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.