Last night's Diamondbacks Game

Last night I went to the Diamondbacks game with Robb and Dalee MacDonald. He had free tickets from work. They were pretty good seat and they came with free parking. Not only that but we got to see a good game that included a grand slam! This was an added bonus because now I get a FREE Grand Slam at Denny’s with my ticket. Awesome.

Here is the story inside the story. That baseball stadium is HUGE! The whole time I was there I was looking around at the size of it all. The stadium holds probably 60,000-70,000 people. It is a giant convertible. During the hot summer days they close the roof and turn on the A/C. But the size of everything amazed me. What made an even stronger impression on me was the amount of sponsorships and advertising that went on at the game. It has never hit me before this hard. Everything at the stadium was sponsored or was used to advertise at company or product. Here are some examples.
• All of the cup holders that the fans used had an Infinity logo on it.
• The Grand Slam was sponsored by Denny’s
• The strike outs, normally signified by a “K” were Circle K logos instead of regular K’s.
• There were banners and signs everywhere. The Arizona Republic sign, in dead center field, had letters that were probably 20 feet tall.
• There were electronic signs that flashed different advertisements throughout the game. I am pretty sure that they changed every inning.
• In between innings there were different promotional events like a US Airways miles give-away for catching some fly balls, a dancing contest sponsored by somebody, Lotto fan zone.
• There were also live spots from around the stadium broadcast on the big screen advertising sales going on at the gift shop or other attractions.
• Sprint, sponsored the “call to the bullpen” when a team brought in a relief pitcher.
It reminded me of the time I was at a Real Salt Lake game and the yellow card that a player was issued was sponsored by Yellow Book or something and the red card was sponsored by Jiffy Lube. The corner kicks were sponsored by Western Union, “reminding you that the nearest Western Union was, ‘Just around the corner.’

It was unreal. Most everything you could think of had been spoken for. I found a few more places that they could stick some ads but I decided to not go to their marketing department and pitch my ideas. I can’t say I blame them for doing it. I mean, they need all the money they can get so they can pay those players the outrageous salaries they “earn” for playing baseball. I bought a 32 oz soda and a hot dog for $9.25. Franchises have to do that when they only sell 1/3rd of the seats.