The New York Mets are looking to rebuild their image and attract younger fans by rebranding themselves as “New York Young Fans.” The team has launched a new website, social media accounts, and merchandise that all promote the idea of being young.
The ny mets uniforms 2021 is a new branding effort by the New York Mets to build cred and win young fans.
Thousands of devoted New York Mets supporters flocked to Citi Field on a sweltering Tuesday evening in August to see their club take on the highly rated San Francisco Giants. Despite the team’s recent losing run, the Queens stadium was filled with optimism.
The Mets were defeated 8-0 that night.
In an interview at the conclusion of the game, new Mets owner Steven Cohen remarked, “It’s a fixer-upper, for sure.”
Mr. Cohen, the chairman and chief executive officer of hedge firm Point72 Asset Management LP and a longtime Mets fan, paid $2.4 billion for the club last year. He’s set out to win more games, not only on the field, but in the hearts and minds of casual and potential supporters.
He and his wife Alexandra Cohen have proposed a marketing makeover that would include an update to the team’s brand identity, unique typefaces in marketing materials like as photography, signs, and advertising, as well as new experiences and attractions inside the stadium to give the Mets more cultural cred.
However, the new owners will have challenges beyond player strikeouts, as baseball and other sports struggle to attract young people, a demographic that is becoming more disinterested in attending live games.
“How you recruit young fans is a problem for all sports,” said Jeff Deline, the team’s new chief revenue officer. “How can we re-engage them?” says the narrator. Their purchasing patterns are very different.”
Range Media Partners LLC, a marketing and talent management company, is spearheading the charge. According to Natalie Bruss, managing partner at Range, which is minority-owned by Mr. Cohen’s venture capital fund, Point72 Ventures, ideas for the initiative include offering live comedy during games, updating existing spaces in the stadium where people can gather, adding more screens throughout the baseball park, and making other technology upgrades.
Steve Cohen, owner of the New York Mets, visits Citi Field in February.
Associated Press photo by Mary Altaffer
The aim, according to Ms. Bruss, is to enhance the Mets’ brand on social media, in cinema, and in music, as well as to more closely connect the club with its hometown, which is recognized throughout the world as a cultural center.
Sponsors are also being enlisted to assist the team develop unique experiences for fans. For example, in July, it collaborated with sponsor Airbnb Inc. to convert an empty office space at Citi Field into a one-night stay hosted by former Mets star Bobby Bonilla.
Other ideas, according to Ms. Bruss, include a podcast aimed at Hispanic audiences and partnerships in the fashion sector as the team seeks new and varied audiences.
The search for the next generation
According to David Campanelli, executive vice president and chief investment officer of ad-buying firm Horizon Media Inc., Major League Baseball’s viewership is older than those of other major sports.
According to him, the National Basketball Association has the youngest audience, followed by the National Football League, college football and basketball, and the National Hockey League.
Baseball’s upper management is well aware of this.
Mr. Deline said, “We’re an older, whiter population.” “I doubt many youngsters will sit down and watch a baseball game from beginning to end. On TikTok, they’ll watch the highlights.”
According to Nielsen statistics, the median age of Major League Baseball’s TV watching audience is 59.7 years old for the regular season, up from 56.9 for the entire regular season in 2017.
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According to Nielsen, 9 percent more households are watching baseball this season than during the pandemic-shortened season last year. According to the league, the MLB.TV streaming viewership has become younger in recent years.
However, according to Nielsen statistics, national baseball household viewing on broadcast and cable TV has decreased by 14% to 289,000 households each game this season as of mid-September, down from 336,000 households for the whole regular season in 2019.
People are shifting away from conventional television watching and toward social media, video games, and streaming television, a trend that has further accelerated during the Covid-19 epidemic.
In the United States, the number of individuals aged 7 to 17 who play baseball has decreased in recent decades. According to statistics from the National Sporting Goods Association, it reached 4.9 million last year, down from 6.3 million in 2010 and 10 million in 1995.
Mr. Deline believes that re-engaging youthful supporters and boosting the club’s cool factor would help the team obtain more profitable, long-term sponsorship agreements.
Mr. Deline said that the club is on track to renew almost 90% of the sponsorship agreements that are scheduled to expire this year, but that number would be much higher. According to Mr. Deline, the club has renewed approximately 80% to 85% of its sponsorship agreements in the past three to four years.
To increase renewals, the team intends to abandon a strong commission-based approach that incentivizes individual employees to sell brand agreements based on first-year performance objectives, according to Mr. Deline. Instead, he added, it would promote more regular cooperation with sponsors to support their long-term business goals.
Awkwafina, an actress and rapper, threw the first pitch at a Mets game in July.
Mets photo
According to a rating by sports sponsorship research company IEG, the Mets brand is appreciated by sponsors, but it still has a long way to go to catch up to the New York Yankees. The Mets were rated sixth out of 30 MLB clubs by the company. The scores took into account fan base size, social media following, winning history, and perceived quality or prestige when calculating brand affinity and exposure value for sponsors.
In an email, Peter Laatz, global managing director at IEG, stated, “It’s obvious that the Mets have an opportunity to distinguish themselves from the Yankees both locally and globally.” However, he admits that attracting young people would be difficult.
Other sports leagues and media organizations are also seeing a decline in youthful audience and are looking for new methods to attract new followers.
For example, in August, the MLB hosted a game between the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees at a location in Iowa that was featured in the 1989 baseball film “Field of Dreams.” According to Fox Sports, the event, which was sponsored by Geico, was the most-watched regular season baseball game in 16 years, attracting almost 6 million people. According to Fox Sports, it was also the most-streamed regular-season baseball game in the network’s history.
According to CBS Sports, the NFL teamed with Nickelodeon in January for a kids’ Wild Card playoff broadcast that became the network’s most viewed program in almost four years among total viewers and the No. 1 cable telecast of the week among kids 2-11 years old and youngsters 6-11.
This postseason, the NFL will broadcast another Wild Card game on Nickelodeon, and in mid-September, the network began airing a new half-hour weekly series called “NFL Slimetime.”
Mr. Deline is attempting to expand the Mets’ viewership by using the NFL.
Mr. Deline said, “By fifth grade, you’ve formed an attachment for a brand.” “Once kids get beyond that age, they’ll be Mets fans for the rest of their lives.”
Alexandra Bruell can be reached at [email protected]
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