By Simon Ogus – Email | Twitter | Articles
April is always the time of eternal optimism for baseball fans. Every team is within contention and even the longest of long shots have hopes that this year will be “The Year”.
Safe to say, history suggests that maintaining fan interest is going to be a challenge for Canada’s only baseball team.
The Blue Jays have a lot of young, likable players, but contending with the likes of the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and the suddenly imposing Tampa Bay Rays would be a challenge for even the very best teams in baseball. There is certainly no team happier than the Blue Jays about the MLB adding another wild card playoff team this season.
Steve Milton of the Hamilton Spectator believes that this season already has a different vibe for the Blue Jays. More specifically, he observes that there is an influx of young fans coming out to watch baseball at Rogers Centre so far this season.
Buck Martinez, a former player, manager and current broadcaster told the Spectator “It was like the old days, the number of fans who came over and they were all 25 to 35.” These are fans that likely weren’t watching too many baseball games when the Blue Jays won their back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993.
Martinez credits this influx of young fans to the engaging and entertaining style of the Blue Jays’ players on Twitter. Brett Lawrie, J.P. Arencibia and Ricky Romero, all highly important players to the Blue Jays’ success, are the catalysts of this movement.
“Through Twitter, fans feel they know Lawrie, Arencibia, Romero, all of them,” Martinez continues. “They even tweet what they had for dinner and where. It just makes them very approachable to young fans and they identify with them, too.”
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Furthermore, these off-field actions have major potential to start affecting the Blue Jays’ bottom line. While Milton says that there were about 5,000 fans that lived within walking distance to Blue Jays games 20 years ago, that number has swelled to over 200,000, with numerous condo projects now located within close proximity to the Rogers Centre.
With a growing demographic of nearby young residents with disposable income , it is imperative for the Blue Jays to penetrate this market in order to be successful — and their young players seem to be ready to lead the charge.
Last week we noted that some teams utilize the power of social media more effectively than others. Are we headed towards an era where players are heavily involved in team’s digital marketing strategy? Let us know what you think.
(Photo credit: http://www.wbur.org)