June 7, 2004
The Red Sox Effect | Four more years of the Sox
By Sean Donahue
It's a few minutes before game time at Hadlock Field in Portland, and Sea Dogs general manager Charlie Eshbach doesn't like what he sees in the sky. Cold, damp weather has hung over Portland for three days, threatening to cancel the two previous games of a Sea Dogs' home stand against the Binghamton Mets, and this morning is no better. The team's in-house satellite weather system, connected directly to Eshbach's desktop computer, shows a line of showers headed for Portland, estimated to hit around 12:30.
Calling off the game due to rain is ultimately Eshbach's decision, and dicey field conditions from three wet days in a row means he'll have no choice but to stop play if the showers arrive. To make matters worse, the mid-week, noon game happens to be a spring outing for several schools, attracting busloads of kids from across Maine and as far away as Natick, Mass. Eshbach knows it will be a long drive home if the game is rained out, but at least the weather has held off long enough for the first inning to get underway.
Eshbach's obsession with game-day weather may stem from the fact that it's one of the few things at Hadlock Field he can't control. Weather also is one of the few things not going the Sea Dogs' way these days. Last season, the team's first as a Boston Red Sox double-A affiliate, was among the most successful its history. Though its 405,021 total attendance did not set a record (thanks to a high number of rain-outs), its average 6,231 fans per game did. The Sea Dogs also sold out 36 of its 65 home games, and posted the highest merchandise sales of any double-A team in the country.
While everyone involved with the Sea Dogs points out that the team was always successful as a Florida Marlins franchise, results from last season prove that the Sox and Sea Dogs partnership has delivered on more than just a sentimental level. "When we came to town in 1994, we did well and continued to do well through our entire life with the Marlins, but we had to work hard to do well," says Eshbach, who won't talk about specific dollar figures except to say that the business is profitable and has been since its first season. "With the advent of the Red Sox we still have to work hard, but the results are better."
The results apparently are good for the Red Sox, too, since Boston general manager Theo Epstein came to Portland on May 14 to announce a four-year extension of the team's player development contract with the Sea Dogs ˆ double the standard two-year contract and the longest extension possible. And while that contract means the Red Sox directly contribute only the money for players' salaries and some equipment, the Sea Dogs know that the indirect benefits of being under the Red Sox banner are even more valuable.
Likewise for the Red Sox, a Portland presence delivers more than just player development ˆ it plays into a larger, New England-wide marketing strategy that radiates south from Boston to its triple-A club in Pawtucket, R.I., and north to Portland, reaching hard-core fans far beyond eastern Massachusetts. So even though the Sea Dogs don't share any of their revenues with the parent club, the Red Sox still love to see sold-out games, booming merchandise sales and potential sponsors clamoring for space on Hadlock's outfield walls. "It's very important [to the Red Sox] that the Sea Dogs do well in all aspects of the business," says Chuck Steedman, senior director of business affairs for the Red Sox. "They have their own brand, and it's very strong, but I like to think of them as an extension of our brand, too."
All marketers dream of creating an emotional connection between consumers and a brand. But when that brand happens to be the Boston Red Sox ˆ into which emotion, tradition and, in some cases, irrational devotion are irretrievably, epidemically entwined ˆ the potential exists for the Sea Dogs to be something even more rare: a business perfectly in tune with its market.
The minor league revolution
Given the damp, 44-degree day, Sea Dogs owner Dan Burke is watching the afternoon's game from his enclosed box upstairs at Hadlock Field, rather than in his owners' seats next to the dugout. He and his wife, TK Name, attend more than 60 Sea Dogs games a year and, like almost everyone else associated with the Sea Dogs, Burke says the team's Red Sox affiliation has made those games ˆ and the team ˆ that much more significant. A longtime Red Sox fan, Burke remembers living outside Albany, N.Y., years ago ˆ beyond the boundaries of Red Sox Nation ˆ and being forced to drive his car toward the Vermont border in order to pick up Sox games on a Bennington radio station.
