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Makeover in Miami

The Marlins are undergoing yet another makeover, but the plan executives Chip Bowers, Derek Jeter and Adam Jones have put in place is already starting to turn the franchise around.

Marlins executives Chip Bowers, Derek Jeter and Adam JonesJock Fistick

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

 

Large paintings with that quote, credited to late South African President Nelson Mandela, hang in both the Marlins Park and Jupiter, Fla., offices of Miami Marlins Chief Executive Officer Derek Jeter.

To many, the Jeter-led attempted reconstruction of the long-floundering Marlins presents one of the stiffest tests to that mantra that sports can offer. After all, this is the team that hasn’t reached the playoffs since 2003, hasn’t posted a winning season since 2009, and is a perennial mainstay among MLB’s least-attended clubs.

And these are also the Marlins, whose prior owner, Jeffrey Loria, alienated so many around him — including fellow team owners, the MLB Players Association, much of the South Florida business community, Miami-Dade County politicians who still have a pending lawsuit for a portion of franchise sale proceeds, and many Marlins fans — that it sometimes seemed as if his list of detractors outnumbered the team’s supporters.

But to Jeter, the Mandela quote is inspiration as he seeks to rebuild the club both on the field and off.

“I come from a culture where you win or lose,” said the 44-year-old Jeter, who as the Yankees shortstop was among baseball’s most popular and successful players for nearly two decades. “This team wasn’t winning, and I didn’t show up here to lose. We have to make changes. What was happening before simply wasn’t working. And if it doesn’t work you have to make changes. We’d be fools to continue on the same path.”

The path Jeter and his fellow executives have chosen since taking over has been one of constant change and thus some accompanying criticism, but if you think that has blunted the ultra-confident approach he displayed during his Hall of Fame playing career, think again. 

“Nope,” he says, cutting off  a question about whether he regrets any of his decisions to date. “No regrets. I understand all of the backlash that we’ve gotten from the fans. But my response to that is that it just wasn’t working. It’s black and white.”

In the first offseason after the group led by financier Bruce Sherman closed the $1.2 billion purchase of the franchise in September 2017, the Marlins began trading off the few desirable pieces on their roster. Slugger Giancarlo Stanton, who had just won that year’s National League MVP award, was dealt to the Yankees, and five weeks later Christian Yelich, who would win the 2018 NL MVP, was sent to the Milwaukee Brewers. The club also parted ways with former player and special assistant Jeff Conine, who was known as Mr. Marlin.

The Marlins then lost a National League-worst 98 games in 2018, suffered a 23 percent drop in local TV ratings on Fox Sports Florida and — due to a new, more accurate means for counting attendance — averaged barely more than 10,000 fans per game, MLB’s lowest single-team total since the 2004 Montreal Expos. In February, they traded their only All-Star from last season, catcher J.T. Realmuto, to Philadelphia.

Away from Marlins Park, however, there have been signs of progress. Jeter and the Marlins have begun rebuilding connections with local fans and business leaders through a listening campaign called “Dimelo,” Spanish for “talk to me,” and have built out a new front office of business-side leaders. Chip Bowers arrived early last year from a highly successful stint as chief marketing officer of the Golden State Warriors to become president of business operations. Jeter also hired Adam Jones from PricewaterhouseCoopers Sports and Entertainment to become senior vice president of strategy and development, and David Oxfeld from Excel Sports Management to be head of corporate partnerships. Since coming on board, the team has added more than two dozen new sponsorships.

Those three have led a series of changes to rebrand the team and the fan experience. Last fall, the club junked the redesigned logo and color scheme that had been introduced for the move to Marlins Park in 2012 in favor of a new look marketed as “Our Colores” that has been met with positive reviews. The infamous sculpture called Homer that had been beyond the outfield wall was moved outside the stadium and replaced with the creation of a new social and standing-room area from MSA Sport. Ticket prices were lowered, premium seats were upgraded, and a new, locally inspired food and beverage menu from Levy Restaurants with reduced prices was commissioned.

“Last year was a year of listening. This is a year of implementing,” Jeter said. “We’re putting our money where our mouth is, whether it’s the construction around the park, whether it’s our food and beverage experience, whether it’s ticket prices, we are investing in our fan base.”

Whether all of the moves succeed will make the Marlins one of the most-watched business stories in baseball this year. But already, the work has generated plenty of notice around South Florida.

“This group is a thousand times easier to work with than the prior [Marlins] ownership,” said Alfred Sanchez, president and chief executive of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. Jeter and Bowers have met with the group several times over the past year. “They’re really trying to reach out to this community. And I am sensing much more of a willingness among the community to give these guys a shot. There’s still a lot of work to do, but I sense more of a feeling of wanting them to succeed instead of waiting to see them fail.”

‘A 12-Step Program’

Club officials have not publicly stated firm targets for any particular metric such as wins, attendance, sponsorship sales, revenue or fan sentiment. Instead, Bowers likens these early days of the rebuilding effort to a recovery program where the addict must first acknowledge their prior failings.

“The first step of any good 12-step program is to admit you have a problem,” he said. “We’re out there admitting we have challenges. There’s a reason we have these challenges and we’re laying out what we’re going to do to correct that. And we have unwavering confidence we’re going to get this done.”

A key part of that corrective effort is to focus sales and marketing on the immediate area around 37,442-seat Marlins Park. Once the new ownership came in and began to sell tickets and sponsorships for the 2018 season, the group found that much of the club’s sales base still existed in northern Dade and Broward counties, six years after the club moved 14 miles south to Marlins Park from what is now known as Hard Rock Stadium. The result is what the club now sees as sizable upside within a five- to 10-mile radius of the ballpark.

