It's a Whole New Ball Game

Photo of Weitzel

Weitzel

John Weitzel, instructor of marketing, and Dr. Ed Mayo, professor emeritus of marketing, together with Dobb Mayo (Gazillion & One Advertising) earned an Honorable Mention Award from USA Today Sports Weekly for one of two research presentations they made at the 2013 conference of the Society for American Baseball Research.

The presentation, "The Outfield Sign: Past, Present, and Future," traced the evolution of outfield advertising in major league baseball stadiums from the 1880s to present day. According to Weitzel and Mayo, in its earliest days, outfield signs were simply a way for baseball teams to raise additional revenues, and the signs were hand-painted on 8' x 12' sections of an outfield fence. Often, they contained so much copy that they were impossible to read by spectators sitting three or four hundred feet away.

“What surprised us most was how long it took for the folks designing outfield advertising to follow the principles developed by roadside advertisers—billboard advertisers,” says Mayo. “A typical roadside billboard might have 2 or 3 seconds at most to communicate a message to the people in a passing car. That's probably as long as a baseball fan will look at an outfield fence, too, but it wasn't until the 1970s that stadium advertisers took this time limit into consideration.”

Mayo indicates that the average baseball fan will look up to 300 times at a scoreboard during a game—as well as the advertising signage around it—but each glance is only a second or two long. Most effective ballpark advertising signs today usually don't try to communicate much more than the advertiser's brand name and logo. “This is like a lot of roadside advertising today,” says Mayo.

Today, outfield fences are less cluttered with advertising, and the most visible ballpark advertising is located on super-bright 2,000 square foot L.E.D signs that surround the 11,000 square foot video screens that are the focal point of modern scoreboards. Ballpark advertising today does little more than project a sponsor's brand name. The "Outfield Sign" research presentation also raised questions about advertising's role in branding the stadium itself and the team that calls it home.

The team also made a presentation at the SABR conference titled, "Take Her Out to the Ballgame: Ladies at the Ballpark," which examined how professional baseball marketed itself to women in its earliest days to broaden the appeal of the sport to the emerging middle classes in the late 1800s.

Photo of Ed Mayo

Ed Mayo

“Professional baseball hoped that the presence of women in the grandstands would help discourage the rowdy behavior of fans who were attracted to the national pastime. Ladies Days would become baseball's first great promotion, and were popular until the 1960s,” says Mayo.  

Since then, according to Weitzel and the Mayos, professional baseball has struck out in its efforts at marketing baseball to women. Weitzel points to Charlie Finley's "Hot Pants" promotions in the 1970s and more recent attempts to attract women with ballpark fashion shows and what are called "hair-nails-and-makeup" demonstrations as failed attempts.

“Despite women representing 46 percent of baseball's fan base—and being among baseball's most ardent fans for more than a century – these “tone deaf” programs seem to be the result of a stereotype that says women's interest in baseball is less than serious,” says Mayo. “This kind of thinking has embarrassed several major league teams.”