GK’S GRAND BRAND PLAN
BIG BRANDING PLANS FOR BASEBALL TEAM
GEELONG-KOREA will have a nickname next season and the Australian Baseball League is also planning on creating different membership opportunities to increase crowds.
As the start-up team embarks on its final home series at Waurn Ponds’ baseball complex, ABL chief executive Cam Vale said the new team would have ideally had a nickname this season.
“The need and strength of having a true nickname to the team is important,” Vale said.
“It was certainly a new concept and I think the Geelong-Korea brand has worked well. But like anything, getting that nickname up and running will be really important.
“I definitely think we should have focused the marketing on building a broader exposure to Geelong and get more people to sample it once over the season.
“The membership numbers are good and the crowd growth good, but let’s try and get as many people to sample one game of baseball would be something we’ll do very differently in the second year.”
But one of the shining lights of the start-up — in comparison to Auckland, which also joined the ABL this summer — is the venue, which Vale believes is capable of hosting national baseball in the near future.
“The venue has really stood up this year and has proven, not only from an ABL standard, but the potential for us to bring more national content is really important and something we’re seriously considering,” he said.
“Where Geelong-Korea is more advanced (than Auckland) is the quality of the venue at Waurn Ponds and its ability to get better and better.
“Both teams have performed at similar levels and it was obviously a very competitive series when they played each other and I think a few of the pundits would be suggesting the second year for both teams, they’ll be moving up the table pretty quickly.
“Winning eight to 12 games was probably thought how they’d go.”
Vale said the broadcast into Korea had also gone as expected, however there was a real desire to grow crowd numbers in 2019-20.
“We’re certainly happy with how things have gone,” he said.
“The positives have been the broadcast into Korea as expected. Close to half a million people watching each game has been really successful.
“I think we’ve made the first inroads into capturing attention in Geelong.
“We’ll probably hit 10,000 people across the 20 games by the completion of this round of games against Brisbane. That’s largely where we thought it would be.
“It’s definitely been a good start and we will look at potentially a different way for membership in the future that would be very innovative in Australian sport amongst lower-priced models.”
As for the team’s on-field record, Vale can see the Geelong-Korea team rapidly improving next season.
“Obviously they’ve struggled, but the weekend in Perth sums up their season — a great come-from-behind win when they really shouldn’t have won, a very competitive and close game in game two, and two games when they struggled,” he said.
“The first year of any sporting team, history says those teams struggle and I think there’ll be a lot of lessons learnt. But they have the capability to get very strong very quickly.”