GEELONG ABL FRANCHISE REVEALS LOGO

GEELONG-KOREA has already signed its first 50 members while unveiling its inaugural logo featuring a surfing baseball.

The new Australian Baseball League franchise has reportedly signed about 80 per cent of its playing list after holding tryouts in Seoul last month, while off-field, membership numbers are growing by 10 a day.

ABL head of marketing Alex Pellerano said the club was on target to sell all 300 of its memberships.

“That only kicked off last week and we still had already sold 50 of the 300 memberships with very limited marketing and advertising,” he said.

“With our advertising starting now and with five weeks to go, we hope to sell out of all memberships because we’re getting about 10 per day in.

“We’ll be appearing at upwards of 10 festivals and events (to promote the club). We'll also be at the Waurn Ponds Shopping Centre for a week from the end of October to the start of November. We'll also be appearing at the Korean Festival in the Melbourne CBD, which will be cool. We have a pretty active grass roots marketing campaign.”

Pellerano said the new logo had also been well received, with a play on Geelong’s surf culture.

“It’s pretty sweet, with that little surfing baseball dude, I love it,” he said.

“It came through Happy Rising, who is the new licensee of the team, but obviously what’s really unique about the partnership with them. They’re working really hard on the global broadcasting of the team, which has given us (at the ABL) the opportunity to localise the team here in Geelong a bit and put together a full vision for the game-day experience. It’s a really cool collaboration with their designers and company.

“We obviously gave a little bit of input on how we view Geelong through the eyes of Australians and in general and went with that beach-surfing concept, which is great.”

The ABL season kicks off on November 15.