Hitting a home run: the difficulties of promotions in minor league baseball

Photo: Dakota Palmer

By Dakota Palmer

While fans chow down hot dogs, burgers and other popular stadium foods for Mangia Monday, the all-you-can-eat promotional night for the Syracuse Chiefs game, the man in charge of the special event is most likely thinking about planning the next big event at NBT Stadium: Potato Palooza.

Kyle Fussner, manager of community relations and promotions for the Syracuse Chiefs, aims to do one thing: fill seats. However, marketing in minor league baseball can be much more difficult than in major league baseball, Fussner said. 

Each year minor league teams attend the Minor League Baseball Promotional Seminar, where teams’ marketing and promotional employees are able to network and share ideas of what promotional events are successful and unsuccessful, Fussner said. 

Fussner said last year he learned from an Iowa team that their all-you-can-eat promotion was successful, so this year the Chiefs are trying it.

“A lot of teams are jumping on each other's bandwagon,” Fussner said. “It's not too much copying each other, it's seeing what works and building off of that.”

One of the most popular promotional events is Kids Eat Free Sundays, where children ages 12 and under can eat a hot dog, popcorn, two sodas and an ice cream for free.

Fussner said finding out which promotions work and which don’t is one of the most difficult parts of marketing. However, whether the park puts on a Zombie Night where only one person dresses up or a fireworks night where the stadium has record attendance, each promotion is a learning experience.

“The ones that work, you can tell,” he said. “The fans get into it; the fans are talking about it leading up to it — that's where we learn how to push the big ones.”

One of the most difficult aspects of minor league baseball, especially compared to major league baseball is the on-field play, Fussner said.

“We sell fun,” he said. “Our team is 20 games below 500, we're not selling people to come watch the greatest team in the world and I think people understand that.”

Out of the five seasons he’s worked for the Chiefs, Fussner said he can only remember the score of one game — only because it was a memorable game. Other than that, Fussner typically doesn’t know the score or who’s up to bat. He’s here to make sure fans enjoy their experience.

Watching the Chiefs take on the Red Sox are Debbie Copes and Isaiah Morris, there for a family event. While they don’t attend Chiefs games often, they each had ideas for dream promotional nights: for Copes, a coffee-themed night. Morris, however, hopes to experience a chicken wing bar sometime in the future.

While the Chiefs don’t have a Derek Jeter or Aaron Judge to sell out the stadium, Fussner is there to think of creative ideas to put people in seats. He said he has already started planning promotional nights for the 2019 season.

“A lot of people say between September and March is our offseason, but our offseason is all about planning for the season coming ahead,” he said.