the sets released so far in 2024 are really giving collectors our best look at the advertising patches that some teams began wearing in 2023. more teams have added them this year, and for some franchises i am left to wonder what they are trying to sell.
the dodgers this year began sporting an ad on their jerseys, and it is for the guggenheim group which owns the dodgers but is an investment and advisory firm at its core. they serve insurance companies, corporate and public pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments and foundations, wealth managers, and high-net worth investors. not your average baseball tv viewer.
i am not sure how it all works, but it seems weird that the dodgers would add a patch of the company that owns the team as it is not completely clear how the team makes money off of the deal, or at least how it is a benefit to the advertiser. anyway, the dodgers aren't alone.
when i saw this 2024 topps heritage patrick bailey card
most teams seem to have more mainstream advertisers that baseball fans might actually use like motorola, adt, meijer, marathon oil, quik trip, and quikrete. i will say that the heritage card design and coloring of bailey's card in particular complements the cruise patch really well, and at least we don't have to see ftx patches all over the umpires anymore.
Yeah, that ad ended up being quite an embarrassment when the company had its license revoked in California for public safety violations. https://uni-watch.com/2023/10/25/oops-giants-uni-advertiser-cited-as-public-safety-menace/ I'm a little surprised it even made it onto a card so prominently.
ReplyDeleteI wholeheartedly agree with the joy of no longer having to look at FTX patches. A few observations and potential answers to questions posed in this discussion of MLB advertising:
ReplyDeleteWhy would Cruise advertise at so early a stage in the firm's development? Cruise is among the leaders in developing autonomous driving (much, much, MUCH further along than better known names like Tesla). When Cruise becomes one of the first to widely deploy its vehicles the company will need to overcome trust issues from passengers. Will they hop into a driverless car from some firm they never heard of or will they opt for one whose name sounds familiar? Getting the name into people's subconscious will help in this endeavor which still remains years away.
Why would firms so far removed from the majority of MLB's audience spend so much advertising with the sport? Advertising to a bunch of people who will not be your customers still works if you can reach a sufficient portion of your own target market. Ferrari does very well with marketing at race events despite a very large percentage of the audience never having the resources to purchase its products. Some firms with a largely institutional customer base, like Guggenheim, still manage to find success with broader marketing efforts. The insurance companies, endowments, and trading counterparties of the firm are all faceless entities that have no ability to consume baseball. However, their employees who actually make decisions as to which firms they will do business with can be sports fans. Guggenheim can afford to "waste" some marketing spend on a lot of eyes that will never deal with them in hopes of landing the higher value attention of a handful of decision makers. There are other benefits in addition to the visual advertising that comes with a shoulder patch. Key sponsors have access to special suites and seating arrangements at MLB venues. These are heavily employed to seal transactions with high value customers. Imagine the seats that come packaged with such a marketing deal being used to woo a potential Guggenheim client or influence a home improvement retailer to stock more Qwikcrete in its stores.
Why would the firm that owns the Dodgers advertise with them rather than selling that space? Guggenheim does not own 100% of Guggenheim Baseball Management, the entity that controls the team. Guggenheim's main guy is heavily involved, as is Todd Boehly who has a significant stake after figuring out a way to essentially conduct a leveraged buyout of the team via some insurance companies he took as part of buying out his partnership interests in Guggenheim when he left the firm to set out on his own. Perhaps Guggenheim sees the customer acquisition benefits of advertising as more valuable than the broader-reaching firms that dominate other teams' marketing. Or, perhaps, the Guggenheim alumni network is tightly knit and sees it as a way to keep future business partnerships flourishing while getting in some more seats at the game. When Eldridge (Boehly's firm) needs financing for a deal it turns to Guggenheim.
thank you for this comment! i appreciate the insight and understanding around the questions i posed.
DeleteMakes me wonder if Fanatics/Topps will sell 'ads' on their cards. In other words, they could make a deal with Cruise so that their advertising patch is easily visible in the photos used for their baseball cards.
ReplyDeleteNot the biggest fan of the whole autonomous vehicle thing, but that being said... the patch itself is pretty simple and isn't that big of an eye sore. The color scheme sort of reminds me of Toyota patches.
ReplyDeleteAdvertising is not just for customers. If Cruise is going to be successful it needs to recruit a lot of software engineers/architects etc. Virtually all of the top tier SWEs are in either SF area or Seattle. Employer branding would seem to be a big factor there.
ReplyDeleteThat and probably the person in charge of buying advertising for Cruise liked the idea of getting some free Giants tickets.
I know that it doesn't apply to me since I no longer watch current sporting events but, I really don't like advertising on uniforms. And heck, I haven't seen a game in so long that I didn't even know that the MLB was doing this now.
ReplyDeleteOn my team’s radio broadcasts two prominent advertisers are Cancer Treatment Centers. The ads sound like they are selling Cancer. Every other commercial break you get to think about: Cancer. Health Insurance & Corporate Hospital chains are also major advertisers. I hope the medical profit corps don’t reach the uniforms.
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