The venue is a really important place for consumers. Not only do they spend a lot of time there, but it’s a direct representation of any given sports organization. What sports teams have done in the present time, according to online sports management education, is try to represent their brand through the given venue.
This can be seen through different examples, whether they want to just have a kind of fun, playful atmosphere. There’s a minor league baseball team specifically named after a Simpsons episode. Anytime Homer Simpson plays a game in any one of the Simpsons episodes, he’s known to play for a team called Isotopes. There is a minor league baseball team that has named itself the New Mexico Isotopes and it actually utilizes its field as a way to kind of showcase The Simpsons. The venue has a number of different Simpsons characters all over the venue, and it’s a way to kind of represent their brand, not only as a baseball team, but it’s a way to represent the brand that speaks to the idea that they are a fun team — that they’re a fun fan team that’s willing to interact with the fans through various different types of fun gimmicks.
Sports Management Using the Venue for Brand Emphasis
There are a number of different examples of how sports teams can utilize their stadium to represent their brand. The New York Mets are a great example with Citi Field. Their Citi Field venue is constructed and looks almost identical to what was Ebbets Field. This was an old New York team that would go and play at the Ebbets Field, so the New York Mets are able to construct a field almost as a kind of memorable way to remember Ebbets Field. It doesn’t mean that we are an old-school New York team. It’s more so emphasizing the fact that the New York Mets are a New York team, and that speaks to the brand. The idea of constructing the stadium after Ebbets Field really speaks to the idea of honing in on their New York side of the brand.
Venus can help the community kind of come together because they share some collective meaning in terms of what the brand means to them. If they want to represent themselves as New Yorkers and they want to go to a Mets game, they want to feel that the Mets can allow them to see themselves as New Yorkers. When they go to the venue and they see Ebbets Field, it reminds them of old school New York. And it kind of re-emphasizes this whole idea that, “I’m a New Yorker visiting this New York historic site.”
It’s interesting that the Mets within Citi Field also have a dedication as the Jackie Robinson rotunda where the number “42” is there. It allows certain members of the community (the African-American community specifically), to kind of feel a connection with the Mets that they can say, “the Mets truly represent something that I value,” which is the whole idea of an important player that’s very relevant to my history.
As to what consumers would want in any given ballpark, it’s going to depend on the sport. Sports management education explains, for example, a football game is going to be a lot of consumers directly paying attention to the football game. It’s all filled with action, but there are only actually eight full-time home games so consumers only get a chance to go to one stadium eight times throughout the year. Whereas with baseball, for example, there are 162 games in the season and therefore 81 home games. In fact, baseball might not be as action-packed as would a basketball or football game. You have 81 different chances to go to a sporting event and there’s kind of some downtime throughout. What you’ll see is that football stadiums are not as likely as baseball stadiums are to offer community events. Baseball stadiums offer a social setting because the sport and the season allow it to have these types of social gathering opportunities.
