Minor League Baseball has signed a multiyear sponsorship agreement with Allstate-owned insurance carrier Esurance, marking the first time in nearly a decade that a league-level sponsor has held rights with both Major League Baseball and the affiliated minors.
The deal calls for the creation of an “Esurance Call-Up Worthy” campaign, an effort echoing the carrier’s successful sponsorship of MLB’s All-Star voting platform that includes the tagline of “ASG Worthy.” The initiative will celebrate the moments in which minor league prospects are promoted to major league rosters, an occurrence that happened 271 times last year and is on pace for a similar number this year.
The campaign covers numerous facets, particularly digital and social content at MiLB.com/CallUpWorthy that will include virtual trading cards, video highlights and an online “Esurance Farm Report.” Offline components are also involved, including an Esurance “Home Field Advantage” award for minor league clubs with the best home attendance, as measured by percentage of capacity, and recognition for top students in MiLB markets.
The carrier additionally will sponsor several individual MiLB clubs. A formal announcement of the deal is expected today.
Financial terms were not disclosed. But the deal covers the crucial insurance category for MiLB, and makes Esurance the first company since Bank of America in 2005-08 to hold rights simultaneously with both MLB and MiLB. In the years since, several companies have been involved with both properties at a team level.
MiLB drove the Esurance deal. The MLB sponsorship portfolio represents a largely untapped market for the minors.
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Esurance is building on its MLB sponsorship, which included sponsoring All-Star voting.
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“MLB is certainly an area of huge opportunity for us,” said David Wright, MiLB chief marketing and commercial officer. “Allowing sponsors to be able to have a presence all across baseball is one of a handful of core strategies for us, and this no doubt is a very important category for us being filled by a really strong brand.”
The Esurance deal also extends a run of MiLB sponsorship dealmaking since the January arrival of Wright, formerly with Major League Soccer, that also includes pacts with John Deere, Uncle Ray’s Potato Chips, and residential solar company Sunrun.
For Esurance, the MiLB deal offers a chance to extend the success of the MLB All-Star voting program, which reached record levels in 2015, as well as boost its home insurance presence to supplement its core auto insurance business.
“We learned a lot last year in our first year with MLB, so there’s now a blueprint we can leverage for MiLB,” said Cyndie Beckwith, Esurance vice president of marketing. “We also believe that the minor league markets can be a really powerful target to increase awareness for home insurance.”