Today, Burke says the Sea Dogs' success has far surpassed his expectations when he brought the team to Portland in 1994 ˆ a move that was considered risky at the time, given that the triple-A Maine Guides had folded at Old Orchard Beach in the late 1980s. "I have a certain amount of pride, and I didn't want to fail if I could avoid it," Burke says, "but at the heart of it, I love baseball and I'm a fan."
Though you might suspect that the former Capitol Cities/ABC president and CEO is the business force behind the Sea Dogs, Burke says the best decision he made in establishing the Sea Dogs was hiring Charlie Eshbach as general manager ˆ in the minors, the person in charge of all non-baseball aspects of the team. Eshbach is another lifelong Red Sox fan, who notes that he was born 12 miles from Fenway Park. His career has also followed a Red Sox orbit: His first general manager job was with the Sox double-A affiliate in Bristol, Conn., during the 70s. ("And now I'm the Red Sox double-A general manager again. I guess I haven't progressed very far," he quips.)
In between, though, Eshbach spent 11 years as president of the Eastern League, of which the Sea Dogs are now a part, during what he calls minor league baseball's "revolution." Minor league teams used to be underfunded, low-key organizations, he says, typically owned by former ball players or groups of community owners and playing in Depression-era ballparks to a few hundred fans a night. In the 1980s, though, business people like Burke began buying up teams with an eye toward their family entertainment potential. That led to the development of minor league games as the spectacle of crowd singalongs, sideline games, promotions, fireworks displays and other stimuli they are today.
The idea was to make a baseball a popular night out, which is why Eshbach and Burke have focused on keeping Sea Dogs tickets affordable, ranging from $3-$7 for children and $6-$8 for adults. And though ticket sales make up just a third of the Sea Dogs' revenue, says Eshbach, it's important to sell as many tickets as possible for each game because fans in the seats drive nearly every other revenue stream.
Another lesson Eshbach learned as president of the Eastern League was the importance of controlling as much of the ballpark experience as possible in order to maintain quality and customer satisfaction. That means, for example, the Sea Dogs don't outsource their stadium concessions to food service companies, as many minor league teams do. It was a tough decision at first, says Eshbach, since it required an upfront investment of between $500,000 and $750,000 dollars for equipment. But now he's happy the Sea Dogs have total say over food quality, price, menu options and staffing decisions.
That decision has also paid off, since concession sales account for another third of the Sea Dogs' total revenues. Merchandise sales and advertising and promotions make up the remaining third, says Eshbach ˆ all of which are enjoying a boost from the Red Sox affiliation.
Curt Schilling, Luis Tiant and a waiting list for advertising
By the start of fifth inning the Sea Dogs are down 1-0, but the rain has held off. Eshbach's satellite weather system shows that the showers headed for Portland have broken up, so he can relax a bit and resume his usual in-game tour around the stadium. While walking the concourses and checking in with staff and fans, Eshbach also keeps his eyes and ears on stadium systems like the lights, the scoreboard, the sound system and the new, 16-by-20-foot video board rising over the right field wall, which shows player photos and statistics as well as periodically playing advertisements and promotions for its sponsor, New England Ford Dealers.
Installing a video board had been one of Eshbach's long-term goals that, likely running in the low six figues, seemed a little too expensive to be feasible any time soon ˆ until the Red Sox affiliation made it viable. Regional marketing group New England Ford Dealers, which includes longtime Sea Dogs sponsor Rowe Ford in Westbrook, had been considering a sponsorship at Hadlock Field for a couple of years. But Rowe's general manager, Wally Camp Jr., says it became easier to convince the 19 other dealers across New England to establish a big presence in Portland once the team became a Red Sox affiliate, with a wider potental reach than just southern Maine. "It sort of tied everything together: We've got Curt Schilling, we just signed Luis Tiant, we've got big signage in Fenway," Camp says. "So it's just a natural fit to tie in with the Sea Dogs."
The Sea Dogs' advertising and sponsorship business has been strong throughout its 10-year existence, according to Jim Beaudoin, assistant general manager/ sales and marketing. The team has about 250 advertisers, occupying everything from a quarter-page ad in the program to a billboard on the outfield wall that costs about $7,500 a year, or $5,000 annually for a multi-year contract.
