Entertainment & Sports International mining minor league baseball - bizjournals:

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No, they’re not players worried about pop flies beingcarried helter-skelter abovre their outstretched gloves. They’re not coaches catching a caseof angst, worryinbg their best slugger’s sure dinger will be pushed back into the Owens and Gould are veterans of the marketing wars endemicv to the entertainment industry. A section of resume reveals that he pioneered corporate sponsorshipsa for big music tourz by marrying up the Rolling Stones with Budweiser in the Gould has held senio marketing positions with the likes of Marvel Entertainmentg andComedy Central.
Longtime colleagues and friends, they strucm out – pun not intended – together in 2003 and formed , with the purpose of exploitingf an audience niche they perceived as being minorleague baseball. “We wantedc to create a companyy that has access to the audienced of minor league baseball and will generates revenue for us and for the says Owens. It’s a big audience that’s strong in the prizexd 25-54 age category. Today, there are 20 leaguesx with a total of246 teams. In those teams drew a combined totalof 43.3 million While a gold mine for companies wantinvg to get their message to thoswe millions, the minor leagues have been a tar pit for marketinf executives.
Unlike Major League which handles a significant amount of marketinhg and sales out of acentrap office, minor league teams largely do it club by club. That’se 246 ball clubs to pitch. With theie company, Owens and Gould have created what Owene callsa “touchpoint” to reach all of thosee clubs. Their vehicle is a traveling carnival callerd the Family FunFest made up of interactivesinflatables – those big rubber blow-ups that are molde d into all manner of games, creatures, structures and the They’re functional and portable, but they do not take kindlyy to windy days.
Along the “midway,” the younfg and young at heart are treatedd tobatting cages, a radar pitching video games, a super slide and more. The carnivap is set up outside a minord league ballpark several hours before a game is to be playeethat day. Entry to the carnivapl is free, and theres is no cost to the baseball club. Here’w how ESI generates its revenue, which Owens pegs at abou $1.
7 million annually: The company sells sponsorships of variouss levelsto corporations, which in turn get signags at the funfest, ballpark advertising prior to the event and a substantiap number of tickets to the game on the day of the The name sponsor for the carnival since 2003 has been The Principalp Financial Group, which is in the finalp year of its second three-year contract. Chris Reidle-King, senior relationship manager in corporate marketingfor Principal, says, “Througjh their efforts, over the past five seasons, we’vse been able to put our brand in frony of millions of fans, and entertain thousands of our key clients and Principal is bowing out after this season because the company took federakl bailout money, and public sentimeny has turned against such sponsorships.
Owensw and Gould say they are confident they can sign on a new name sponsorrbut haven’t done so yet. It takes eight workers driviny two trucks to haul the funfestf from town to town during the which runs from early May toearly September. Once at a site, 12 localk workers are hired to help set up and take down the show and man the exhibitds when thecrowds arrive. In addition to those employees, ESI has four administrative workers. Owens works out of an office in Raleigh, whiles Gould works out of Glen N.J., where he lives. This year’ds funfest tour kicked off on May 1 at a CharlottdeKnights game, then packed up and made a stop in Durhak on May 3 for a Bullss game.
For the season, the carnival will be unpacked, set up and repacked at 47 baseball parks. The funfest displays are as colorful as the names of some of the teams on theitineraryy – the River City the Fort Wayne TinCaps, the Granfd Prairie AirHogs, the Washington Wild the Vermont Lake Monsters. It’x been quite a trip, says Owens, adding, “Oud company is an evangelist for minorleagude baseball.
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