2021 MLB Sponsorships Ideas

At Trajektory, we have talked a lot about how teams are being forced to be more creative in their sponsorship placements. While creativity was always something that set teams apart, it is now a necessity given the fanless stadiums. With the MLB starting a fanless spring training next month, our team had a little bit of fun coming together and brainstorming some MLB sponsorship ideas. They range from the outrageous to the outside-the-box to the more practical.

In-Game Entertainment

In-game entertainment looks different today, but there are still ways to engage fans during the game — even if they’re not in the stadiums. Sharon Fish (COO) brought up the idea of having virtual watch parties that can be hosted by team alumni. It would be very easy to attach a sponsor to these watch parties and tracking the results is an easy task being a digital platform. An outside-of-the-box idea that is very specific would be the Sharpie Strikeout where drones would fly to fans' homes and drop a sharpie goodie package. Who wouldn’t be in awe of a drone dropoff at their house? Tracking success may be harder in this case but could be done with discount promo codes included in the package and you could also add a mobile push to let someone know a package has dropped and track the opens of the push.

Doug Nickerson (Strategy Consultant) thought about how the thing you miss out on the most having to watch from home is the food! This leaves an open opportunity for brands like Blue Apron or HelloFresh to do a ballpark food at home meal package where you can have your ballpark favorites delivered to your door during the game. This is another idea that you can closely track by seeing all of the orders that are being placed.

Around the Stadium

While it feels like sponsorship is already everywhere, we feel that there are a lot of spaces around the stadium that are being underutilized in sponsorship. For example, there’s a lot of opportunities to do on-field logos, sponsored foul poles, or bullpen carts that wouldn’t be too distracting. Additionally, Courtney Whiteside (Director of Marketing) mentioned that it seems crazy that more teams aren’t sponsoring their rain tarps as they are used frequently (especially in some locations) and even get featured in the TV broadcast.

When it comes to logo placements, there are additional areas that are underutilized including having sponsored season ticket holder nameplates that get put on the chairs, sponsored warm-up balls that are thrown or hit into the seats during warm-up, and sponsored eye black stickers that can be handed out to kids.

While these seem like assets that are hard to track, Trajektory’s algorithm takes attendance, viewership, and census data to provide accurate valuations for assets like these as well as expected impressions.

Mobile App/Push

Whether they’re in-stadium or at home, fans have access to their mobile phones. This gives teams the ability to reach their fans through mobile push notifications. Alex Kerr (CEO & Founder) thought of a fun engagement idea that lets fans ‘Pick the Pitch’ in their team’s mobile app. A game that has you guessing the pitch and competing for prizes. This could be fully sponsored by a brand or allow mobile app banners throughout the experience highlighting multiple brands. Another engagement idea utilizing mobile push could be a scavenger hunt that can include multiple sponsors within the clues of the hunt.

Email

There’s a lot more that teams can do with their emails that can help improve open-rate but also give an opportunity for teams to humanize their players. Alex had the idea of doing letters from the players that sound personalized to each fan. Every email provides sponsor placements and, with the right content, a team can increase their open rate providing greater benefit to the sponsors.

Sportswear

Every sports league sponsors some part of the jersey. The NHL is now opening up helmet logo sponsors, soccer has always had sponsored jerseys, and the NBA now has a jersey patch. The MLB is behind in their jersey sponsorships and can open up sponsor opportunities on the batting helmets, jerseys, or pants. You may think that this is incredibly hard to value, but utilizing attendance data and census data, we have been able to create an algorithm that helps value any asset.

Now, hear us out on this idea. What if Juicy Couture sponsored a team’s pants and put their iconic ‘Juicy’ on the butt of the players. Imagine the attention that would get!

Out of Season

Most baseball stadiums repurpose their venue for concerts or events in the off-season. However, there’s also an opportunity for sponsored use of the stadium when the teams are out of season. Courtney thought there was a great connection between baseball and golf. What if a baseball stadium turned into a TopGolf venue in the offseason or even a PGA sponsored drive-in? This is something that could also include a year-round sponsorship with a Retiree of the Night in-game entertainment during the season where a team honors a retiree every night who gets a golf goodie bag.

Utilizing Trajektory

No matter how out-of-the-box an idea is, Trajektory can help value any asset and aggregate all of the sponsored assets into one login so you can see performance all in one place. Feel free to take any of our crazy ideas, we know you want to!