Washington Nationals Experience

Posted on 23. Sep, 2009 by Mike Olaski in Individuals, Merchandise Vendors, Promotions, Service Providers, The Connection, The Fans Perspective, The Sports Perspective

After a few days of running around, battling traffic and trying to get organized, we have finally settled into Washington for a few days.  We rolled into town just in time to catch the Washington Nationals vs LA Dodgers game at Nationals Stadium last night.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the game experience at Nationals Park was great.  Unfortunately for the Nats though, a good chunk of the fans were wearing the Dodgers Blue & White.  Regardless, you could tell that, even though the Nats have only been in Washington for a few years, they have a loyal fan base that is itching for a winning team.

Nationals Fan Experience

As you may have noticed on the website, we uploaded a number of photos and tried to tweet regularly to share our experience with everyone. I wanted to write a bit about the In-Game experience and promotions we noticed between eatin peanuts!

Racing Presidents

One of the In-Game promotions that most people would be familiar with is the “Racing Presidents” sponsored by Geico.  This promotion has received alot of attention due to the fact that one of the famous presidents (Teddy Roosevelt) has never won a race.  Rumor has it that the reason he has never won is more “political” than one might think…..but I’m not going to start any rumors or political scandals   Unfortunately, Teddy did not run in the race during this game – apparently due to a pulled hamstring. You can follow Teddy Roosevelt’s struggles for that elusive first win Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/Teddy.Nats and on Twitter – http://twitter.com/Teddy26Nats.

Big Screen Promos

As in every major sports stadium, the majority of the fan engagement is focused around the Big Screen located in center field.  There were a few promotions that we noticed that were promoted on the Big Screen including the following:

• Random Acts of Red (DC Lottery) – The branded “Red” theme seems to be common in Washington sports. Throughout the game, the Nationals gave away prizes including a Lucky Seat Upgrade
• Free t-shirt giveaway – the first 10,000 fans into the stadium received free “Screech” t-shirts (Screech is the Nationals patriotic mascot)
• Pizza giveaway (Papa John’s) – we were in the right section, but unfortunately, were on the wrong side of the isle, so we never didn’t get a shot at the free pizza.

I guess in summary, there were a number of In-Game promotions that were displayed up on the Big Screen in Nationals Stadium. However, considering that we are advocating that teams should start to incorporate their online marketing (website, social sites, etc) with their offline marketing (Big Screen, give-aways, etc), it was quite obvious that none of their offline marketing tied in social media in any way.  There was no mention of their Facebook accounts or Twitter account and from what we noticed, there was no interaction with the thousands of fans in the stands that had mobile phones in their hands.  I think there is a huge opportunity being missed here.