As the 2019 MLB season gets underway and an avalanche of advertising and sponsorship activation leverages Opening Day one might think that baseball is a sport in rude health.
After all, the MLB saw more than $1bn invested in just three players during the closed season: a staggering total suggesting healthy underlying economics.
An off-season in which three of the richest contracts in all sports’ history – Manny Machado’s 10-year, $300m San Diego Padres contract, Bryce Harper’s 13-year, $330m Philadelphia Phillies deal and Mike Trout’s 12-year, $426.5m commitment from the LAs Angels – suggests baseball is flourishing.
And when these deals are considering alongside record 2018 MLB gross revenues of $10.3bn last year one might be even more confident in the sport’s rosy future.
But look a little closer and underlying trends are concerning: perhaps the narrative that baseball is an old fashioned, outdated sport dying a slow death isn’t entirely rubbish.
After all, the average attendance at major league ballparks reached a 16-year low in 2018, while Little League participation is down again and a 2018 Gallup poll shows MLB has fallen behind the NFL and the NBA in popularity among US fans.
Whichever side of the future of baseball narrative you sit on, one thing is clear, many of the new season’s marketing initiatives share a strategy based on engaging and attracting younger, more diverse audiences.
The Activative team chooses its ‘Favourite 5’ campaigns – rights-owner/official supplier/league sponsor/team/team sponsor – leveraging MLB #Opening Day 2019.
1: Rights-Owner > MLB ‘Let The Kids Play’
2: Supplier > New Era ‘We Reign As One’
3: League Sponsor > Budweiser ‘Impact’
4: Team > San Francisco Giants ‘We Built This City’
5: Team Sponsor > T-Mobile ‘Mariners’ T-Mobile Park Opening Day’
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