Major League Baseball (MLB) leveraged spiking interest around the sport generated by its ‘Field Of Dreams Game’ to reach out to younger demographics by hosting a watch party on streaming platform Twitch and by entering the world of Minecraft with an in-game ‘MLB Home Run Derby’.
Inspired by the 1989 movie starring Kevin Costner, MLB finally built a real baseball field on the site of the original film set and on 12 August the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox (who featured as ghosts in the film) and 8,000 fans came to Dyersville (Iowa) for a one-off game aired on Fox Sports.
Absolute chills. #MLBatFieldofDreams pic.twitter.com/JsejH3OsWI
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) August 12, 2021
For those not able to be there in person, the league hosted a watch party on its official Twitch channel and launched a Home Run Derby in Minecraft.
The Twitch watch party was positioned as a second-screen experience for younger audiences: it was hosted by Jeff Eisenband and Alex Giaimo and featured baseball videogame content, conversation, movie commentary and trivia alongside game updates and commentary (plus special guests ranging from Call of Duty League personality Studyy and Minecraft streamer TrueTriz, to MLB.com reporter Sarah Langs, celebrity chef Jack Mancuso, plus podcast host and retired MLB player Xavier Scruggs).
"If you stream it, they will come."
Check it- @neonerZ & @DemonFive are hanging with our friend @TrueTriz during the @MLB Field of Dreams game. It's on now at https://t.co/91bFmEXsze #MLBatFieldOfDreams #FieldOfDreams #MLB #Minecraft— The Misfit Society (@MisfitSocietyMC) August 12, 2021
The partnership between the league, Microsoft Studios and The Misfit Society, includes the rights to MLB marks and logos, enabling Minecraft players to show off their baseball fandom with the logos of their favourite teams for the first time.
It invites Minecraft players to download the MLB Home Run Derby DLC and swing for the fences in the home run competition competing as one of over a dozen Minecraft characters and featuring all 30 MLB teams and stadiums. Every Big League ballpark has been carefully recreated in Minecraft’s famous pixel art style.
Rounds are timed, with each stadium’s scoreboard displaying time remaining, total home runs and the distance of a player’s last hit and longest home run. Players can also train in the batting practice arena within the game’s interactive menu to hone their home run skills before taking to the field.
Players can even bring a souvenir back from each ballpark they play in by purchasing their team’s jersey and selecting it in the Character Creator tool.
MLB Home Run Derby is available now on the Minecraft Marketplace for $7.99 or 1,340 Minecoins.
MLB is headed to @Minecraft!
Build a ballpark, dig a dugout and invite your zombie fans. Get the MLB HR Derby DLC from the Marketplace NOW! https://t.co/ZfMa1Olcm6 pic.twitter.com/Eb7nxTzJe2
— MLB (@MLB) August 3, 2021
“Some of my favourite games growing up were NES Baseball and Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr on Nintendo 64, so we took a lot of inspiration from those games and put them into our game,” said The Misfit Society Co-Founder and Managing Director Gerald Bove. “Now, being able to play this with my six-year-old son and being able to connect across different generations over a game that’s been around for the past 100 years is something that feels really good to me personally.”
“More than just saying we took MLB and slapped it into Minecraft, we wanted to say that we brought the two together in that there is a true sort of crossover feeling,” added The Misfit Society Co-Founder and Creative Director James Duseko. “You’re playing in MLB stadiums, you’re playing in MLB jerseys, but you’re playing as Minecraft characters. … My hope is that most people recognize the amount of creativity that went into this project and the amount of love that went into this project. I think that’s what Minecraft is all about.”
Comment:
With the average age of a Minecraft player being 24 and the average age of an MLB fan being 57, the Minecraft tie-up is another strand in MLB’s long-term strategy of appealing to younger demographic segments as it aims to engage more youthful audiences.
A multi-platform Sandbox game, Minecraft boasts over 130 million active monthly users around the globe and is played on mobile devices, game consoles and Windows computers. Microsoft announced that Minecraft had surpassed 200 million copies sold in early 2020 – just 11 years after the first public version of the game was released. Making it the world’s top-selling video game of all time.
Original created by The Misfit Society, Minecraft was acquired by Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5bn and the MLB integration into Minecraft is similar to moves made by the NBA (eg ‘The Crossover’) and NFL in recent years to add team uniforms and league branding into Fortnite.
The Field of Dreams game itself posted impressive TV viewing and streaming numbers for television and digital.
According to Nielsen Media Research, the special regular-season game drew an average of 5.903m viewers on linear television (FOX Sports): which made it the most-viewed regular-season game on any network since 2005 and the most-watched programme across all television for the day.
While it was also the most-streamed regular-season game in history posting an average minute audience of 73,114 via Fox streaming, plus 17.4m social media views across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
So, the MLB built it and the fans came in big numbers.
Surely that will mean not only a second Field of Dreams game next season, but also more of these specialty regular-season game in the future? Perhaps the MLB will host an historic Negro League ballpark game?
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