Who owns the No. 8?
NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. and NFL superstar Lamar Jackson are two of the most unlikely people you’d expect to be beefing, but here we are — and it all comes down to the number eight.
Jackson has filed opposition to Dale Jr’s attempt to trademark the number, which was filed in 2024 by “DEJ Holdings,” Dale’s company.
Essentially Jackson is saying that Dale Jr. breached his trademark of “ERA 8,” which is Lamar’s clothing brand — and is asking the courts to give him sole ownership of the number eight, and removing Dale’s claim to it.
ERA 8 was established in 2018 when Jackson was an NFL rookie, and it applies to clothing, apparel, backpacks, bags, and sporting goods. Meanwhile Dale Jr’s trademark of simply “8” was listed as being used in:
“Clothing, namely, tops as clothing, shirts, sweat shirts, T-shirts, long sleeve shirts, hoodies, hats, caps being headwear”
Here’s where this gets a little more weird, though. The Earnhardt Jr. trademark filing notes the date of first use as June 2019, which is a year after Jackson trademarked his ERA 8 company. This is despite the fact that Dale Jr. drove the No. 8 car in NASCAR from his debut in 1999, until 2007.
This is essentially where the dispute in court will lie. While Dale Jr. didn’t technically try to use the No. 8 himself until 2019, he was the best-known No. 8 in sports before Lamar Jackson — and arguably the more iconic athlete because of how race drivers are associated with their numbers. However, legally speaking Lamar did filed ERA 8 prior to Jr.
Is a stylized number eight something that could be confused with ERA 8? That’s for the courts to decide.
