This week the Bandits play a five game away series against the Sydney Blue Sox. Five game series are new to the ABL this year (scheduled ones, anyway - postponements necessitated their need last season, on occasion). This is due to the increase from 40 games per team per season (home and away four game series) to a new 45 game schedule. While I think it's unfair to have teams play an uneven number of home and away games both against eachother and overall (based on this blog on homeground advantage in the ABL), the five game series has additional implications.
The first of these obviously relates to pitching. With five games in four days, the pitching roster will be stretched. This season the Bandits have tried five starting pitchers - Maestri, Yanagawa, Chambers, Morriss, and Kilby. Five games, five pitchers - all good, right? Well Kilby only started during the first series, against Canberra, lasted 2.1 innings and hasn't appeared since (and is currently not on the active roster). This poses a problem. If the series were across five days, then potentially the opening game pitcher could close out the series on short rest. Given the clustered schedule, I think it's reasonably safe to assume that a different starting pitcher will be tossed the ball for each game.
The current active Bandits roster consists of 12 pitchers. If we assume Maestri, Yanagawa, Chambers, and Morriss all get starts (Morriss has a patchy recent past, but in a reasonable ballpark like Sydney he makes a solid option) - then we can expect a new starter to take the mound this weekend. Of the remaining, I think it's safe to straight away rule out Mowday, Erasmus, and Lamb. All three play classic reliever roles (usually very well) - and Erasmus is presumably restricted by a pitch count. This leaves Veitch, Baker, Durket, Jarrett, and Marck. Veitch is an experienced campainer, and started once last season, but his longest outing this season (3.1 innings of relief) was his worst. He has however performed well in shorter relief, and the Bandits will probably feel he's best suited for this role. Baker hasn't experienced the smoothest start to the season, so I'd tend to assume the same. So the decision comes down to either two pitchers who've shown promise as relievers (Marck, Durket) or a yet to debut Jarrett. Sean Jarrett is an interesting case - he's so far reached the AA level in the US, playing with the Tulsa Drillers, with a (mostly) good record as a reliever (he understandably takes a short while to adjust to each new level, but has pretty great numbers otherwise). The issue is that he's never started in the minors. Now, Yanagawa is a reliever/closer in Japan, so this isn't necessarily an impediment - but an issue to consider. This leaves Durket and Marck. Durket only started one game during his time with US indie-league team Lake Erie Crushers, but has shown promise since arriving in Australia and is more experienced than Marck. The New Zealander, Andrew Marck, is the wildcard. While having no stateside experience, he's consistently started for New Zealand in the past. This season Marck has only allowed 1 hit across 5.2 innings of relief. He's an exciting up and comer, but much more of an unknown. While my crystal ball is a bit foggy at the moment, I'm forecasting that Marck will be given the chance to start this series and Durket and Jarrett will shoulder some heavy relief work.
The next important implication has to do with the way things will stand at the end of the series. The Bandits are currently in (tied) second spot, with an even 6-6 record. To keep themselves comfortable for the playoffs, they'll probably be aiming to keep themselves even or better. Sydney are in last spot (5-11) but are by no means a bad team, and a bad series against Perth exaggerates their record. The fall of this series therefore is very important for the Bandits. A 3-2 or 4-1 series victory would be a great result (I'm assuming neither team will sweep the other). Yet it could come down to an error or stroke of luck to flip this the other way. The Bandits and Blue Sox will likely be in the tussle for spots 2-4 in the league this season, so these head-to-heads are highly important - especially when an odd-game series takes away the possibility a split (barring rain). Blacktown Ballpark plays quite similar to the Bandits own RNA Showgrounds, so thankfully this is likely going to come down to a test of skill and mettle. The Bandits hold the edge so far, after winning their home series against the Sox 3-1 - with great pitching performances. I'm predicting a 3-2 series win to the Bandits, but secretly hoping they can pinch a result to sneak that up another win.
Wednesday 30 November 2011
Sunday 27 November 2011
Increasing Exposure - Marketing the ABL.
I've spoken a lot about ABL attendances in previous blog posts here and here.
