Cori Sams doesn't consider herself to be a huge baseball fan. Yet, there she was on a recent Thursday night taking in the action during a Louisville Bats game at Louisville Slugger Field.
The 24-year-old doctoral student, who is studying audiology at the University of Louisville, said she was drawn to the ballpark by the novelty of seeing a game there -- it was her first visit to Slugger Field -- but also by the Bats' pre-game happy hour promotion.
Thursday happy hours, which the ballclub began in 2002, feature live music and $1 Budweisers on the Overlook Deck beyond the right-centerfield wall. The promotion runs from 5:30 to 7 p.m., wrapping up before the ball game's first pitch at 7:15.
Sams, a Georgia native who has seen baseball games in other venues, so enjoyed her experience at Slugger Field that she said she likely would come again.
And that's just what Bats officials want to hear. They introduced the happy hour promotion during Slugger Field's third year as a way of attracting a new generation of fans -- college students and young professionals -- in the hopes that they will return to watch the Bats play again.
"Happy hour has been a great success because ... we're reaching a different person," said Bats President Gary Ulmer. "Hopefully, those people are coming back. I think they are. We see young people on dates" on other nights during the week.
Team's budget includes 'several hundred thousand dollars' for promotions
The Thursday happy hour is just one of myriad promotional events and activities that the Bats roll out over the course of their 72-game home schedule.
This year, it spawned a more family-oriented discount promotion. Tuesday nights are $1 nights with $1 Pepsi products and hot dogs throughout the game.
The Bats have attained a goal of having at least one special feature or giveaway every night that the team plays in town.
Ulmer declined to provide an exact figure, but he said the team allots "several hundred thousand dollars" each year for its promotional budget.
Nightly expenses could be as small as $2,000 or $3,000 for an individual act or as large as $10,000 or $12,000 when the team brings in a troupe of cheerleaders or other traveling groups.
Most of the promotions have a corporate sponsorship, which helps defray the costs.
Transient nature of minor leagues makes promotions important
Having nightly promotions fits with the Bats' strategy to provide a full evening of entertainment and to offer features that appeal to men, women and children from all age groups.
Greg Galiette, the team's assistant general manager and director of marketing, is responsible for the Bats' promotions. He said he looks to other professional sports leagues, including the NBA, NFL and NHL, in his attempts to find the newest and most popular acts to book.
The Bats, who are the Triple A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds, also have done market research and polled season-ticket holders to find out what they like or don't like about features and events held at the ballpark.
Although promotions are important to drawing fans at the highest levels of professional sports, they are even more so at the minor league level, according to Galiette, because players often come and go so quickly. The transient nature of the minor league game makes it difficult to market individual players as a draw for fans, he said.
"You can't really count on the team," Galiette explained. "You don't know what kind of team you're going to have -- not only from season to season but from week to week. The one thing we can count on is being able to control the atmosphere and the quality of entertainment we put out between innings, before the game and after the game to really wrap a ribbon around this whole package."
Mixing the old and the new
Galiette has been with Louisville's Triple A baseball club for 23 years, serving in his current role since 1991. He said some baseball promotions, such as fireworks and bat giveaways, always are a hit.
Other Louisville favorites include The Famous Chicken, a traveling mascot, and Jake the Diamond Dog, a canine that catches Frisbees and retrieves bats from the batter's box. Cheerleading squads also are sure to draw a crowd, Galiette said. Team officials have dubbed such promotions "testosterone nights."
Over the course of the season, the Bats' promotions and special events range from tried-and-true entertainment -- every Friday, there are fireworks -- to more unusual offerings, including "Mad Chad," who juggles running chainsaws, and "Rubber Boy," who twists and contorts his body into a variety of bizarre positions.
Galiette compared the Bats' promotions strategy with an amusement park that has old standbys but also continues to bring in new attractions. "If you had the same rides every year, (people) aren't going to go anymore," he said.
Biggest promotions saved for weekends
Whatever the strategy, it continues to work for the Bats. Once again, they are leading the International League in attendance, having drawn 420,767 fans through 46 games.
That's an average attendance of 9,147 per game -- far more than the Bats' closest competitors, the Pawtucket Red Sox, averaging 8,038 a game, and the Buffalo Bisons, with 7,905 a game.
The Bats stage their most popular promotions on weekends, when games draw the biggest crowds. Ulmer said the idea is to give the most loyal fans and season-ticket holders more entertainment value for their dollar.
The strategy pays off. When The Famous Chicken came to town on Saturday, June 10, for example, a near sellout crowd of 12,131 turned out at Slugger Field. The ballpark holds 13,200.
Competition for entertainment dollars has increased
Promotions and freebies at minor league baseball games are, of course, nothing new. Ballclubs have given away everything from caps and team photos to oil changes in an attempt to lure more fans.
But fans today have heightened their expectations when it comes to baseball promotions, according to International League President Randy Mobley.
As a result, the importance of promotions has "increased significantly" in recent years, he said.
They now are a "critical" part of a minor league baseball team's entertainment mix, and they help the sport compete with other leisure activities available to consumers.
"The competition for the entertainment dollar has increased over the years, and folks have more and more choices to make," Mobley said.
"Promotions are really the lifeblood of the overall success of minor league teams in this day and age. You're continually trying to provide (the fans) more for their money."
That's the goal for the Bats, according to Ulmer.
He said the acts and events that the team hosts during the season probably aren't the No. 1 reason fans come to the ballpark. They just add a little something extra to the mix.
"We know people would miss it if we didn't consistently devote a fairly significant amount of dollars to promote our product," Ulmer said. "It's a different business model. We've got to spend money to generate revenue. We think it's probably one of the most important things that we do."