Portland Sea Dogs score in top 25 of minor-league baseball merchandisers
Photo / William Hall
The Portland Sea Dogs are one of the 25 highest-grossing merchandisers in minor league baseball, based on 2018 sales. At Portland's 7,400-seat Hadlock Field, the team sells caps like this for over $30.
The Portland Sea Dogs, the Double-A franchise of the Boston Red Sox and Maine’s only professional baseball team, rank among the 25 minor league teams with the highest merchandise sales.
Based on 2018 sales, the Dogs scored in the top 15% of 160 professional ball teams affiliated with the “bigs,” the Minor League Baseball governing organization said in a news release Monday.
The organization would not disclose sales volume or rankings for individual teams, but said sales for the affiliates totaled $73.8 million. That’s a 4.2% percent increase over $70.8 million in 2017, and the highest amount since Minor League Baseball began licensing products in 1992.
The Durham (N.C.) Bulls, a Triple-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, are the only team to make the top-25 list every year since Minor League Baseball first issued it in 1993.
Also on the 2019 list are three of the Sea Dogs’ Eastern League rivals — the Hartford (Conn.) Yard Goats, the Trenton (N.J.) Thunder and the Richmond (Va.) Flying Squirrels.
While no comment was immediately available from the Sea Dogs, the team said in 2013 that their sales had made the list for 20 consecutive years.
The sales success isn’t surprising. During home games at Portland’s Hadlock Field, fans wait in long lines to buy T-shirts, mini-bats and other merchandise emblazoned with the popular Sea Dogs mascot, Slugger. The Sea Dogs website offers hundreds of team items, including baseball caps in over 50 styles.
A 2017 study by Pennsylvania College of Technology found that such merchandising is a major part of the minors’ marketing.
In fact, promotional events and products demonstrated a bigger impact on game attendance than a team’s win-loss record or the weather. That’s partly because minor-league teams have relatively little control over their performance, the researchers said, since players are often called up to the parent club.
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