Dodgers, Sox striking out on Spring Training sales

[Balta1701]

It's written from the Dodgers point of view, but this clearly affects the other team in the complex as well, going 0/9 on major ad sales.

The Dodgers anticipated a financial windfall by moving their preseason home from Vero Beach, Fla. to Arizona, thousands of miles closer to the vast majority of their fans and to a sparkling new training complex expected to attract the attention of deep-pocketed corporate sponsorship.

 

It hasn't worked out that way.

 

The Dodgers, who open camp Saturday, had a goal of selling 4,000 season tickets for spring training but will probably sell about half of that, chief operating officer Dennis Mannion said.

 

And those corporate sponsors?

 

They're staying away too.

 

"The economy is a huge, huge factor right now," Mannion said.

 

The Dodgers and Chicago White Sox, who share the facility, were so excited about their new home's potential as a revenue producer that they ignored the proven spring training model of seeking local advertisers and focused their efforts on finding national sponsors.

 

The concept -- called "The Starting 9" -- was designed to allow nine major sponsors paying $200,000 annually to secure the naming rights for different parts of the facility.

 

And to make those packages even more attractive, opportunities for fantasy camps or corporate outings were included.

 

So far, the sales force is 0 for nine in selling them.

 

Mannion said he didn't anticipate that all of them would be sold before spring training -- some advertisers, he assumed, would want to see the facility in use before agreeing to that kind of deal. But he didn't expect to be batting .000, either.

 

"I was hoping we would have four of the nine sold," he said.

 

The Dodgers and White Sox have secured around $700,000 in lower-level sponsorship deals that cost anywhere from $5,000-$75,000, Mannion said, with another major deal in the works.

[Jimbo's Drinker]

get used to reading about this all throught sports for the rest of this year.

[caulfield12]

Just like the Yankees struck at precisely the wrong time (although they won't pay for it), the Dodgers and White Sox (also the Twins in 2010) picked the wrong time to be opening or building new facilities...

 

Maybe 6 months ago those marketing deals would have been realistic, but not anymore. As another thread mentioned, national sponsors like Pontiac or Motorola are not often going to fire or lay 10 upper-level employees off in these times, they're going to sacrifice that $2 million in advertising and wait for the economic situation to recover. Those $200,000 sponsorships being lost are just a more "micro" version of the big picture that will be striking all professional sports franchises...it will be interesting to see if companies stick with the Big 4 (and NASCAR/PGA to a lesser extent) to spread their money around through minor league sports or "second tier" ones.