Seattle Mariners Marketers Are Pitching a Rare Doubleheader of Iconic Events

For much of the last 20 years, marketing the Seattle Mariners has been less about promoting big events at the team’s T-Mobile Park and more about reminding fans that it exists and baseball is played there. Prior to 2022, the former Safeco Field last hosted All-Star and playoff games in 2001. It was so long ago that the Mariners’ 2002 All-Star outfielder and reigning American League Rookie of the Year Julio Rodriguez was an infant at the time. Thanks to his efforts and those of a young core of teammates, however, the Mariners qualified for a Wild Card berth and repaid the Toronto Blue Jays’ Canadian fans for their repeated occupations of Seattle over the years by sweeping their team at home (before being swept themselves by the Houston Astros in the Division Series). Inside the Future of MLB’s Marketing With New Creative AOR Wieden+Kennedy This year, Mariners marketers find themselves with not only known commodities in players like Rodriguez, George Kirby, J.P. Crawford, Luis Castillo and Robbie Ray, but with two premier events awarded to the franchise before it's even played an inning in 2023. As T-Mobile Park prepares to host both the 2023 MLB All-Star Game and its nearly full week of festivities, it's also gearing up for the National Hockey League’s next Winter Classic with a potential postseason return by the Seattle Kraken. Drawing fans and sponsors to a 162-game regular season is enough of a challenge for any MLB marketing department. To effectively sell that slate and multiple major events as well, the Mariners, their sponsors and their partners at MLB, as well as the NHL and the Kraken, have made welcoming fans to T-Mobile Park in 2023 a team effort. “That's one of the great things about baseball,” said Gregg Greene, the Mariners’ vp of marketing. “We have 81 home games, we have 47,000 seats, we have 3 million+ opportunities for fans to come inside the ballpark.” Welcome to Seattle The Mariners draw from a five-state home region—Washington, Alaska, Oregon, Idaho and Montana—whose more than 961,000 square miles are larger than all but nine nations on the planet. They play in a city whose population has added nearly 200,000 people since the Mariners last hosted an All-Star Game, and a metropolitan area that’s absorbed nearly 1 million during that same span. Along with the Mariners’ return to the postseason, that has Major League Baseball excited to host one of its jewel events beside Elliott Bay again. “This combination makes the city, and the entire region, an ideal All-Star host because it’s both a destination for baseball fans around the country and home to a passionate fan base,” said Jeremiah Yolkut, MLB’s vp of events. “2023 is really the perfect time to showcase baseball’s greatest players in the Emerald City.” https://twitter.com/Mariners/status/1550660118852751362?lang=en But the Mariners haven’t filled more than 30,000 of their ballpark’s 47,000 seats on average since 2007. Last year, before Rodriguez placed second in the Home Run Derby and fans got to know Castillo as La Piedra, the Mariners basically had to reintroduce themselves to fans with help from a player-forward campaign by Portland, Oregon-based agency Heart & Hustle. Even with their playoff appearance, the Mariners drew fewer attendees on average than they did in 2018. Between T-Mobile Park’s marquee events, the Mariners marketing team is emphasizing access: $10 center field bleacher seats for every game and a dozen concessions items (including hot dogs and refillable sodas) between $2 and $4. The team has opened a restaurant, bar, beer garden, batting cages and training facilities in a former flooring store across the street, all of which is open to fans without a game ticket. Rashad Floyd of agency Heart & Hustle reintroduced Seattle Mariners like J.P. Crawford to the sports world through an Opening Day campaign last year. His job's a bit easier in 2023. The team is also taking advantage of its increased visibility after last year’s playoff appearance to work on community engagement and outreach. Nova Newcomer, the Mariners’ director of community relations and the Mariners Care Foundation, said the team is focused on three pillars of community outreach this year: ensuring baseball and softball access for all, advancing equity and “being a good hometown partner.” Along with its baseball and softball clinics, camps, grants and programs, the team offers free seats through MLB’s Commissioner’s Initiative ticket program that brings thousands of fans from the region to T-Mobile Park each year. Newcomer noted that, last year, the team brought a group of 75 kids up from Portland who got to see both a win against the New York Yankees and an Aaron Judge home run. “One of the things that is really clear to me is that no matter how somebody comes into the ballpark, a fan is a fan, and their experience matters,” Newcomer said. “From the community side of things, we want to make sure that whether you come in with a free ticket or a premium ticket, that your experience is, for lack of a better word, sacred.” In it together T-Mobile has been an MLB sponsor for the last decade, but only entered its 25-year naming rights deal for T-Mobile Park in 2019. Part of a broader arrangement with the Washington State Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District (PFD) that required the Mariners to make $600 million, the deal stamped T-Mobile’s brand all over the facility, gave it a party area in the ballpark and created a presence for the brand that already had a headquarters just across Lake Washington in Bellevue. Mike Katz, president of marketing, innovation and experience at T-Mobile, noted that the deal has allowed the carrier to support its hometown team and establish a more visible presence within the community. And with a decade’s worth of All-Star sponsorship behind it, T-Mobile also can lend some experience to the festivities. “We’ve seen firsthand what hosting All-Star Week means for a city, the team and its fans,” Katz said. “With Seattle and T-Mobile Park on the national stage this summer, we have a unique opportunity to create some incredible fan experiences.” T-Mobile secured the naming rights to the Seattle Mariners' ballpark for 25 years back in 2019. On Jan. 1, 2024, however, the National Hockey League will lay down a rink inside T-Mobile Park as the Seattle Kraken host the Las Vegas Golden Knights for the latest installment of the league’s Winter Classic. Arriving as an expansion franchise in 2021 just as pandemic lockdowns were lifting, the Kraken have already partnered with the Mariners on Kraken Night at T-Mobile park and Mariners player appearances at Climate Pledge Arena. Kraken CMO Katie Townsend pointed to similarities between the Seattle teams: They share a similar color palette, a “golden era” of young players—including Rodriguez, Kraken forward Matty Beniers, and the Seahawks’ Tariq Woolen and Kenneth Walker—and ideas about how to market their city’s teams. Townsend said Mariners president of business operations Catie Griggs and svp of marketing Kevin Martinez have answered questions and lent support throughout her tenure. https://twitter.com/SeattleKraken/status/1610006108449681408 As the Kraken look to tell a story about the history and heritage of their sport in Seattle—which includes a Stanley Cup championship for the Seattle Metropolitans in 1917—they view the Mariners not as a franchise rediscovering its fortunes, but one that set the example for how the city could play on its sport’s biggest stages. “For us to be hosting at the Mariners’ [ballpark], there's something that feels special about that,” Townsend said. “When I think about the right kind of venue, which feels like it has the history and allows you to see through to the city, and the kind of nautical sea brand, there's so many connections there that just feel right.”