One of the most pressing questions surrounding the Giants as their 65th season in San Francisco begins doesn’t pertain to the diamond, but rather around it.
Coming off an 81-81 season that saw the lowest attendance total in a non-pandemic year since the club moved to their waterfront ballpark, the Giants organization has a chance to start fresh.
At the Giants’ annual Media Open House event at Oracle Park, executives demonstrated an authentic push to attract fans. Old fans, new fans, young and aging, the Giants realize a need to rebuild some goodwill with a fanbase that’s been going through it recently.
So the Giants made strides to improve the fan experience at Oracle Park — still among the best places to catch a game. They dedicated resources to branding their product to a wider, younger audience. They improved the roster compared to last year and tried to schedule creative events.
Will those focused efforts combine to improve fan engagement?
“There’s just been a surge in interest,” Giants president and CEO Larry Baer told KNBR after the Open House presentations.
A myriad of factors went into the Giants’ 2.4 million attendance total from last year, many of which were unique to the city of San Francisco.
One study showed that San Francisco is the slowest city to return to in-person work. That makes it easier for potential ticket-buyers to stay home and watch the game instead of heading to the yard.
The city’s public transportation system was also operating on a reduced schedule, making it less convenient to get to Oracle Park without a car.
There were also general COVID-19 concerns, inflation and supply chain issues that cut peoples’ discretionary spending budgets, the Warriors’ title run potentially taking some attention away from the Giants, and a middling team without a discernible star player to draw casual fans.
Baer clarified that he wasn’t disappointed with 2022’s attendance number, pointing to some of the uncontrollable factors. The Giants were also the last team to reopen the ballpark in 2021, another indicator of unique challenges in the market.
But there’s a clear need to drum up more interest. At the Open House event, the Giants operated like they knew as much.
The organization hired advertising firm nice&frank to help come up with their “Nothing Like It” branding campaign. The firm conducted a survey of 500 fans and did 500 hours of work researching and executing a plan, according to the Giants’ presentation. Organizations don’t seek an audit like that when they’re content with the status quo.
Baer’s main takeaway from their findings was a clear need to appeal to young, casual fans who might not be clicking through Fangraphs.
“I’ve seen this in years too when we had sellouts: families would come and they don’t know much about baseball, but they enjoy the food, enjoy the music, enjoy the environment, enjoy Lou Seal, whatever,” Baer said. “And they kind of get hooked. And they go up the avidity scale, to the point where then they’re like ‘this is fantastic. I like it. I remember back in the years I loved JT Snow or Jeff Kent or Barry Bonds or Buster Posey or Madison Bumgarner.’ But we’ve got to get them to sample the experience. We’ve got to get them back to that.”
Getting young fans and families back engaged is the right area to focus on. Even if on the margins, the club has turned its attention.
The Giants’ preseason hype video features narration from popular Bay Area rapper Iamsu! and is produced with bright colors and quick cuts reminiscent of a TikTok. (Here’s a snippet). The video and corresponding still marketing components highlight what makes going to a Giants game unique and fun: garlic fries, splash hits, seagulls, and upper-deck seats in the fog.
Their promotions include a drone and fireworks show with a soundtrack arranged by E-40.
They upgraded their in-stadium Wi-Fi to 6E, becoming the first outdoor sporting venue to reach that connectivity level. Sources familiar with the installation said it cost millions of dollars to complete; the Giants compared the improvement in speed from Bengie Molina on the base paths to The Freeze. BeReals from the bleachers should load seamlessly.
As previously announced, their 14oz domestic drafts have been cut in price to $9. The Giants also added espresso martinis and hard kombucha — beverages popular with the youths — to the menu.
The energy at Thursday’s event felt ramped up from last year’s Media Open House, when the Giants unveiled the “Game Up” slogan. That catch phrase was born from a chance interaction with manager Gabe Kapler.
The “Game Up” brand campaign didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Beyond it, the Giants previewed much of the same: Star Wars Nights, fireworks, a 2012 reunion, the ever-popular bobbleheads. It’s easy to try to body-surf the waves of a 107-win season.
Thursday’s message was sharper.
The Giants have a captive market of passionate fans to invigorate. From 2000 to 2007, and again from 2010 to 2017, the Giants kept sellout streaks. That’s 16 of the 23 sellout seasons on the shore of McCovey Cove, Baer notes.
“We’re just building it back up,” Baer said.
The attendance numbers in 2023 should benefit from a full-scale return of public transit — plus the introduction of the new T-line — and from business slowly bringing employees back to the office. Mondays and Fridays may still be tough, but many businesses require employees to work in-person during the middle of the week. Baer also said a cohort of 8,000 Google employees normally within walking distance have been returning to a hybrid schedule.
But a return to more normalcy, focus groups and promotional gimmicks alone won’t get the Giants back to the sellout streak days.
In the past few years, on top of the pandemic, Giants fans have seen their all-time favorite manager dip to Texas, their favorite remaining player retire, and their favorite team reach the postseason once in six tries.
Then this winter, when the offseason demanded a push for a superstar, Aaron Judge decided to stay in New York and Carlos Correa signed, then left after flunking his physical. Both events are nuanced and may ultimately benefit the Giants in the long run, but Giants’ fans loyalty was nonetheless tested by the most tumultuous offseason in franchise history.
After the Correa deal fell through, some fans declared they were at their wit’s end. Some canceled their season ticket packages.
No superstar in tow, Giants pivoted to targeting free agents Michael Conforto, Mitch Haniger, Ross Stripling, Sean Manaea, Taylor Rogers and Luke Jackson. They brought back Joc Pederson and extended Wilmer Flores during the season.
Including arbitration, SF spent $203.6 million this winter — eighth in MLB — on a group that owns six All-Star selections and three World Series rings.
“I think the fans fall in love with players in a lot of different ways,” Baer said. “Superstar is one way. The other way is, Buster Posey wasn’t a superstar when he first showed up here in 2009. Fans fell in love with him over the years. Same thing with Tim Lincecum. So there’s a lot of ways for that to happen. It can happen through a free agent signing, trade, minor league system. So I feel like we’re going to be okay.”
Of all the factors that do or don’t put fans in seats, a winning product on the field remains the most crucial. Perhaps just as important is finding or developing players who resonate with the fans.
Until that happens, though, the Giants can be confident that they’re doing a better job selling their brand than in the past. More fans may buy it when baseball returns to Oracle Park.
But probably only if the Giants baseball on the diamond looks more like it did in 2021 than it did in 2022. Everyone’s in first place now, but anything can happen over the course of a 162-game season.
The Giants’ roster is talented enough to contend for a wild card spot this season. If not, fan frustrations might really bubble. If not, Oracle Park might remain half-full.
If the fan angst if 2022 repeats itself? There might be nothing like it.