ALL-STARS: Baseball coverage more ‘regional’
world, basketball, NFL, soccer, tennis and at certain times golf stars connect more with fans, especially younger fans, and sponsors who covet those fans,” he said.
Judge and hometown slugger Giancarlo Stanton headlined Monday night’s Home Run Derby at 5-year-old Marlins Park, a sleek retractableroof ballpark with splashes of Joan Miro colors, a Red Grooms home run sculpture and a Clevelander night club with a swimming pool just beyond the left-field wall. MLB hopes to continue momentum from the Chicago Cubs’ first title since 1908, which drew the highest television rating for the World Series in a dozen years.
“We know that fans connect locally every day with the teams that they root for and love, and our job is to try to highlight the performances to make it a national story as much as possible when we have that,” said Tony Petitti, MLB’s chief operating officer. “We were really fortunate last fall. We had an incredible national story in the Cubs.”
MLB’s “This Time It Counts” promotion has been scrapped after 15 years. The World Series will start at the home of the pennant winner with the best record, not the league that prevails in the All-Star Game.
The league and many of its national sponsors are featuring players in marketing campaigns. Still, baseball players say athletes in other sports are seen far more often in commercials.
Judge, the 6-foot-7 larger-than-life New York Yankees rookie who leads the big leagues with 30 home runs, was celebrat- ed by MLB with a JudgeCon promotion in on Monday in which the sport enlisted actors and comics to dress as judges and make appearances throughout New York City.
Partly because of the busy schedule – 162 games in 183 days – baseball players don’t have much time for marketing during the season. And when it comes to viewers, clicks and retweets, MLB often lags in recent decades, when the NFL and NBA have connected far better with younger audiences.
ESPN’s 2017 ranking of the 100 most famous ath- letes, based on endorsements, social media following and internet search popularity, has Cristiano Ronaldo first, followed by James, Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, tennis star Roger Federer and golfer Phil Mickelson. Brady is the top NFL player at 21 after leading New England to five Super Bowl titles.
“It seems like baseball players tend to have a little bit more regional coverage,” Giants catcher Buster Posey said.
Equipment companies have a larger audience to sell basketball sneakers, tennis equipment and golf gear than baseball spikes.