One of the primary conclusions coming from these attendance analyses is
that while the ABL has started solidly, there is plenty of room for
growth. I'll return to attendances in future weeks (the Bandits are in
the middle of three weekends without a home series), but for now I
thought it would be interesting to look more into the strategies the
Bandits (and the ABL) are using to build the fanbase. I'll also throw in
some ideas of my own.
To start, let's look at something the Bandits do very well - creating an environment that is very kid friendly, and extending this beyond the ballpark. In a really good piece on Shayne Watson, Alexis Brudnicki reveals some of the work that goes on behind the scenes. Shayne, last year a Bandits player and this year the third-base coach, actively engages kids in our local schools with short baseball orientated clinics (Shayne is a development officer for Baseball Queensland). If you need some convincing about the value of these sorts of programs - take a look at the AFL program Auskick. Through Auskick, the AFL is making huge inroads in Rugby League centric areas - such as the Gold Coast and Western Sydney. Kids love sport and are young enough that cultural biases don't yet run particularly deep - encouraging their involvement at a grassroots level can be very successful. he families that make it to the ballpark are provided with a very kid friendly environment - between innings activities involve races against the mascot, dizzy bat races for prizes, and dance-offs. Buster (the Bandits mascot) gets a fair workout all night, and there's always a fair share of kids on the hill throwing a baseball around and swarming after flyballs. From my observations, I'd say a large percentage of the crowd on any given night is families - and many of the children play the sport. The Bandits actively target this market, and the cowboy hat wearing guy running a lot of the show is a great asset for them (unfortunately, I don't actually know his name - he does bare an interesting resemblance to Buster, though).
One thing I read and hear a lot about the ABL is the idea that the quality of the product is key (in this case, the product is baseball games). In an interview this year with ABC's the 7:30 report, ABL CEO Peter Wermuth said:
The key thing is really to deliver a good product, so when they're here, they come out and "Oh I had a great time. This was awesome. I will come back and bring my friends." If we can achieve that, then we're successful.
I agree with this - when marketing resources are limited, the word-of-mouth effect can be very useful. I also agree that the quality of baseball in the ABL is quite strong. The key to this quote lies in the line "I will come back and bring my friends". Herein lies the problem - at present, the Bandits are underperforming when it comes to attracting non-family groups. The proportion of 18-30 year olds in the crowd on any given night is typically very low. These are the types of people that say "This was awesome. I will come back and bring my friends". And these people, much more than the families, are the ones in which word-of-mouth will begin to work its magic. If you don't agree with or aren't convinced by my point, go to one of the upcoming Big Bash League 20Twenty cricket games. State cricket in Australia has always had dismal attendances, with one-day matches attracting crowds typically in the low hundreds. The introduction of 20Twenty cricket (a much shorter format, for those of you not familiar with cricket) saw crowds jump dramatically - with most crowds in the tens of thousands. With a reworked format and additional marketing money, I wouldn't be surprised if this jumps again this year. While the context here is different (e.g. a new game format), the key to my point is that a large proportion of these crowds are groups of friends - young professionals, workmates, teenagers, social groups, etc. They have a good night (and strong crowd numbers boost this atmosphere) and return to later games and later seasons - often with different groups of people. This segment of people is virtually missing from Bandits games, and this is something that needs to be addressed if the league hopes to gather momentum with regards to crowd growth.
And here's the thing. I'm 25 and a big baseball fan. I've always enjoyed following the Astros in the MLB, and when the ABL started I happily latched onto the Bandits as well. I know people who support the Braves, Phillies, Yankees, and other major league teams. When I was still at university I could have a good chat about baseball with a number of different people. When I walk around Brisbane I see hundreds and hundreds of MLB caps on the everyday people. I frequently baseball see playing on TVs in the restaurants in the middle of Queen Street Mall, or in O'Malleys, or in any number of places. Live MLB games are broadcast on both free-to-air and cable. While Baseball currently plays a minor role in the Australian sporting landscape - its presence is almost ubiquitous. Yet, if I were to stop many of these people in the street (or mall) and ask them what they know about the Australian Baseball League - many of them will offer only blank stares. The league is greatly lacking in brand awareness. This is a huge issue that needs to be overcome - people can't attend games if they aren't even aware they are happening. There is a significant casual baseball fanbase in Australia - and the Bandits and the ABL need to work hard at getting their name into peoples heads, and taking advantage of this dormant group of potential future crowd members.
