Even if the Kansas City Chiefs do win their third straight Super Bowl with a victory over the Philadelphia Eagles on February 9, the AFC Champions may still struggle to claim a ‘three-peat,’ ‘three peat,’ or even a ‘3-peat.’
That’s because NBA icon Pat Riley’s company has spent nearly 40 years trademarking variations on the phrase despite the fact that he’s never won three consecutive champions as a player, coach or executive.
Riley first got the notion to trademark ‘THREE-PEAT’ in November of 1988 as his Los Angeles Lakers were in pursuit of their third consecutive Larry O’Brien Trophy. Unfortunately for Riley, that application would not be approved until August of 1989, by which point the Lakers had already been swept by the upstart Detroit Pistons in the NBA Finals.
Undeterred, his Riles & Company, Inc. continued to register different versions of the phrase, even as his rival and fellow 1967 draftee Phil Jackson coached his way to two three-peats with the Chicago Bulls and another with the Lakers.
These days, Riles & Co. controls trademarks for ‘three-peat,’ ‘threepeat,’ ‘3 peat,’ and ‘three peat’ in a variety of fonts. But that doesn’t mean the Chiefs are forbidden entirely from using the phrase. Instead, they could pay royalties to Riley’s company to use variations of ‘three-peat’ on anything from shirts or jackets to hats and other items.
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Riles & Company have several active and inactive trademarks for varieties of ‘threepeat’
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In fact, that’s exactly what the Bulls did in 1993 and 1998 as the team attempted to market a variety of ‘three-peat’ merchandise. According to Finance Monthly, Riles & Co. made $300,000 on the strategy with the first Bulls three-peat and a whopping $600,000 the next time around.
Many of the various ‘three-peat’ trademarks owned by Riles & Co. are no longer active due to cancellation or other issues.
Three-peat chatter has inevitably centered around Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and his place in NFL history.
With a Super Bowl LIX win over Eagles, Mahomes will have four total тιтles to his name.
What’s more, he and his Chiefs teammates will become the first team to win three consecutive NFL тιтles since the Green Bay Packers did so from 1965 to 1967.
And although the Packers won the first two Super Bowls at the end of the ’66 and ’67 seasons, no NFL time has captured three straight Lombardi Trophies in the Super Bowl era.
For comparison, Tom Brady was already 37 by the time he won his fourth Super Bowl in 2014.
Of course, he would miraculously win three Lombardy Trophies in his 40s, the last of which came as a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers against Mahomes and the Chiefs.
Like Brady, Riley never won three consecutive тιтles, but did win one as an NBA player, five as a coach in LA and Miami, and two more as a Heat executive.
