There’s so much Orioles-Nationals rivalry talk that goes on over the season, enough to make one dizzy.
Though no one on either team seems to think the rivalry’s much more than a competition between two good, geographically-close teams, the real rivalry isn’t just in the minds of some fans, but rather in two busy marketing and promotions offices.
There, an intensive rivalry exists for border-sitting fans in Howard and Anne Arundel and a couple other border counties that, sadly for the Orioles, the Nats are winning by a landslide, at least as far as what the teams are doing to bring fans in.
It would be simplistic to just look at attendance numbers – both teams are winning, and both drawing well as far as attendance goes – that can change with each team’s respective won-loss record. (Perhaps the master of promotions was former Chicago White Sox owner the late Bill Veeck who had “Disco Demolition Derby” and many other legendary promotions to draw fans in even during losing seasons.)
So as Veeck or minor league teams would tell you, winning the promotions battle means keeping fans even when the record isn’t as good or star players like Bryce Harper or Chris Davis aren’t quite as aplenty.
Consider the Nats: a current promotion offers fans a $5 game ticket and $5 beers. The Orioles have Ollie’s Bargain Night and Student Night, which are good, particularly the Student Night promotion, but nowhere near as interesting or creative as the Nats.
The Nats offer their fans a “Summer Concert Series” in which major Grammy and CMA-nominated artists come and play for free after the game. Those acts have included Blues Traveler, with harmonica virtuoso John Popper, and country star Dierks Bentley.
The Orioles have “Fireworks Night” a few nights per year. Fireworks are fun, to be sure, but that idea is about as old as baseball itself. If you are yawning so far, and an O’s fan, you aren’t alone. The Nats do fireworks nights too, but not as a major promotion.
The Orioles have or have had a few fun giveaways, like Floppy Hat night or Crush Davis T-Shirt night, but don’t do quite the promotions the Nats do – July features dollar hot dog night and dollar ice cream night, and on July 6 a concert with CMA Award-winning artist Thompson Square.
The Orioles do have a Summer 6-Pack which gives you a pretty good deal on six games including a series with the Yankees or Red Sox, but why not a concert series? Do the Orioles not know the number to 9:30 Club owner/IMP Promotions head Seth Hurwitz or to the folks from Ram’s Head Live? Couldn’t the O’s get anyone playing a local venue to do a post-game like the Nats?
The Nats seem to just have better ideas and better energy when it comes to promotions. The O’s seem to just recycle old ideas, unless they have to come up with something or face empty stands.
In last year’s playoff run, the O’s offered cheap tickets (at old prices) in decent lower-level locations to get fans in the stands v. a few teams that don’t normally draw well. The promotion succeeded, but sold out so quickly that some fans didn’t have a chance to blink before the applicable tickets were gone.
That promotion ONLY came around because the O’s were chasing the playoffs to half-full stadium crowds. The Nats seem to present such promotions regardless.
The O’s do get credit for a couple things: their $10 off the price of a ticket for voting a specific number of times in the All-Star balloting is a good way to encourage O’s fans to turn out – and they have with four players currently scheduled to start the game if voting ended as of Sunday June 23rd.
Also, the Orioles’ ticket raids – in which they have offered free tickets to fans, including this writer, for providing an email address, is a great way to stay in touch with fans and to get a turn-out to games against opponents like the Houston Astros or Cleveland Indians.
But if the O’s really want to compete with the Nats for fans, they need to step up their game, a lot. The Nats seem to have a minor league, fun mentality of creativity and old-school lore. The O’s seem to be a little stuck in the mud by not embracing that mentality.
The minors have some of the most unique promotions you will ever see – not that all those promotions work in a bigger market. But the Orioles need a shot of the promotions version of Don Draper, or at least the guys at his agency with Don now on hiatus, for some new ideas.
In full disclosure, the Orioles have sponsored, in the past, this writer’s WCBM radio show. However, they are not a current Tom Moore Show sponsor, and the gripe is not with any of the advertising the team is doing – quite effective actually – to get the word out about their games.
The O’s may just need, shall we say, a change of Nat-titude.
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2 Responses
Last years promotions were pretty good. Of course they were anchored by the statue giveaways, which isn’t exactly something you can do every year. But everything this year is boring and unoriginal. One bobblehead night at the end of the season. A beach towel night. A toiletry bag giveaway. It’s just like they aren’t even trying. The need to go talk to someone down at Bowie about how to get this right. They have happy hour beer deals. Manny Machado garden gnome night. And I’m not really a fan, but they got people to turn out for Star Wars night. The Orioles need to understand that you can’t just hand out a player shirt and expect tix to sell.Granted, Crush night was a huge success. But you had a lot of local Nats fans help fill up the park. On top of the fact that they only gave out 10K shirts that were gone in 45 minutes pissing a lot of people off. It’s great to go see a winning team again. But they have a long way to go to make the fans who stuck around for the previous 15 years to feel appreciated again.
Nats also have a fairweather fan base, a bunch of transplants From all over the country and world. Now I do agree that it is good they do whatever it takes to get people into the ballpark whether they are there for the game or not, But DC is a market that can do that.