Since the Red Sox affiliation, though, demand has increased, especially from companies that wanted to get involved immediately to capitalize on the Red Sox phenomenon. And while he often has to explain that the outfield wall has been sold out since 1995 with a 40-company waiting list, Beaudoin uses those opportunities to suggest new, splashier advertising options like the video board.
He's also creating new options for smaller companies that can't afford multi-year commitments, such as adding more promotion and sponsorship nights, like the June 4 Tim Wakefield bobblehead giveaway sponsored by Bath Savings Institution, for as little as $1,000 to $2,000. "We needed to come up with new sources of advertising revenue, because we didn't want to turn all these new, potential clients away," says Beaudoin.
Demand for Sea Dogs merchandise also has spiked since the Red Sox affiliation, increasing about 40% last year and helping the Sea Dogs post the highest sales in the double-A division, as well as the third-highest merchandise sales in the entire minor leagues, which includes triple-A teams in much larger markets like Sacramento, Calif. and Nashville, Tenn.
Some of those gains obviously came from existing Sea Dogs fans who wanted to keep step with the color change, says John Kameisha, the Sea Dogs' vice president and merchandise director. But even more sales came from the core group of Red Sox fans in the area. "Before, I had people say to me, 'I am not a Florida Marlins fan,' and they would not buy a hat or a T-shirt even though they were Sea Dogs fans," says Kameisha. "As soon as we switched to the Red Sox, we got the emotional tie."
To maintain that sales momentum, Kameisha's strategy has been to put the Red Sox logo on as much Sea Dogs merchandise as possible. This year, for example, he ordered 50 different styles of hats, half of which have both a Sea Dogs and a Red Sox logo on them. "I didn't do it for every hat, because there are Yankee fans up here who also are Sea Dogs fans," he says. "I'd be eliminating those potential customers."
Chasing a title
In the top of the seventh inning, the Binghamton Mets break the game open, scoring four runs on a series of solid hits and one Sea Dogs error. Although the Sea Dogs eventually score a run and load the bases in the bottom of the ninth, they can't catch up, and the 5-1 loss helps keep the Sea Dogs in last place in their division.
The team's on-field performance so far this season is the Sea Dogs' only off note. But thanks to minor league baseball's focus on providing a barrage of entertainment beyond what's happening on the field, a team's record doesn't have too much impact on ticket sales, according to Eshbach. As long as a team isn't terrible year after year, fans will continue to come.
Adding the Red Sox fans' passion to the Sea Dogs mix, though, may present a challenge for the team: Its on-field performance suddenly matters more than it ever did. Fans have begun to see Sea Dogs' struggles as potential Red Sox struggles, and Eshbach says Sea Dogs players are now occasionally booed ˆ a first in Sea Dogs history ˆ when they commit errors on the field.
Though it's conceivable that sustained poor performance could hurt attendance, Eshbach and Burke believe there's plenty of time left for the team to overcome its slow start this season. They also say that the Red Sox's four-year commitment to the Sea Dogs shows that the team is serious about turning Portland into a player development facility. As more Sea Dogs players ˆ like infielder Kevin Youkilis and pitcher Anastacio Martinez ˆ get called up to the Red Sox, the team's appeal to fans is likely to grow.
But since team performance, like the weather, is out of Eshbach's control, he's focused on doing whatever he can to make sure the team's four-year extension is just the start of a long-term relationship with the Red Sox, whether it's helping players and their families find housing for the summer ˆ an off-the-field touch Theo Epstein mentioned as one of the reasons the club committed to four more years ˆ or adding new attractions to Hadlock Field. "Our goal is to improve on what's already here," says Eshbach. "We have no intention of sitting on our laurels, because this is the entertainment business and you have to stay ahead of the curve."
Dan Burke is confident Eshbach and his staff can sustain the success the Sea Dogs have achieved over the last 10 years. And though he still considers the team a business and an investment ˆ and believes the Red Sox affiliation has increased that investment's value ˆ he says he's also staying around for the long term. He's not interested in selling, and even after he's gone expects to pass the business on to his wife and children.
