Over the last six weeks or so, Steve Weingarten and I have been assisting the San Diego Hall of Champions with the marketing of their upcoming Pitch, Hit, and Run (PHR) event at the Boys and Girls Club of Vista. The event will be held on May 3rd, just days away.
The official skills competition of Major League Baseball, PHR is intended to encourage youth participation in baseball and emphasize the fun element of the sport. The competition is open to boys and girls, ages 7 to 14. PHR participants can advance through four levels of competition, including Local and Sectional competitions, Team Championship events held at Petco Park, and the National Finals in July at the MLB All-Star Game in St. Louis. Arguably the best part of PHR is that it is completely FREE for the participants!
Through volunteering, Steve and I have been introduced to the challenges of promoting a non-for-profit type of event. With no significant funds allotted for marketing, we have had to roll up our sleeves and make a real effort to get the word out to all local schools, Little Leagues, and other nearby Boys and Girls Clubs. It has been a great experience and Steve and I are grateful to everyone at the Hall of Champions who has been showing us the sports marketing ropes!
So if you live in the San Diego area and have a child, age 7 to 14, we’ll see you at the event this Sunday. Below are the SDHOC site for the event and the official MLB.com PHR site.
During the first weekend of our Spring break I volunteered for the Kraft-Nabisco Championship at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California. The KNC was the first major of the season for the LPGA Tour. Because I had interest in golf, I felt that volunteering for an event would be a great opportunity to learn what goes on behind the scenes at a major golf tournament. I made the two hour drive each morning from San Diego to Rancho Mirage to gain valuable experience and meet some great people.
Volunteering with the operations crew, I originally was going to operate the 18th green leaderboard, but as volunteers fell short I was flexible with the needs of the tournament and was charged with pairing volunteers from the Boys and Girls Club of Palm Springs, Mission Hills Country Club members, and United States Marines from 29 Palms as standard bearers for groups on the course throughout the weekend.
With help from volunteers from the Kraft-Nabisco headquarters, this small part of the grand operation was a great success. The most satisfying feeling was being able to see the reaction of the volunteers after they walked 18 holes with the greatest LPGA golfers in the world. Volunteers were able to walk with the likes of Lorena Ochoa, Natalie Gulbis, Paula Creamer, and Michelle Wie. Parents and children were even paired with each other to walk with the golfers. After the parent and child returned from the round you could sense that they did something they could talk about and share for a long time. It was a bonding experience they would never forget.
I was rewarded for my efforts on the last day of the tournament as I was standard bearer for Michelle Wie during her final round. After the round I was also able to get a greenside view of Brittany Lincicome's eagle on the 18th hole to win the tournament by 1 stroke. And as is tradition for the KNC, I also had a front row seat of Birttany's splash into the greenside lake on the 18th hole.
All in all it was a great experience and we hope that the program can build a relationship with the KNC in the years to come.
Before I attended classes this winter I had dedicated a small portion of my life volunteering for Yakima Youth Soccer Association (YYSA), which is a non-profit organization that helps facilitate youth soccer participation--whether in leagues or tournaments--in the greater Yakima Valley in Washington State. The greater Yakima Valley has over 100,000 residents, of which nearly half are Mexican American. The significant Hispanic influence, along with a history of strong youth soccer programs spanning the last thirty years, has made it a community where soccer participation is not only unusually high, but is considered a sport of civic pride. In 2008 along, the organization represented over 2,000 athletes under the age of 18, and over its lifespan has helped over 40,000 children experience the joys of playing organized soccer. Yakima is also home of the Yakima Reds who are part of the semi-professional USL league.
However, Yakima does not have adequate facilities to meet the demand of the thousands of youth players who compete every year. The YYSA board of directors had the foresight to realize the Valley had insufficient soccer facilities for young players, and began to save revenue from tournaments and league dues with the hopes of acquiring land and developing a soccer complex for youth soccer. In order to make an idea into reality they brought onboard project manager Larry Mattson to help develop plans for land acquisition and permitting as well as create a business plan and operating agreement with the city. To see the project homepage go here: http://www.yysa.org/frameset.php. The estimate 2-3 million dollar complex will sit on 35 acres of land, have between 12-14 regulation sized sod fields (including what will likely be a center-court style championship field), and includes an administration building and concessions building.
With knowledge of the project, and as a YYSA participant for 10 years, I asked Larry if I could volunteer, and he gladly put me on a number of projects. Almost immediately I began helping out with operating agreements, facility planning and finances. Shortly after I began helping Larry I arrived at SDSU for the SMBA program and I immediately realized how our class could help him and YYSA out. I asked Larry about bringing some students onboard. He was more than glad for the help and immediately provided us with a number of projects. I was pretty excited to get about 10 people from class to help with the various assignments.