The final thing I want to talk about is something the ABL does very well but isn't taking advantage of. One of the huge benefits of the partnership with the ABL is the high quality merchandise deals in place - with New Era and Majestic. Essentially, our players are decked out in the same gear as major leaguers, and fans at games seem active in buying some of the gear. At this very moment I'm wearing a Bandits on-field 59fifty New Era cap, like the one below.
Every second teenager, and a large number of twenty-somethings, I see in Brisbane is wearing a New Era baseball cap. Now while they may wear them in incredibly stupid ways - such as leaving the sizing sticker on the cap and keeping the brim flat (to me this is the equivalent of wearing a shirt with the cardboard insert still in and the tag still attached - or wearing new shoes with tissue paper still stuffed down the front and the laces unthreaded) - it creates an interesting alignment between what the league already has and what the current culture is presently doing. Walk into a store like Culture Kings and you will see rows and rows of these hats - MLB, NBA, NHL... they now even have local NRL (rugby league) logos on them. As far as I know the NRL has no deal with New Era, so these hats are probably made as a custom order. There is a huge opportunity for the ABL to raise its profile here - the barrier is getting their products into these stores. While I evidently don't care for some of the fashion trends, and most of the buyers of MLB hats aren't legitimate baseball fans, the MLB and NBA have shown that successful merchandising strategies can hugely boost the awareness of their brand. Latching on to this market could be key to increasing the visibility of the ABL, and giving the brand an aura that aligns it with its North American counterpart. For those of you who don't think teens would actually buy them - one of the trends I've noticed is the broad spread of teams represented - not just the major teams but many low market franchises. From this I infer that having different hat to your peers is a major attractor. A display of the six ABL hats, backed by the ABL logo, in a "modern culture" store would get hats on heads faster than you may think. And importantly, on heads that would wear them most days of the week. The key here I feel isn't conversion (getting the cap purchasers to go along to games) but brand visibility and awareness, and allowing the ABL team logos to have a persistent visual presence in our daily lives would have significant onflow effects.
To start, let's look at something the Bandits do very well - creating an environment that is very kid friendly, and extending this beyond the ballpark. In a really good piece on Shayne Watson, Alexis Brudnicki reveals some of the work that goes on behind the scenes. Shayne, last year a Bandits player and this year the third-base coach, actively engages kids in our local schools with short baseball orientated clinics (Shayne is a development officer for Baseball Queensland). If you need some convincing about the value of these sorts of programs - take a look at the AFL program Auskick. Through Auskick, the AFL is making huge inroads in Rugby League centric areas - such as the Gold Coast and Western Sydney. Kids love sport and are young enough that cultural biases don't yet run particularly deep - encouraging their involvement at a grassroots level can be very successful. he families that make it to the ballpark are provided with a very kid friendly environment - between innings activities involve races against the mascot, dizzy bat races for prizes, and dance-offs. Buster (the Bandits mascot) gets a fair workout all night, and there's always a fair share of kids on the hill throwing a baseball around and swarming after flyballs. From my observations, I'd say a large percentage of the crowd on any given night is families - and many of the children play the sport. The Bandits actively target this market, and the cowboy hat wearing guy running a lot of the show is a great asset for them (unfortunately, I don't actually know his name - he does bare an interesting resemblance to Buster, though).
One thing I read and hear a lot about the ABL is the idea that the quality of the product is key (in this case, the product is baseball games). In an interview this year with ABC's the 7:30 report, ABL CEO Peter Wermuth said:
The key thing is really to deliver a good product, so when they're here, they come out and "Oh I had a great time. This was awesome. I will come back and bring my friends." If we can achieve that, then we're successful.