In fact, even though he helped build Capitol Cities/ABC into one of the biggest entertainment companies in the country before selling the business to Disney, Burke says nothing he's done in his career has been more fun or satisfying than the Sea Dogs. There's just one more goal he'd like to achieve, though. "Before I go, I'd really like to win the Eastern League championship once," says Burke, "but that's the fan coming out in me."
Calling off the game due to rain is ultimately Eshbach's decision, and dicey field conditions from three wet days in a row means he'll have no choice but to stop play if the showers arrive. To make matters worse, the mid-week, noon game happens to be a spring outing for several schools, attracting busloads of kids from across Maine and as far away as Natick, Mass. Eshbach knows it will be a long drive home if the game is rained out, but at least the weather has held off long enough for the first inning to get underway.
Eshbach's obsession with game-day weather may stem from the fact that it's one of the few things at Hadlock Field he can't control. Weather also is one of the few things not going the Sea Dogs' way these days. Last season, the team's first as a Boston Red Sox double-A affiliate, was among the most successful its history. Though its 405,021 total attendance did not set a record (thanks to a high number of rain-outs), its average 6,231 fans per game did. The Sea Dogs also sold out 36 of its 65 home games, and posted the highest merchandise sales of any double-A team in the country.
While everyone involved with the Sea Dogs points out that the team was always successful as a Florida Marlins franchise, results from last season prove that the Sox and Sea Dogs partnership has delivered on more than just a sentimental level. "When we came to town in 1994, we did well and continued to do well through our entire life with the Marlins, but we had to work hard to do well," says Eshbach, who won't talk about specific dollar figures except to say that the business is profitable and has been since its first season. "With the advent of the Red Sox we still have to work hard, but the results are better."
The results apparently are good for the Red Sox, too, since Boston general manager Theo Epstein came to Portland on May 14 to announce a four-year extension of the team's player development contract with the Sea Dogs ˆ double the standard two-year contract and the longest extension possible. And while that contract means the Red Sox directly contribute only the money for players' salaries and some equipment, the Sea Dogs know that the indirect benefits of being under the Red Sox banner are even more valuable.
Likewise for the Red Sox, a Portland presence delivers more than just player development ˆ it plays into a larger, New England-wide marketing strategy that radiates south from Boston to its triple-A club in Pawtucket, R.I., and north to Portland, reaching hard-core fans far beyond eastern Massachusetts. So even though the Sea Dogs don't share any of their revenues with the parent club, the Red Sox still love to see sold-out games, booming merchandise sales and potential sponsors clamoring for space on Hadlock's outfield walls. "It's very important [to the Red Sox] that the Sea Dogs do well in all aspects of the business," says Chuck Steedman, senior director of business affairs for the Red Sox. "They have their own brand, and it's very strong, but I like to think of them as an extension of our brand, too."
All marketers dream of creating an emotional connection between consumers and a brand. But when that brand happens to be the Boston Red Sox ˆ into which emotion, tradition and, in some cases, irrational devotion are irretrievably, epidemically entwined ˆ the potential exists for the Sea Dogs to be something even more rare: a business perfectly in tune with its market.
The minor league revolution
Given the damp, 44-degree day, Sea Dogs owner Dan Burke is watching the afternoon's game from his enclosed box upstairs at Hadlock Field, rather than in his owners' seats next to the dugout. He and his wife, TK Name, attend more than 60 Sea Dogs games a year and, like almost everyone else associated with the Sea Dogs, Burke says the team's Red Sox affiliation has made those games ˆ and the team ˆ that much more significant. A longtime Red Sox fan, Burke remembers living outside Albany, N.Y., years ago ˆ beyond the boundaries of Red Sox Nation ˆ and being forced to drive his car toward the Vermont border in order to pick up Sox games on a Bennington radio station.
Today, Burke says the Sea Dogs' success has far surpassed his expectations when he brought the team to Portland in 1994 ˆ a move that was considered risky at the time, given that the triple-A Maine Guides had folded at Old Orchard Beach in the late 1980s. "I have a certain amount of pride, and I didn't want to fail if I could avoid it," Burke says, "but at the heart of it, I love baseball and I'm a fan."