The Marlins’ latest reboot includes a new color scheme and logo as part of the “Our Colores” marketing effort.getty images

“We are finding out daily that there is a tremendous untapped opportunity right in our own backyard,” Bowers said.

The Marlins also are seeking to take advantage of demographic shifts in the Miami market that not only have seen steady overall population growth in recent years — the Census Bureau estimates that the Miami metro area is the sixth-biggest in the U.S. — but also a demographic shift with particular gains within Central and South American communities and a spike in young professionals living in downtown Miami.

“The Miami of today is different than the Miami of 2012 when the ballpark opened,” Bowers said. “There’s been a real influx of cultures.”

Despite those changes and World Series titles in 1997 and 2003, Miami has still not embraced its baseball team the way other major cities have theirs.

“This is still a more transient, bandwagon kind of sports market,” said Miami-Dade County Commissioner Joe Martinez, who voted against the hotly debated public financing for Marlins Park and last year said the Jeter-led group was “worse than Loria.” Since then, Martinez’s tone has softened somewhat and he plans to meet with club leaders later this month. But he still believes the Marlins have a heavy uphill climb ahead.

“When they got rid of all those players, that really upset a lot of fans. And people are still bitter over the stadium deal,” Martinez said.

Some early signs of progress on the fan development, however, were seen last month following the club’s FanFest at Marlins Park where half of the names collected from the event were not previously in the club’s database.

Jeter himself also has been a key figure in the club’s effort to connect locally. He still owns a large mansion in Tampa’s Davis Islands but now has based himself primarily in Miami with his wife, Hannah, and their two young daughters, and he is a regular presence at the team’s offices.

“It’s a complicated history to say the least. I guess we pay the price for that,” Jeter said of the Marlins’ troubled past. “But I also can’t expect people to trust me if they don’t know me. … And we’ve spent a lot of time out in the community trying to repair that relationship. But I think people appreciate the fact that we’re not out and about for its own sake, and that we’re making the effort.”

Park Factors

Fans arriving to the Marlins’ March 28 season opener against the Colorado Rockies will find a vastly different Marlins Park. Most obvious is the replacement of the oft-criticized Homer in favor of a new three-level social area designed in large part to cater to millennial audiences. The top level is accessible to all fans and features craft cocktails; the middle level is part of a social pass that also includes an additional standing area in the right field corner and features tickets starting at $10 per game; and a lower level is designed specifically for group sales.

In place of Homer (below), the infamous 73-foot sculpture that towered over the outfield wall, the team is installing a new, three-level social space for the coming season.getty images
getty images

The social areas each have new corporate title sponsorships attached. Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Estrella Jalisco signed on to sponsor the right-field area, and AutoNation, the car retailer founded by original Marlins owner Wayne Huizenga, gained rights for the center field area in what will be called AutoNation Alley.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but AutoNation Chief Marketing Officer Marc Cannon said his agreement “was not a [discount] deal, but a product priced appropriately for where they are now. But this is a group that recognizes they have work do in the community, wants to re-engage, are doing the right things, and we absolutely support them in that.”

Meanwhile, the bright green Marlins Park outfield walls that were also a regular source of fan debate have been repainted blue to match the ballpark seat color. The creation of the social pass was part of an average 10 percent ticket price reduction compared to 2018 single-game prices.

A new “3-o-5” menu, referencing Miami’s primary 305 telephone area code, features many core food and beverage items such as hot dogs, nachos and beer for either $3 or $5 in keeping with the growing sports industry shift to lower concessions pricing. But that discounted menu also includes mojo pork tacos, and several other new menu concepts at the ballpark similarly seek to more broadly showcase Miami’s diverse culinary heritage.

The Diamond Club lounge area behind home plate also has been updated and modernized. A sharply expanded promotional calendar features more theme nights and regular slots throughout the season for giveaways of both kids’ items and team-branded merchandise.

“We really had before what I would call a fairly singular experience at Marlins Park, basically one type of product with a chairback seat,” Jones said. “Putting a lot more variety in our offerings, creating many different types of experiences, new seats that appeal to all the various segments of the market was a key area of focus for us.”

Captain’s Orders

The moves of the new Marlins leadership and its future plans represent a test of strength for South Florida as an MLB market. The most prominent feature during the team’s 26-year history has been chaos and turmoil through four separate ownership groups.

“When I reference the past, it’s not in the interest in defending this organization, it’s in the interest of defending our fan base,” Bowers said. “A lot of people say that South Florida does not have a great fan base, and I find that to be 100 percent false. We see nothing but blue sky ahead.”

During a 20-year playing career in New York that included five World Series championships, Jeter was a fan and media favorite. As a rookie executive in Miami he was faced with criticism for some of his decisions, but he has kept his ultra-confident exterior.Jock Fistick

The immediate on-field future, however, remains cloudy. Despite all of the Marlins’ moves, the club is still looking up at the rest of the NL East in what is arguably baseball’s most competitive division. Atlanta returns as defending champions with a young core led by reigning Rookie of the Year Ronald Acuna Jr. Philadelphia, with Bryce Harper, and Washington, with Patrick Corbin, made the biggest free-agent position player and pitcher signings to date, while the New York Mets embarked on a series of roster upgrades under new general manager Brodie Van Wagenen.

The Marlins are widely picked to again finish last. But Jeter, ever the competitor, insists he is unfazed.

“Good. Good,” he said when broaching the topic of the stacked division. “You have to compete. If you want to be the best you have to beat the best. It’s how you get better.”

For Jeter, a successful 2019 will mean significant steps forward in all facets of the organization.

“We need progress in all areas, all departments,” he said. “Whether it’s on the business side or the baseball side, we have to show progress. But I’d be saying that even if we just won a championship. It’s always about what we can do better.”  

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