I agree with this - when marketing resources are limited, the word-of-mouth effect can be very useful. I also agree that the quality of baseball in the ABL is quite strong. The key to this quote lies in the line "I will come back and bring my friends". Herein lies the problem - at present, the Bandits are underperforming when it comes to attracting non-family groups. The proportion of 18-30 year olds in the crowd on any given night is typically very low. These are the types of people that say "This was awesome. I will come back and bring my friends". And these people, much more than the families, are the ones in which word-of-mouth will begin to work its magic. If you don't agree with or aren't convinced by my point, go to one of the upcoming Big Bash League 20Twenty cricket games. State cricket in Australia has always had dismal attendances, with one-day matches attracting crowds typically in the low hundreds. The introduction of 20Twenty cricket (a much shorter format, for those of you not familiar with cricket) saw crowds jump dramatically - with most crowds in the tens of thousands. With a reworked format and additional marketing money, I wouldn't be surprised if this jumps again this year. While the context here is different (e.g. a new game format), the key to my point is that a large proportion of these crowds are groups of friends - young professionals, workmates, teenagers, social groups, etc. They have a good night (and strong crowd numbers boost this atmosphere) and return to later games and later seasons - often with different groups of people. This segment of people is virtually missing from Bandits games, and this is something that needs to be addressed if the league hopes to gather momentum with regards to crowd growth.
And here's the thing. I'm 25 and a big baseball fan. I've always enjoyed following the Astros in the MLB, and when the ABL started I happily latched onto the Bandits as well. I know people who support the Braves, Phillies, Yankees, and other major league teams. When I was still at university I could have a good chat about baseball with a number of different people. When I walk around Brisbane I see hundreds and hundreds of MLB caps on the everyday people. I frequently baseball see playing on TVs in the restaurants in the middle of Queen Street Mall, or in O'Malleys, or in any number of places. Live MLB games are broadcast on both free-to-air and cable. While Baseball currently plays a minor role in the Australian sporting landscape - its presence is almost ubiquitous. Yet, if I were to stop many of these people in the street (or mall) and ask them what they know about the Australian Baseball League - many of them will offer only blank stares. The league is greatly lacking in brand awareness. This is a huge issue that needs to be overcome - people can't attend games if they aren't even aware they are happening. There is a significant casual baseball fanbase in Australia - and the Bandits and the ABL need to work hard at getting their name into peoples heads, and taking advantage of this dormant group of potential future crowd members.
The final thing I want to talk about is something the ABL does very well but isn't taking advantage of. One of the huge benefits of the partnership with the ABL is the high quality merchandise deals in place - with New Era and Majestic. Essentially, our players are decked out in the same gear as major leaguers, and fans at games seem active in buying some of the gear. At this very moment I'm wearing a Bandits on-field 59fifty New Era cap, like the one below.
Every second teenager, and a large number of twenty-somethings, I see in Brisbane is wearing a New Era baseball cap. Now while they may wear them in incredibly stupid ways - such as leaving the sizing sticker on the cap and keeping the brim flat (to me this is the equivalent of wearing a shirt with the cardboard insert still in and the tag still attached - or wearing new shoes with tissue paper still stuffed down the front and the laces unthreaded) - it creates an interesting alignment between what the league already has and what the current culture is presently doing. Walk into a store like Culture Kings and you will see rows and rows of these hats - MLB, NBA, NHL... they now even have local NRL (rugby league) logos on them. As far as I know the NRL has no deal with New Era, so these hats are probably made as a custom order. There is a huge opportunity for the ABL to raise its profile here - the barrier is getting their products into these stores. While I evidently don't care for some of the fashion trends, and most of the buyers of MLB hats aren't legitimate baseball fans, the MLB and NBA have shown that successful merchandising strategies can hugely boost the awareness of their brand. Latching on to this market could be key to increasing the visibility of the ABL, and giving the brand an aura that aligns it with its North American counterpart. For those of you who don't think teens would actually buy them - one of the trends I've noticed is the broad spread of teams represented - not just the major teams but many low market franchises. From this I infer that having different hat to your peers is a major attractor. A display of the six ABL hats, backed by the ABL logo, in a "modern culture" store would get hats on heads faster than you may think. And importantly, on heads that would wear them most days of the week. The key here I feel isn't conversion (getting the cap purchasers to go along to games) but brand visibility and awareness, and allowing the ABL team logos to have a persistent visual presence in our daily lives would have significant onflow effects.
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