Minor League Teams Will Face New Challenges Entertaining Fans In 2021

Image credit: (Photo by Mike Janes/Four Seam Images)

For the first month of the 2021 season, minor league operators are confident they will be serving one of the most appreciative fanbases they’ve ever seen.

After a completely lost 2020 season, fans will be thrilled simply to walk back into a ballpark. Green grass, a beer, a hot dog and a baseball game are all signs that normalcy is slowly returning to an increasingly vaccinated United States.

That will be enough to thrill fans who have been away for a long time. The first month of this year’s minor league season is expected to be the honeymoon period of all honeymoon periods.

 

Teams will throw open their gates and welcome fans back with universal appreciation. Everyone will (mostly) happily endure physical distancing, mask-wearing and plenty of coronavirus-enacted rules. Simply seeing a game in person will be an experience many didn’t realize how much they enjoyed until it was gone.

That feeling should last through the first and maybe the second visit a fan makes to a park in 2021—just put on a baseball game, keep the fans safe and everyone goes home happy.

By the time June rolls around, the novelty of getting back to the ballpark will begin to fade. The grass will still be green. The kids will still love getting an ice cream in the seventh inning. But the novelty of returning to the ballpark will start to dissipate.

At that point, minor league teams will face their biggest challenge of 2021: How do they make a night at the ballpark as entertaining as possible without many of the tools they use to make their experience more than just a baseball game?

Once the new-car smell of a night at the ballpark wears off, fans will begin to notice all the differences of baseball in a world still affected by the pandemic.

The list of items that will be off-limits in 2021 because of coronavirus concerns is lengthy.

 

Sumo wrestling, dizzy bat races, kids racing mascots and other staples of the normal minor league game won’t be allowed. Fans and staff aren’t allowed on the field, so there will be no on-field promotions of any kind.

Bat dogs, bat boys and bat girls aren’t allowed.

The bounce houses, inflatable slides and other kids activities teams use to turn a game into a carnival will also likely be shut down for the foreseeable future.

Autograph seekers will also be out of luck. Minor league teams are required to create buffer areas around the dugouts and bullpens to keep fans and players apart.

Those same buffers will take away the in-game interactions between fans and players in the bullpen which have long been one of the hidden gems of a night at a minor league ballpark. Minor league players and staff have always been more accessible than major leaguers. For the short term, that will no longer be true.

That is a worry for many minor league teams. In 2021, one of the main appeals of Minor League Baseball—the chance to experience top-notch professional baseball without the barriers of the major leagues—will be difficult to fulfill.

All of the restrictions have forced teams to tap into their creativity to find ways to entertain while still adhering to the restrictions. No one knows whether the inability to run the bases after the game or get an autograph from a player will mean the difference between a young girl or boy becoming a lifetime baseball fan. They are definitely worried that could be the case.

“We’re in the memory-making business, and many, if not most, of our most powerful tools to create memories aren’t available to us,” Erie SeaWolves president Greg Coleman said.

There still will be fireworks nights and bobblehead giveaways. But what will teams do to make up for the many things that are now out of bounds? They will have to be more ambitious and unconventional than they’ve ever been before, in a field already known for creative thinkers. In doing so, they will likely reinvent what the minor league fan experience looks like in a post-pandemic world.

For most teams, the minor league in-game experience has depended in recent years on an energetic, witty, on-field in-game host. He or she drives the between-innings entertainment and keeps fans’ attentions whenever the game takes a pause.

Teams will likely still have the in-game host this year, though he or she will be roaming the stands rather than wandering onto the field. But the most important staffers in 2021 may be talented video production teams. Most minor league teams have a massive video screen.

This year, using them creatively will be vital to entertaining the crowd.

“People on the field with a mic in their hand have made it go. I think that will slowly shift. Individuals who can create packaged content will become some of our most valuable employees,” said one Class A minor league operator.

Clever between-innings videos may replace dizzy bat races and sumo wrestlers. Packages that can show some aspects of the players’ and coaches’ personalities will be valued, and could be a way to bridge the physical gap between the players and the fans.

And there is a side benefit. These video packages can also become social media content to help attract others to check out a night at the park.

Some teams will also adopt between-innings digital games that can be played by the crowd on their mobile phones, which will provide a shared experience in a new way.

You’re unlikely to see beer, popcorn and cotton candy vendors working their way through the crowd this year. Instead, you will likely see teams adopting online ordering, where fans order concessions from their seats—and even pay on their phone—and then walk to pick up their waiting order without needing to stand in line.

It’s a habit many customers have gotten used to over the past year of the pandemic, now adapted to a minor league game.

For the sharpest minor league operators, it will still be a three-hour show wrapped around a baseball game. The hope teams have is that the constraints forced upon everyone will lead to ideas that otherwise wouldn’t have been discovered.

“Between innings won’t be on the field. On the field will be solely baseball,” said one Triple-A operator.

“I think we will figure that out this year. The experience this year and in 2022 will be more dynamic. We will be more engaging. It will be more community-specific.”

That’s the hope for the minor leagues. By being forced to change, teams will end up finding new promotions and entertainment that they will want to keep as part of the show long after the pandemic.

In doing so, teams may find a path to being even more engaging for fans for years to come.