We set up a 45 minute conference call for introductions and to review documents he had sent us; business agreement, operating agreement, cost analysis, permitting plans, board minutes, etc. He then gave us a list of things he wanted us to work on for him and the organization. Among them were exploring the use of social networking sites (like Facebook) for promotion and fundraising, developing ideas for how best to generate atypical revenue streams, creating marketing and sponsorship strategies for the unique Yakima Valley demographic, and performing cost analysis estimates for construction and operations. All of our findings and finished products will be submitted to the YYSA board of directors, and some will even make it into the final business plan! This has been an excellent opportunity for all of us to get a better understanding of facility development, cost analysis and for generating unique sponsorship and marketing ideas primarily targeted to Hispanic’s.
Since the Sports MBA Class of 2010 is on Spring Break this week, we're going to feature a guest blogger from the Class of 2009, Masanari Kawai. Nari penned the following piece after working as a media liaison for Team Japan, the winners of the 2009 World Baseball Classic...
The World Baseball Classic is an unprecedented baseball event that featured many of the best baseball players in the world competing for their home countries and territories. The inaugural tournament in 2006 gave fans around the world a chance to see the exciting, world-class baseball games. The 16 countries and territories selected as the first participants of this historic competition were chosen because they are among the best baseball-playing nations in the world and provide diverse global representation. The tournament was created to provide a platform that will increase worldwide exposure of the game and promote grassroots development, attracting new fans and players in traditional and non-traditional baseball regions.
In Japan, team Japan’s camp for the World Baseball Classic (Feb 16th-22nd) at Miyazaki prefecture created an economic effect of over $100 million USD. The first matchup between Japan and Korea earned a TV rating of 37.8 in Japan, with more than 45 million viewers tuning in nationwide. The game ranked as the highest rated sporting event of any kind in Japanese history, surpassing even the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. However, although the event resulted in record-breaking television ratings and larger crowds than the inaugural tournament held in 2006, I felt there was a great deal of growth opportunity among Japanese baseball fans in the U.S.
The last iteration of the event in 2006 saw disappointing attendance figures for Team Japan games in the U.S. For example, there were only 16,591 in attendance for team Japan against Mexico despite nearly 60,000 Japanese expatriates living in Los Angeles and another 11,056 in San Diego. I knew that the interest in baseball and national pride were strong within the Southern California Japanese community, but I felt that I could help MLB and the WBC by assisting with their Japanese outreach.
Therefore, I launched a ticket sales project for the 2009 WBC second round games, which were held in San Diego at PETCO Park. Since the SDSU Sports MBA program is partnered with the Padres, I was able to garner support from the club in securing tickets to specifically sell to Japanese fans. I launched a website (http://wbc2009round2.blogspot.com/) in Japanese to promote the project, and recruited Yuma Ono, a Japanese student in the Sports MBA Class of 2010, to assist me. Once the site launched and the tournament began, I was focused on my job working with the Team Japan as a media relations liaison for the tournament.
Yuma took a leadership role from the beginning, bringing on three assistants to help market the PETCO games for several weeks prior to the start of the tournament. Our plan was to attract Japanese fans to buy tickets through us for a number of reasons: first, our site was in Japanese whereas the MLB site sold tickets only in English, second, we charged no additional fees, third, the Padres had secured our group great seats for the event, and fourth, we were marketing only to Japanese fans, creating a vibrant atmosphere that helped give the team an advantage.
Yuma Ono (Sports MBA '10) developed a social networking and new media marketing strategy by getting support from the president of "San Diego Town," a local Japanese community website, advertising on "mixi," the biggest Japanese social networking site, and creating partnerships with local Japanese baseball teams. This project was covered and broadcasted by Japanese national TV program (Fuji Television and Nippon Television Network Corporation) and a Japanese sports newspaper.
This strategy, in just a few short weeks, yielded excellent results. In total, 201 tickets were sold and the project raised $13,130. In addition, this project resulted in 24 tickets sold to fans who flew to San Diego from Japan, increasing the economic impact of the event exponentially. The total attendance in game 1 of the second round (Japan vs Cuba) was 20,179 compared to 16,591 in 2006 (Japan vs Mexico). Both Padres executives and the international media covering the event noted that more Japanese fans were at the stadium this time, giving the atmosphere a boost for the Japanese team.
Although this project was a success, we feel that with greater time and resources, we could have done more to get additional Japanese fans to the games. We still feel it is necessary and there is a great deal of potential for MLB to expose and promote the WBC more on a global level to increase attendance. We also feel that MLB must measure attendees and fans from specific countries to have an accurate depiction of the sport's global interest continuing to build and grow beyond traditional markets.
For Yuma and myself, the opportunity to work with MLB on this major international event was a great experience. We have enormous pride for Japanese baseball and it was very satisfying to defeat our rival, Korea, in the final at Dodger Stadium. I really hope this tournament will grow and expand to more countries for the next World Baseball Classic. I see a lot of potential for the event, and although it has started small with 16 teams, remember that the FIFA World Cup started with only 13 participants in 1930!
