Inside the quirky, out-there world of team branding in minor league baseball (2024)

“It’s only hubris if I fail.”

Pardon if instead of Julius Caesar it’s a pontificating penguin that borrows this line in Rome, Ga. The city northwest of Atlanta owes its name to the capital of Italy because of its similar seven hills and three rivers. So when its Braves minor league affiliate rebranded last year, the Rome Emperors made perfect sense. As did a waddling emperor penguin fittingly named Julius to serve as the mascot.

“We didn’t want a Little Caesars-looking character walking around with a golden helmet,” explained David Lane, general manager of the team. “There were several qualities we loved about the emperor penguin. They’re dedicated, adaptable, resilient; they have a big, strong sense of community; they’re graceful, confident and regal. It came out to be lighthearted and kid friendly, just this character that’s very proud of himself and ready to play baseball.”

The Rome Emperors joined the likes of the Sod Poodles, RubberDucks, Sky Carp and Yard Goats as minor league teams continue to swing for the fences with their branding. At stake is an opportunity to bring big-league exposure to their clubs and score huge jumps in merchandise sales.

In the past 10 years, more than two dozen affiliated minor league baseball teams have either rebranded or adopted names as new teams, or are in the process of doing so. That’s not including dozens of alternative identities that crop up each year for various theme nights at the ballpark.

The clubs have taken different approaches to create their identities, and some reveals have started out more dud than dinger. They provide case studies of playing it safe, or letting ’er rip, and of appealing to the hometown crowd while still catching the eye of outsiders.

“If you want to sell merchandise nationwide, you have to be top of mind, so you can’t play it safe,” said Jason Klein, co-founder of San Diego-based Brandiose, which works with dozens of teams on branding each year. “Safe is risky. You never want a name that is tastefully dull.”

Why they do it

Chris Creamer, who runs the SportsLogo.net website, said it was around 20 years ago that minor league teams started broadly moving away from simply using the name of their major league affiliate. That’s when you saw the birth of teams such as the Montgomery Biscuits, the Tampa Bay Rays affiliate that moved from Orlando to Alabama in 2004 and adopted a new name to go with it.

“Teams kept pushing further and further until every team was an adjective and a noun,” said Creamer, who has tracked team branding on his website since he was 14. “Now we have the alternate identities, they have the Copa series that pays tribute to Hispanic fans. Now you have these teams not only with out-there and unusual names, they have three to four other out-there, original names that they change every year and put out new merchandise.”

Klein spells out the strategy simply: Teams can sell only so many tickets and sponsorships. Fans in the ballparks can eat only so much food. But there’s no cap on how much merchandise a team can sell if it hits on the right formula with its branding.

In this case, lightning in a bottle can best be defined by the Rocket City Trash Pandas. Ahead of the former Mobile BayBears’ move to Madison, Ala., in 2020, the club announced the new moniker in a tip of the hat to the area’s space industry and a nickname for a raccoon given its tendency to dig through garbage.

“They did $6 million [in merchandise sales] in one year, during COVID when there wasn’t even a baseball game,” said Klein, whose agency assisted the rebrand.

It goes back to the point of choosing names that resonate locally, yet can capture the attention of the nation’s baseball and pop culture aficionados who lean into the quirky and outlandish.

Minor league teams either go it alone on the branding process or tap outside experts such as Brandiose, Dan Simon of Studio Simon or Ryan Foose of Fooser Sports Design. They’ll typically spend around the low to mid-five figures to get outside help.

“It’s a misconception when people hear the word ‘branding,’” said the Tampa-based Foose, who was hired as Minor League Baseball’s first head of brand development before starting his shop in 2013. “They think it’s the logos, but it’s every single aspect. It’s the tone that people take on social media, it’s the players, it’s the owner.”

Most efforts involve surveying fans. The Rome Emperors received more than 5,300 submissions from fans when they worked through the rebranding process.

Simon, who’s based in Louisville and been in branding for 30 years, including working with the Emperors, said getting fans involved may uncover new themes and highlight what’s most important to the fans. “I always recommend to teams that they get the community involved and not just to say that you got them involved, but because since they’re your fans, you want them involved.”

The ties to the community bring about branding such as the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers (a nod to Cannon Mills’ legacy in the North Carolina town); the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels (yet another Florida team to adopt an aquatic creature); the Jersey Diners (a temporary rebrand for the Somerset Patriots that honors the cultural significance of diners); the Exploding Whales (an alternate identity for the Eugene Emeralds referencing the Navy removing a dead beached whale back in 1970 by blowing it up); and the Amarillo Calf Fries (an alternate identity for the Amarillo Sod Poodles that pays homage to a local “delicacy” — you can look that one up).

“It’s fun. It’s entertainment,” Foose said. “People come to the games for more than just what happens on the field. It’s hitting a point in the community when you create something that they feel like they own.”

