Attendance for the Cleveland Indians is off by one-third in a rebuilding year, as the team is drawing fewer than 22,000 a game. But they averaged 28,000 in the 10 games before the All-Star break, and the team's director of marketing, Sanaa Julien, thinks the reason is increased cross-marketing with other entertainment events and venues in town and a wider range of entertainment at Jacobs Field.
It's a plan the Indians began this season after hiring Julien, who was handling event marketing at WXTM-FM, an Infinity-owned rock station in Cleveland.
"It's baseball," she said, "but it's also entertainment, and we're marketing based on selling the entertainment value here, giving people something above and beyond having a great team to watch."
While Jacobs Field and the team's on-field success have long been draws, this year the Indians were eight games under .500 at the All-Star break. Hence the new emphasis on family entertainment.
The popular children's entertainment act The Wiggles will be at the Cleveland State Convocation Center in August, and the center and the Indians will partner to offer a family package of tickets to one weekend game and one weekend Wiggles performance plus two nights at the Hilton Garden Inn, with the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital as a co-sponsor.
Marquees at both venues are promoting the package, a Wiggles character threw out a ceremonial first pitch at a recent game, and there was a dance contest at each of the 10 games before the All-Star break, with the winner receiving one of the family packages.
A similar plan is in the works for when the "American Idol" franchise comes to the Convocation Center later this summer.
"We've been putting our marketing messages out there this way, and we're seeing great walk-up [attendance]. It doesn't cost a lot and it's all partnership-driven," Julien said.
The Indians also linked with the recent Cleveland Harborfest Historic Ships Festival, as ship captains threw out first pitches, while cruise tickets were given away and fans were encouraged to attend Harborfest activities when they were at different times than Indians games. Meanwhile, there was Indians signage at Harborfest and the team sent e-mail promotions to Harborfest patrons.
Branching further into non-sports themes, the team has done a program around Clevelander Bob Hope and his 100th birthday, with members of his family attending games. And the Indians have been doing "Signature Saturdays," in which small groups of randomly selected children 14 and younger get to meet players in the media center and get autographs.
All of the these programs are heavily promoted in team media. "We're a lot more topical in our marketing, telling people exactly what's going on each week at the ballpark instead of more global messages," Julien said.
KING JAMES TRADEMARK STILL OPEN: As the Cleveland Cavaliers' heralded rookie LeBron James is being dubbed "King James," a report earlier this month after Nike said it intended to buy Converse noted that Converse had withdrawn its application for the trademark "King James" in April, almost a year after making the application.
The report suggested this move may have been part of negotiations with Nike, but one sports intellectual property attorney questioned that notion. "Withdrawing it makes it a dead application and anyone can go in and grab it up, so I'm hesitant to conclude it was part of the deal," said Kirk Sullivan of Foley & Lardner's sports industry group in Los Angeles.
At press time, there was no pending application, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office site. A USPTO rep said if Nike had made an online application within the past 30 days, it might not be posted yet, and a mail application can take 90 days to appear. Online applications are favored for their faster claim to a trademark, so it appears the trademark went unclaimed — or could still be.
Kenneth Kwartler, the Nike attorney who handles trademark applications, would not say whether Nike had applied to register the trademark in the past several months. When it was suggested that if the company had done so, he might want to state as much to forestall applications by others, he said, "That could well be true, but I can't discuss this kind of matter."
Meanwhile, Foley & Lardner's Sullivan suggested the "King James" name could encounter some "resistance" from the public for playing on the name of a revered version of the Bible. But it's increasingly clear that resistance engenders street credibility where shoe sales are concerned.
Noah Liberman can be reached at nliberman@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