Though you might suspect that the former Capitol Cities/ABC president and CEO is the business force behind the Sea Dogs, Burke says the best decision he made in establishing the Sea Dogs was hiring Charlie Eshbach as general manager ˆ in the minors, the person in charge of all non-baseball aspects of the team. Eshbach is another lifelong Red Sox fan, who notes that he was born 12 miles from Fenway Park. His career has also followed a Red Sox orbit: His first general manager job was with the Sox double-A affiliate in Bristol, Conn., during the 70s. ("And now I'm the Red Sox double-A general manager again. I guess I haven't progressed very far," he quips.)
In between, though, Eshbach spent 11 years as president of the Eastern League, of which the Sea Dogs are now a part, during what he calls minor league baseball's "revolution." Minor league teams used to be underfunded, low-key organizations, he says, typically owned by former ball players or groups of community owners and playing in Depression-era ballparks to a few hundred fans a night. In the 1980s, though, business people like Burke began buying up teams with an eye toward their family entertainment potential. That led to the development of minor league games as the spectacle of crowd singalongs, sideline games, promotions, fireworks displays and other stimuli they are today.
The idea was to make a baseball a popular night out, which is why Eshbach and Burke have focused on keeping Sea Dogs tickets affordable, ranging from $3-$7 for children and $6-$8 for adults. And though ticket sales make up just a third of the Sea Dogs' revenue, says Eshbach, it's important to sell as many tickets as possible for each game because fans in the seats drive nearly every other revenue stream.
Another lesson Eshbach learned as president of the Eastern League was the importance of controlling as much of the ballpark experience as possible in order to maintain quality and customer satisfaction. That means, for example, the Sea Dogs don't outsource their stadium concessions to food service companies, as many minor league teams do. It was a tough decision at first, says Eshbach, since it required an upfront investment of between $500,000 and $750,000 dollars for equipment. But now he's happy the Sea Dogs have total say over food quality, price, menu options and staffing decisions.
That decision has also paid off, since concession sales account for another third of the Sea Dogs' total revenues. Merchandise sales and advertising and promotions make up the remaining third, says Eshbach ˆ all of which are enjoying a boost from the Red Sox affiliation.
Curt Schilling, Luis Tiant and a waiting list for advertising
By the start of fifth inning the Sea Dogs are down 1-0, but the rain has held off. Eshbach's satellite weather system shows that the showers headed for Portland have broken up, so he can relax a bit and resume his usual in-game tour around the stadium. While walking the concourses and checking in with staff and fans, Eshbach also keeps his eyes and ears on stadium systems like the lights, the scoreboard, the sound system and the new, 16-by-20-foot video board rising over the right field wall, which shows player photos and statistics as well as periodically playing advertisements and promotions for its sponsor, New England Ford Dealers.
Installing a video board had been one of Eshbach's long-term goals that, likely running in the low six figues, seemed a little too expensive to be feasible any time soon ˆ until the Red Sox affiliation made it viable. Regional marketing group New England Ford Dealers, which includes longtime Sea Dogs sponsor Rowe Ford in Westbrook, had been considering a sponsorship at Hadlock Field for a couple of years. But Rowe's general manager, Wally Camp Jr., says it became easier to convince the 19 other dealers across New England to establish a big presence in Portland once the team became a Red Sox affiliate, with a wider potental reach than just southern Maine. "It sort of tied everything together: We've got Curt Schilling, we just signed Luis Tiant, we've got big signage in Fenway," Camp says. "So it's just a natural fit to tie in with the Sea Dogs."
The Sea Dogs' advertising and sponsorship business has been strong throughout its 10-year existence, according to Jim Beaudoin, assistant general manager/ sales and marketing. The team has about 250 advertisers, occupying everything from a quarter-page ad in the program to a billboard on the outfield wall that costs about $7,500 a year, or $5,000 annually for a multi-year contract.
Since the Red Sox affiliation, though, demand has increased, especially from companies that wanted to get involved immediately to capitalize on the Red Sox phenomenon. And while he often has to explain that the outfield wall has been sold out since 1995 with a 40-company waiting list, Beaudoin uses those opportunities to suggest new, splashier advertising options like the video board.