Foose said names could be sparked by the local food scene or have cultural significance. “I really enjoy getting in as early as possible, learning what they love and what the community loves, and then always trying to find ways that maybe the primary logo is more neutral, that it can sell nationwide.”

When Brandiose dives into a market, it might discover themes such as underdog towns or maybe narrative stories, such as Akron being the rubber capital of the world or Biloxi being the oyster capital of America (thus the Akron RubberDucks and Biloxi Shuckers). “It has to be a local story that is accessible to the rest of America,” Klein said.

Developing the names and logos can take as little as eight to 12 weeks, but the entire process typically stretches to 18 months or so, building in time for a review by Major League Baseball and to allow partner New Era enough leeway to produce the accompanying hats and apparel. So for the 2025 season, teams had to let MLB know what they were doing by Nov. 15, 2023. Multiple efforts are underway now that won’t see the light of day until the 2026 season.

Nathan Blackmon, senior director of MiLB club services at MLB, said names and logos are reviewed for trademark infringements and possible double meanings — an urban dictionary comes in handy for that. He said while names may be designed to be zany, they shouldn’t shock. “We have lots of different people taking a look just to make sure it’s an appropriate name that we feel comfortable with," he said.

New Era is kept on its toes by all the branding and alternate identities, since no one knows for certain when a new name will catch fire and really spike demand. “You don’t know how things are going to perform, and the Exploding Whales was a great example. As things went live, they were quickly selling out,” said Hernán Tudela, director of MiLB licensing at MLB.

The rollout

With all the work that goes into rebrands, rolling them out properly is crucial. Go big or go home. Teams typically hold an unveiling party, some clubs produce hype videos, and all use social media channels to build the buzz.

The Sugar Land Space Cowboys, to unveil their rebrand from the Skeeters, attracted about 4,000 people to an event in January 2022. This past May, the Hub City Spartanburgers in South Carolina held a block party adjacent to their under-construction ballpark (the club is relocating from Kinston, N.C., and begins play in 2025) and offered live music, food trucks and fireworks.

“We wanted to create an event,” said Tyson Jeffers, general manager of the Spartanburgers, who handled their branding in-house. “We wanted our first touch point with the community to be something that resembled the experience they should expect to get when they come to our baseball games.”

As can be imagined, initial reactions are often mixed, and social media gives fans a megaphone to relay their displeasure. As Jeffers said, “If you look at social media content, some comments with anything, you think everyone hates the world.”

Tyler Stamm, general manager of the Sugar Land Space Cowboys, who also handled their own rebranding, recalls an initial reaction of 70% unhappy, 30% happy.

But fans typically come around. Brandiose’s Klein said initial negativity can actually be a good thing, especially as rebrands seek to go viral on social media and garner more attention. Mixed reactions can fuel virality and create conversations that become marketing campaigns, he said. “The worst thing isn’t that someone hates the name,” he said. “The worst thing is that they’re apathetic about it.”

Klein continued, “I’d rather have 1 million people find out about it and 60% hate it than 1,000 people find out about it and 100% love it. Because it’s a numbers game. If I can get 400,000 people to love it and 600,000 people to hate it, it’s a lot better than 1,000 people loving it.”

As fans warm up to the rebrand, rising merchandise sales remove any initial sting. Jeffers recalls the flow of customers buying Spartanburgers merchandise the Monday after the branding was revealed. One fan already had a tattoo of the new logo. Still to come is a primary mascot to go with the secondary mascots of a hamburger (yet to be named), Flip the spatula and Chip the pickle chip.

The Spartanburgers already have shipped merchandise to 48 states. “I mean, it exploded,” Jeffers said. “Right now, as we are a startup, that’s our most tangible product, the merchandise that we have.”

Stamm said Space Cowboys merchandise sales grew by tenfold in that first year.

There are inevitable fails along the way. In 2023, the team in Lexington, Ky., rebranded as the Lexington Counter Clocks (because horses race counter clockwise) and it bombed. The club returned to its original Lexington Legends name for the current season.

Then on the other extreme, there’s those lovable emperor penguins in Rome, which within two weeks of their reveal had sold merchandise in all 50 states. Through 33 games this season, merchandise sales were up 51% compared to the same stretch last year. Players have even started incorporating waddling into on-field celebrations.

“It was awesome to see the brand go national immediately and people resonate with it and love it,” Lane said. “You know, it’s unique and quirky, but it was good on the heart.”

“Experience is the teacher of all things.”

Now you’re just showing off

Theme nights offer Minor League Baseball clubs additional opportunities to test their creative chops and cash in along the way. In fact, some teams have as many as seven theme nights. Here are a few examples of what clubs have on the docket this season, not including any efforts around the Copa de la Diversión initiative to celebrate Hispanic heritage: