Advertising In Baseball Stadiums

Introduction

Baseball is considered to be America's favorite pastime and has become popular all over the world. This sport is watched by millions of people every time there is a game played. People will go to the stadiums to watch and a lot of fans will watch the game on television. Since there are so many people watching these games, advertising has become more and more apart of every baseball stadium due to the amount of exposure a company can receive by using the many types of ads found in a baseball stadium. The stadiums use billboards, fences, green screens, merchandise, airplanes, names of stadiums, and scoreboards as all different ways to advertise a company's product.

Billboards

Billboards play a huge role at ballparks because they are usually surrounding the entire outfield and can be seen by everyone. Billboards are very effective in reaching your target audience because of the frequency they are viewed by people watching on television and by people who are actually at the game. They are also very visible when you enter a baseball stadium because of their large size and are a great form of advertising due to them being so big that people can tell what product or service that is being offered from clear across the ballpark. Also, billboards are in a great location lining the outside of the stadium because that is generally where the fans eyes tend to wonder because they like looking out at the scoreboard. While they are checking the score their eyes scan these advertisements on the billboards. If you are watching from your home you also get exposed to these billboards because throughout the game the camera pans in and out on the scoreboard and all around the ballpark so you can catch a glimpse of all of the different products and services that are being advertised during the game. Another important thing about billboards is the fact that they are very colorful and eye catching to the fans. For example if a fan sees a red, blue, and white circle on a billboard in the outfield they know that it is for Pepsi. Colors are very important because people recognize certain brands by their colors and if the billboard is to far away to read the fans can recognize the product or service by that companies colors alone.

Fences

The fences in every ballpark all over the world use the fences as a tool to advertise products to fans. Fences are always being looked at during a game due to people watching the game. It is the background of the outfielders and whenever a ball is hit out there or someone wants to look at the scoreboard, people have to look at the outfield and have really no choice to look at the advertisements on the fences. GAP Inc. really benefited from company's putting there ads on the fence, because left-centerfield and right-centerfield are called the "gap" in baseball leaving a lot of stadiums to use GAP as their advertisement in that area on the fence. Fences are really useful due to how visible they are throughout an entire game.

Green Screens

Technology is making advertising much easier in baseball stadiums and the use of green screens is really starting to take off. Greens screens are only visible to fans watching the game on television, but are very useful due to how easy it is to switch an advertisement during an inning of the game. The green screens are usually located behind the umpire on the backstop to left of batter's box for left-handed batters. This is not a distraction to pitchers or infielders, because they use a green screen which is similar to the centerfield sitting area. This area never sits any fans and is either black or green in a stadium so that the batter is not distracted when a pitcher is throwing a pitch. Marketers like the ads because they dominate the background behind the pitcher-hitter confrontation, which is the central image in a baseball telecast. Plus, if an advertisement takes place during a homerun or an important strikeout then it will be played for free on ESPN's "Sportcenter" and other newscast all over the country. FOX and TBS are two national stations that first started implementing the use of green screens in baseball stadiums, which give marketers the chance to reach a national and local target market.

Merchandise

Merchandise is probably one of the most common forms of advertising in a baseball stadium. First you have the souvenir shops inside all of the ballparks that sell shirts and hats with the team's logos and the stadiums name on them. This makes the fans a walking advertisement for the stadium and team. Food is the next form of advertising in baseball stadiums followed by beverages. These two go hand in hand with one another because when people buy a hotdog they usually want to wash it down with an ice cold beer. Hotdogs and beer have almost become a tradition in the fact that when you go to ballparks those are the top two items fans purchase the most. Lastly you have the vendors walking around yelling out the name of beer they are selling along with hotdogs and peanuts. For example, Wrigley Field is known for their Old-Style beer so when the vendor is yelling out get your ice cold Old-Style they are advertising for the beer company and giving them good exposure throughout the game.

Airplanes

Airplanes are another way marketers reach a large crowd at one time by using fly-by advertisements. These were more effective and used a lot more before technology began to take over. Planes are able to pull a large sign behind it with a phrase written in a banner style, which limits what a marketer can put on the sign. Usually these ads include a special deal, the name of the place/company, and a phone number for the fans to read. Blimps are also used at major league baseball games and they are great exposure for a company. For example, the GOODYEAR blimp might be at the world series and the blimp will be seen by millions of people all over the