There’s nothin’ like a good old Texas bar-bee-cue, just ask the Houston Astros’ fans.  Last July, Astros management gave away promotional BBQ tool sets to the first 10,000 fans.  That’s a whole lot of grilling tools!  Seems like they chose a great time for the promotion too, given that Independence Day was just two days later.  Heck, some fans may have even high-tailed it right back to their vans to get the grilling started right there in the parking lot.  But hopefully they stuck around to see the ‘Stros swing their bats.

Posted: November 7th, 2008 under Baseball, stadium giveaways.
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This adorable advertising giveaway was given to the first 18,000 fans at Yankee Stadium on September 17, courtesy of MetLife. It’s a promotional plush animal version of Snoopy (also MetLife’s mascot) wearing a mini Yankee jersey. These types of family-friendly giveaways are the perfect schwag to use to draw children and families out to the ballpark.

Posted: November 6th, 2008 under Baseball, Basketball, MLB All Star Game, stadium giveaways.
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Even though I was rooting for the Tampa Bay (gotta support the underdog!), I figured the Philadelphia Phillies were deserved of my humble team schwag blogpost after winning the World Series last night. Cole Hamels, who actually didn’t pitch last night at all, but pitched the first 5.5 innings of the crazy suspended game two days prior, won the World Series MVP. He was stellar throughout the playoffs, winning 4 games, and was poised to win a record fifth before the Devil Rays tied the score in the top of the seventh.

I digress. Hamels got the job done every time he hit the mound, and hopefully some of the faithful Phillies fans busted out their Cole Hamels promotional jerseys from the July 25th giveaway at Citizens Bank Park. Life is good right now for baseball fans in our nation’s former capital.

Posted: October 30th, 2008 under Baseball, stadium giveaways.
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For those Minor League baseball teams that can’t offer to send fans away in used cars (see Reading Phillies post below), it turns out they can still offer a different set of wheels. The Lancaster JetHawks gave away skateboards to their first 500 kids at a game this past season! And for the parents of those lucky children, they gave a year of free medical coverage for skateboard related accidents! Ok, fine, that part’s not true.

If you want to give away promotional items, but maybe would rather not risk the lawsuits that might follow from turning them loose on skateboards, frisbees provide timeless fun for everyone. They advertise for you as they fly, and they don’t require helmets or knee pads for use!

Posted: October 29th, 2008 under Baseball, stadium giveaways.
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Sometimes you go to a baseball game for a free bobblehead. Sometimes you even get a free souvenir in the form of a foul ball. And sometimes, yes sometimes, you get a free used car.

Minor League baseball’s Reading Phillies began a promotion dubbed Pimp My Clunker last May to give away beat up but serviceable cars to lucky fans. The Phillies’ director of communication described the vehicles as having “passed inspection, but just barely. Four tires and duct tape come standard on most cars.” I once had a car that fit that description stolen from a baseball parking lot, so I think I should be first in line!

If you want to watch some minor league baseball and potentially win a junkyard scraper, check out the Reading Phillies website. Or, if you think promotional car giveaway sounds like a good idea, but you might want to do it on a smaller and less expensive scale, check these guys out.

Posted: October 22nd, 2008 under Baseball, stadium giveaways.
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New York Yankees fans could use this timely stadium giveaway, handed out on August 30, 2008, to count down the days until their beloved team left its
longtime stadium. Of course, it might not be suitable to calculate their ridiculous payroll unless they add a few more spaces for extra digits on the display.

It does seem a bit strange to give away a calculator at a baseball game. I mean, hats, t-shirts, beer mugs, boom sticks, etc. all seem a lot more like reasonable promotional items. Maybe the calculator symbolizes the fact that a large chunk of NYC’s economy revolves around finance and number crunching.

So, maybe you don’t own a baseball team. But maybe you work for some sort of company. Really, any company. If baseball teams can give away promotional calculators, surely almost every other organization would benefit as much (I would assume more) from such a giveaway. Slap your logo on the top, and propagate it effortlessly. After all, calculators make their way to desktops, home offices, and schools. And, occasionally, baseball stadiums.

Posted: October 3rd, 2008 under Baseball, stadium giveaways.
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With hurricane Ike threatening to really make things messy in Texas, it appeared Major League Baseball Commissione Bud Selig decided to create his own storm. According the a recent Yahoo! Sports article, Selig opted to move two crucial late-season Astros home games away from Minute Made Park in Houston to Milwaukee’s Miller Park. Chicago Cubs fans delighted! The two game Cubs-Astros series was moved practically next door.

After traveling overnight and arriving on little sleep, the Cubs handled the Astros easily in both games, thus pushing Houston’s playoff hopes further out of reach. The entire Astros organization was outraged. Players were baffled as to why these games could not have been rescheduled to later dates; Doug Brocail suspected that “if it was New York or Boston, it would have been played at the end of the season.”

At any rate, the fiasco quickly became a money-making opportunity for Astros fans, who printed promotional t-shirts (like the one pictured above), to help other disgruntled fans express their frustration with Selig loud and clear.

Posted: October 2nd, 2008 under Baseball.
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HOLY SCHWAG!! Check out this freakin’ globe! Hopefully this is pretty neat for you New Yorkers out there, or for those who appreciate baseball and recognize that the last year at Yankees stadium is the end of an era for the pinstriped powerhouse from the Big Apple.  

Posted: September 24th, 2008 under Baseball, Souvenirs, stadium giveaways.
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Check out this cool (and kinda gross) promotion created by ESPN to inform media-buyers of the channel’s impressive ratings in Asia. The message that ESPN wanted to convey was that sports fans couldn’t get any closer to the action than by watching ESPN’s comprehensive sports coverage and commentary. To send this message in an “eye-catching” way, ESPN had various sports balls airbrushed to look like human eyeballs. Soccer balls, baseballs, and basketballs were all chosen as part of the campaign (probably because people don’t have football or hockey puck-shaped eyeballs).

On the back of the eye-balls was the ESPN logo and the marketing slogan: “You can’t get any closer than this.” The balls were packaged in PR kits that also had literature detailing ESPN’s ratings and audience demographic in the Asian market. The company reported the successful promotion created a very favorable environment for the subsequent sales process, and media buyers were wholly impressed by the unique item.

(via Adsoftheworld)

Posted: August 29th, 2008 under Baseball, Basketball, General, Soccer.
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There’s a great article in the August 2008 issue of Promo Magazine that talks about the use of ballpark promotions — their purpose, their effectiveness, and their future. Richard Tedesco gives great insight into the use of promotional products in sports marketing, and shows how savvy marketers are focusing on creating a comprehensive entertainment experience for fans, instead of expecting people to fill the stadiums and sit there on their butts for the sake of it.

As basketball and football overtake baseball in popularity, sports marketers are faced with a new challenge: How can they create a value-added experience for fans that gives them a great reason to come to the ballpark, besides the game itself? Many baseball marketers admit that its easier for fans to watch the game from the comfort of their couch, so they’re looking for ways to draw fans out of their homes with exciting themes, celebrations, and free giveaways.

Promotional products aren’t viewed as a quick fix for low attendance. Instead, marketers view these giveaways as a way to make fans more comfortable with the idea of coming out to the ballpark, and hope that the entire experience gives them a reason to do it more often. Free giveaways benefit the team and the fans as much as they help the sponsors’ brands. It’s a win-win-win situation!

Posted: August 14th, 2008 under Baseball.
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