On Friday August 4 at 7pm, the Canberra Raiders announced a rebrand for 2024 and beyond silently through their website. The fans of the club did not react kindly to the change and this petition is calling on the Canberra Raiders, the National Rugby League and WiteKite Studio to reconsider the direction on the rebrand.

Social media has voted on various polls, The Greenhouse - the #1 Raiders fan forum - ran a poll on their social media channels with 26% of fans saying they either like it or love it, and 73% of fans saying they don’t like it or they hate it. The Greenhouse reports that their Facebook poll numbers were also up to 90% unfavourable. The Green Machine Podcast also ran polls on their channels with more fans following their channels showing more of a dislike for the logo.

The major changes to the logo involves the change of colour, traditionally the Raiders has always stood out among the rest of the league and has established an identity with a “Lime Green”, a look back in 1982. The 2024 rebrand the club announced it was going to use only one green. So fans is displeased that the chosen colour isn’t lime green. Fans feel that this isn’t the Raiders identity.

Another issue is that the club rebranded recently in 2020 after the NRL and the Telstra premiership rebranded in 2018, clubs such as the Wests Tigers and the Gold Coast Titans were forced into a rebrand to fit the NRL guidelines (guidelines created by WiteKite), so fans believe that these changes are completely unnecessary and the club should let the NRL dictate what clubs identities should be.
The major reasons for the club rebranding in 2020 is:
* The Raiders Viking head - our brands’ primary mark, has been simplified, with tweaks to its fine details to make sure it looks great in any format or location.
* The colour palette has also been simplified from six to five colours and refreshed to include the ‘Green Machine Envy’ and ‘Bad N Mean Navy’, both of which have been utilised in previous seasons.
* The club’s wordmark has also been modernised, to better reflect Raiders brand we know today.
* “The new look logo allows us to continue to have a strong, unique and highly recognisable brand in 2020 and beyond, particularly digital, without straying too far from what everyone knows and loves.” - Raiders CEO Don Furner

Another keyword for this rebrand is “inclusive” which fans completely disagree with, because the symbol is still the same, “Bearded Viking”, just like the last one… Personal opinion, but this keyword is garbage. Members of the Green Machine Podcast raised points about the 2020 rebrand rolling out a Valkyrie logo or a potential NRLW team, however the NRL shut the idea down because the logo needed to be uniform across the board.

The general consensus around the logo is that it’s “too flat and too boring”, it “doesn’t pay attention to the minor details, it completely removes them”.

The club has also come under fire for silently using a different logo after the 2020 rebrand which eventually lead the the decision, a few TikTok users have criticised the club for a lack of quality control from their marketing department.

Fans are calling on a review to the rebrand, asking for members to be consulted, and for the club to conduct focus groups and testing to try and counter the negative fan reaction and either revert back or come to a revision and compromise. Your signature will help.