He's also creating new options for smaller companies that can't afford multi-year commitments, such as adding more promotion and sponsorship nights, like the June 4 Tim Wakefield bobblehead giveaway sponsored by Bath Savings Institution, for as little as $1,000 to $2,000. "We needed to come up with new sources of advertising revenue, because we didn't want to turn all these new, potential clients away," says Beaudoin.
Demand for Sea Dogs merchandise also has spiked since the Red Sox affiliation, increasing about 40% last year and helping the Sea Dogs post the highest sales in the double-A division, as well as the third-highest merchandise sales in the entire minor leagues, which includes triple-A teams in much larger markets like Sacramento, Calif. and Nashville, Tenn.
Some of those gains obviously came from existing Sea Dogs fans who wanted to keep step with the color change, says John Kameisha, the Sea Dogs' vice president and merchandise director. But even more sales came from the core group of Red Sox fans in the area. "Before, I had people say to me, 'I am not a Florida Marlins fan,' and they would not buy a hat or a T-shirt even though they were Sea Dogs fans," says Kameisha. "As soon as we switched to the Red Sox, we got the emotional tie."
To maintain that sales momentum, Kameisha's strategy has been to put the Red Sox logo on as much Sea Dogs merchandise as possible. This year, for example, he ordered 50 different styles of hats, half of which have both a Sea Dogs and a Red Sox logo on them. "I didn't do it for every hat, because there are Yankee fans up here who also are Sea Dogs fans," he says. "I'd be eliminating those potential customers."
Chasing a title
In the top of the seventh inning, the Binghamton Mets break the game open, scoring four runs on a series of solid hits and one Sea Dogs error. Although the Sea Dogs eventually score a run and load the bases in the bottom of the ninth, they can't catch up, and the 5-1 loss helps keep the Sea Dogs in last place in their division.
The team's on-field performance so far this season is the Sea Dogs' only off note. But thanks to minor league baseball's focus on providing a barrage of entertainment beyond what's happening on the field, a team's record doesn't have too much impact on ticket sales, according to Eshbach. As long as a team isn't terrible year after year, fans will continue to come.
Adding the Red Sox fans' passion to the Sea Dogs mix, though, may present a challenge for the team: Its on-field performance suddenly matters more than it ever did. Fans have begun to see Sea Dogs' struggles as potential Red Sox struggles, and Eshbach says Sea Dogs players are now occasionally booed ˆ a first in Sea Dogs history ˆ when they commit errors on the field.
Though it's conceivable that sustained poor performance could hurt attendance, Eshbach and Burke believe there's plenty of time left for the team to overcome its slow start this season. They also say that the Red Sox's four-year commitment to the Sea Dogs shows that the team is serious about turning Portland into a player development facility. As more Sea Dogs players ˆ like infielder Kevin Youkilis and pitcher Anastacio Martinez ˆ get called up to the Red Sox, the team's appeal to fans is likely to grow.
But since team performance, like the weather, is out of Eshbach's control, he's focused on doing whatever he can to make sure the team's four-year extension is just the start of a long-term relationship with the Red Sox, whether it's helping players and their families find housing for the summer ˆ an off-the-field touch Theo Epstein mentioned as one of the reasons the club committed to four more years ˆ or adding new attractions to Hadlock Field. "Our goal is to improve on what's already here," says Eshbach. "We have no intention of sitting on our laurels, because this is the entertainment business and you have to stay ahead of the curve."
Dan Burke is confident Eshbach and his staff can sustain the success the Sea Dogs have achieved over the last 10 years. And though he still considers the team a business and an investment ˆ and believes the Red Sox affiliation has increased that investment's value ˆ he says he's also staying around for the long term. He's not interested in selling, and even after he's gone expects to pass the business on to his wife and children.
In fact, even though he helped build Capitol Cities/ABC into one of the biggest entertainment companies in the country before selling the business to Disney, Burke says nothing he's done in his career has been more fun or satisfying than the Sea Dogs. There's just one more goal he'd like to achieve, though. "Before I go, I'd really like to win the Eastern League championship once," says Burke, "but that's the fan coming out in me."
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