So it seemed for a little while there that the webbed wonder was going to get his own spotlight at 15 Major League Baseball stadiums from June 11 through June 13.
Spider-Man and baseball?
Now, like peanut butter and jelly. Chunks and all.
Should we all have been terribly surprised?
No.
Should baseball purists be both quietly and verbally upset at the notion of an advertisement on the on-deck circle or the bases?
Absolutely.
Is this an ingenious idea for marketing executives in a time when the sports world has become a big business and, in effect, money is the bottom line?
No further questions needed.
The skinny of it is:
“They’re always looking for new ways to create incremental revenue streams for the league,” said Paul Swangard, director of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center. “I think it’s a pretty creative approach. You can say what you want about traditional baseball values and not protecting the sanctity of the game.
“But let’s be obvious. The only reason people are willing to pay the kind of money for the teams to put this on their bases is because there’s all these people watching they want to reach with their advertising.”
In effect, and Swangard alluded to this later, is that somebody was bound to eventually try an advertising scenario like this. In past seasons, the American and National leagues have placed World Series and Major League Baseball All-Star logos on the bases and on-deck circles.
But the catch is that those were for the betterment of the game. Those logos were internal advertising, a way to promote what was happening on the field, not in the theaters.
Spider-Man and promotion of the superhero’s second movie is a whole other realm. It’s a realm the game won’t get into just yet — giving up an estimated $3.6 million that Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios would have paid to promote the movie.
That, in itself, is a dangerous precedent. As much as everyone outside baseball seems to be happy that the advertising won’t happen, there’s nothing to say baseball officials won’t try it again next year. The thought has seeped into the minds of commissioner Bud Selig and Co.
That’s dangerous.
Sometime, probably soon, the thought will stick.
Maybe even for good.
Maybe then, Major League Baseball will realize how important the fans are, whether they are purists, fair-weather fans or youngsters going out to their first game.
That’s the point Swangard made in an interview Monday. He would challenge MLB — if and when the league was to start giving in further to advertisers — to give back to those who pay to watch the game.
And as the head man of the nation’s best sports marketing program — as
indicated by a Sports Illustrated article on Oct. 7, 2002 — Swangard should carry some weight in the world of professional athletics.
Maybe, he suggested, MLB should’ve planned to give out free tickets to the movie in return for peppering everyone’s eyes with blue and red advertisements. Maybe major league teams should lower concession prices — maybe the most overgrown prices of anything in the game — for a night or even longer.
Just give something back to the fans.
“This idea in a triangle of relationships between a property, a sponsor, both of whom are trying to create value of association with fans, what’s the fan get out of the deal?” Swangard asked.
“It’s sort of the notion of sustainability. Part of (“Spider-Man 2″) was about trying to reach out to a younger demographic. Well, those guys aren’t there because they can’t afford to go to the games, like their parents were able to when they were growing up.”
For now, it’s safe to say we can all be thankful the bases will stay white. The game’s decency and tradition have been preserved.
We think.
For another year, anyway.