Recently Alex Rodriguez signed on with the William Morris Agency, a firm that represents a number of athletes and movie stars. While the move isn’t unusual in and of itself, it does raise some interesting questions in my mind about the way that baseball has marketed itself relative to other sports.
If baseball could be said to have a cohesive marketing strategy, it would be to market laundry, but not equally. MLB has really focused on marketing teams, and more specifically, to market two teams. The focus of baseball’s marketing effort seems to have been on almost exclusively marketing the rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. Sure, at various times there has been some attention given to other teams, but I would say that Major League Baseball’s raison d’etre has been to perpetuate and exploit this rivalry. Regardless, what is clear is that baseball does not market individual players, except on the rare occasion that a record is set to fall.
There are perils associated with allowing the players to become the focal point of the league. Basketball has seen the results of this marketing strategy in spades. Players have far more power in the NBA than they do in MLB. Additionally, NBA players take on the role of a pseudo-GM, ala Allen Iverson or Kobe Bryant. The players also expect their salaries to reflect their status as the focal points of the league. Baseball has successfully avoided those problems by focusing more on the individual teams than on the individual players. The flip side to baseball’s refusal to highlight it’s players is that there are a number of outstanding players that would be superstars if marketed more, who instead play in relative anonymity. A perfect example of this is Hanley Ramirez, who was once in the Boston Red Sox farm system. Ramirez is an exciting young player, who plays on a small market team, and would probably be a household name right now if the Red Sox had not traded him to get Josh Beckett in 2005.
The question of how baseball could best market itself is extremely complex. The lack of a salary cap in baseball has definitely contributed to the two team arms race climate that Boston and New York have created. While many teams have found success within this climate, the yearly expectations of most teams and fans have been set by the big market teams. Although a fan of the Tampa Bay Rays or the Colorado Rockies might squeak into the playoffs from time to time, the probability of any team outside the American League East getting the Wild Card spot seems slim at best. To argue that low budget teams have been successful is to miss the point. Every year there are a certain number of playoff spots that automatically go to the Red Sox, Yankees, or both. The real problem presented by MLB’s marketing of this rivalry though, is that without these teams in contention baseball viewership would probably suffer. The league has put all their eggs in one basket. There is no other league that has so much riding on the success of two teams. Sure, the big market teams are always going to have the highest number of non-regional fans, but generally the interest is spread out more broadly.
Is baseball really reaching the broadest audience possible? Would it be better suited by marketing individual players more, despite the pitfalls? Would more parity increase national interest in the game, or is the current two team model working just fine? These are all difficult questions to answer, and I honestly don’t know what I think. I would tend to think that the league that is leading the way in the marketing department is the NFL. By and large there has been a great deal of parity in the league, but not to the point of making a dynasty impossible. The league has made gains in popularity over the last several years. Individual players have driven some of this popularity, but it has never been at the expense of the team or the game. Often NBA players seem bigger than the game, whereas NFL players generally fit into it. Can the successes of the NFL even be transfered to MLB? Ultimately I end up with more questions than answers at this point.
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
