S. you'll find crests inspired by both American and European sensibilities. For decades team owners had to design logos that would speak to American sports fans.. and American sports fans are used to
{City name} {Animal/mascot name} type team names and logos that are a bit cartoony and such, compared to UK crests for instance. So for the longest time American football clubs came up with names and logos "like that"..
A unique footballing culture emerged over the years on this continent though, and since football here used to be a bit of a niche sport, a lot of fans started demanding more "authentic" club names and logos. Where do you get such authenticity? Well, why not look to the place where the sport was invented? Club owners started embracing European style naming and branding. That's how you got club names like Real Salt Lake and Sporting Kansas City, Inter Miami, Halifax Wanderers (Canada, not U.S.), etc. European style crests go hand in hand with that, so more teams started embracing those too.
As a result the U.S. has an interesting mix if club names and crests, some seem American, some seem British, some seem South American, some are just.. whatever the hell they are.
Lately there's been a trend to name teams {City Name} FC and that's it, as bland and generic as possible, and then use a letter (like Juventus did) in the logo in some way. Or some other generic looking logo (Look up Nashville FC, Austin FC, for examples of generic logos)
Here in Canada we only have 11 professional clubs. Two of them (Vancouver and Montreal) trace their history back to the 1970s and for the longest time kept their historic names and some of the branding. Montreal have recently rebranded to a new name and crest (the butthole) that their fans hate (although they mainly hate the new name). Toronto FC embraced a more generic team name and look when launched in 2007 - the club wanted the fans to come up with a team nickname and such. The TFC logo is also designed around the letter T - a somewhat generic logo. The 7 Canadian Premier League clubs, when they launched, tried to create names and crests that speak to the local community where the club is located. We ended up with some European names like Halifax Wanderers and York United, but also some unique ones like Forge FC and Cavalry FC, and some generic ones like FC Edmonton . The league has so far not embraced the North American {City name} {Mascot} club naming approach, although this is decided on a club by club basis, so it could very well happen in the future. We also now have Atletico Ottawa, another nod to European footballing traditions. They are owned by Atletico Madrid, which is why that name was used.
So as you can hopefully see, our continent (minus Mexico & anything south of it) has a mix of various crest styles, mainly a reflection of how football has evolved here and the unique path it has taken. For the longest time the sport was thought of as a joke.. a sport that children play... Over the last decade and a half or so, this has been changing, and IMO that's why you can see some crests getting "more serious" and "less cartoony" over time. But all sorts of crests are still out there, since sometimes fans will fall in love with a crest even if it sucks.. or what have you.
Another reason American & Canadian football crests have started looking more and more European is because the owners of these clubs have started dreaming of creating a "global brand". So they try to embrace existing football traditions in Europe, South America, etc.
Let me ask you though, what names do hockey clubs in Britain have? Do they embrace local naming traditions or do they do the North American thing and name their clubs things like
Manchester Penguins ?
I quickly googled "British hockey clubs" and got an assortment of logos that were an almost hilarious mix of North American style and British style sports logos/crests
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