Making The Brand of Baseball Great Again

Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

(for the full blog posting, go to blog.joelrubinson.net) It’s baseball’s time, having just finished a great World Series with the biggest ratings jump this year (+40%) in history for the World Series.  So let me merge my branding brain and my baseball heart for this blog posting.

Don’t be fooled by the ratings jump; the brand of baseball is seriously challenged. Some indications:

• Continued long-term downward trend in the ratings for the all-star game and the World Series.
• Football is our national sport, while baseball is now based on local team interest
  • A few weeks ago, on Sunday the NY Giants/Phoenix game and the 6^th and final game of the ALCS (Yankees, Angels) went head to head and got equal national ratings.  Yet, in NY, the Yankees’ TV ratings blew away the Giants.
  • The World Series TV ratings are about 4X higher in the home cities of the teams playing than elsewhere.  This is a typical pattern for baseball but not football.
  • Ironically, while major league baseball’s appeal is local in the US, Japanese stars playing in the US major leagues give it national appeal in Japan.  People all around Japan took an extended lunch to watch Matsui have an unprecedented game and they would have done the same for Ichiro.  BTW, Chien-Ming Wang (until he got hurt) was the largest sports star in Taiwan.
  • The star quality of Baseball players has been eclipsed by basketball and other sports.
    • Forbes’ list of top 100 celebrities only has one baseball player—Derek Jeter at #66.  A number of basketball players are at the top of the list, and, of course, Tiger Woods is Tiger (top rated). 
    • Until the 70s, organized sports’ biggest stars seemed to come from baseball (and whoever was heavyweight boxing champion): Cobb, Ruth, DiMaggio, Williams, Mantle, Mays, Clemente
• I think basketball is tops on cultural connection
• Basketball is the sports embodiment of urban culture. So many of our phrases come from urban culture and are part of  basketball these days.  Remember when baseball sayings dominated?
• Baseball etiquette reflects days gone by. In other sports we trash-talk, fight, do victory dances.  In baseball, we don’t steal second if we’re up by too many runs, warn both sides after a bean ball, never show up the pitcher on a home run or the hitter on a strikeout, we never trash talk.
  
• The World Series, our biggest stage, starts so late that it is losing the viewership of the nations’ young who have to go to school the next day.

Having said all of this, baseball has amazing assets on which to rebuild.  In the movie City Slickers, around the campfire one of the friends said, “When my father and I had nothing else to talk about, there was always baseball”  True dat.

Here are some recommendations I freely offer built around five cornerstones:  make the game national and international (rather than only local), reignite the passion that fans have from childhood, make baseball permeate culture, make baseball contemporary and cool, play to the game as theatre.

1. Baseball ties into childhood memories more than any other sport; reawaken those feelings and for God’s sake, start the World Series game earlier so kids can grow up with baseball!
2. Reestablish a new cultural connection. Just like basketball has embraced African-American culture, Baseball has a high representation of Latino and Asian players and should embrace those cultures in a way that reflects the new America.
3. Stop the spitting, it is really disgusting!
4. Market your stars better and turn them into national role models (that’s part of why Jeter is number one).
5. Inflame the passion that people feel for their team and create passion for their league so they have a rooting interest in the World Series and All-Star game.
6. Join the digital age! Augmented reality, integrated stats (mlb.com and espn.com offer a lot), social media at the sport and team level, and instant replay.
7. Create national and international relevance for baseball.  Ethnic pride, stars, integration into culture can transcend local rooting interest and are all big assets baseball has (but could do more with).
8. There is poetry and beauty to baseball.  The baseball diamond is gorgeous.  There is no clock which makes for high drama.  In the 60s, fans used to be able to exit Yankee stadium on the field along the running track.  That was a religious experience so why not again, at least occasionally?

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