Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 22, 1993 TAG: 9305220217
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HARRY BERKOWITZ NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
According to a marketing study conducted for advertisers, Major League Baseball is suffering a drastic erosion of loyalty that is similar to the threats faced by big brands. And baseball is not moving aggressively enough to counteract the trend.
"By all indications, fans no longer feel as loyal, or as attached, to their teams as they once did," said Mark Levine, a loyalty specialist who conducted the analysis at the marketing firm Wunderman Cato Johnson, which is an arm of the big ad agency Young & Rubicam. "Fans have a more dispassionate attitude, which means advertisers benefit less from the association."
While big, brand-name products are losing sales in the face of competition from lower-priced brands, baseball's problems stem from relocation of players through free-agency, relocation of teams, rule changes, embarrassing publicity that hurts baseball's image, player strikes and soaring salaries.
"Baseball has too many changes," according to Wunderman Cato. There also is less of a sense of value for fans, as features such as doubleheaders have all but disappeared, and less of a sense that a team symbolizes its city.
As a result, fans feel less of an emotional link and less depth of involvement with baseball, the study says. "Simply put, the guys you're rooting for today become the enemy tomorrow so frequently that a fan has no long-term expectations to base his or her loyalty, so it erodes," said Mitch Kurz, president of Wunderman Cato Johnson.
The firm, whose clients include major advertisers on sports shows, did the study for six clients wondering about the long-term value of linking their own products to baseball. It reviewed television ratings, overall attendance, and the big gap in attendance between winning teams and losing teams, and it interviewed executives at a dozen ballclubs as well as some fans.
"Advertisers have concluded that advertising in baseball is not as good a buy as it used to be," Levine said. Some major advertisers, including beer and car companies, have sharply cut spending on baseball in recent years and shifted it to basketball and football. Anheuser-Busch, for example, cut its baseball spending to $75 million this year, compared with $100 million in 1988. Average television viewership has dropped 28 percent for regular-season games since 1990, and the price that advertisers pay per viewer has dropped 20 percent since 1988, the firm said.
by CNB