• by Larry Dobrow , May 6, 2004

The 2004 baseball season is off to a relatively hot start at the turnstiles, with TV ratings inching up over 2003 levels. But an unprecedented marketing deal announced Wednesday threatens to test the limits of how far a major professional league can intermingle commerce and sport.

In conjunction with Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios, Major League Baseball Properties has designated June 11-13 "Spider-Man 2 Weekend." Central to the program is the placement of multihued Spidey logos on first, second, and third base, as well as in the on-deck circles of the 15 American League stadiums hosting interleague games that weekend. Other components include Spider-Man 2 clips on the Jumbotron and giveaways of items like Spidey masks.

The timing of the announcement seems curious, especially its arrival one day after erstwhile presidential candidate Ralph Nader assailed a sponsorship deal in which the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays wore Ricoh logos on their batting helmets and uniform sleeves during a season-opening series in Japan. Furthermore, several hours after the movie partnership was announced, MLB issued another press release, this one detailing a Mother's Day breast-cancer awareness/prevention program that boasts similar on-field components (a commemorative pink logo on each of the bases, etc.).

Reaction to the Spider-Man announcement was swift and almost uniformly negative. "It's an ephemeral promotion that has no connection to baseball," says Doug Pappas, an author of the Baseball Prospectus Web site. "They've basically made baseball a pawn in somebody else's one-weekend marketing game."

Yet as a result of the controversy, the promotion will likely end up a wild success. While Sports Business Group principal David Carter believes that none of the parties to it expected Wednesday's immediate firestorm, he says that the controversy can only help the program.

"It sort of reminds me of Super Bowl ads, where the exposure before the game gives the commercials extra value," he explains. "Think about all the spillover free publicity--talk radio, columns like yours, [former MLB Commissioner] Fay Vincent and Bob Costas weighing in. The movie people must be thrilled; they'll get millions worth of unanticipated notoriety. Baseball will emerge victorious, even if they do so in sort of a backhanded way."

The irony, of course, is that if MLB had introduced the element of on-base signage via the Mother's Day program--or even in conjunction with a longtime supporter of the game--the early reaction might not have been so unforgiving. "Baseball has a way of sticking its thumb in people's eye," Pappas says. "If they were trying to broaden the area of the game that's subject to advertising, this was not the way to do it. You start subtle and small."

Say, with something like the Mother's Day program? "That's what they would have done if they were intelligent," Pappas continues. "After the fact, they realized, 'Oh crap, we have to do something to make this more palatable to the public'--and then all of a sudden you had the Mother's Day press release."

Carter disagrees: "I'm not convinced they put out [the Mother's Day release] to mute the impact of this." But he speculates that given the chance to do it again, baseball might have handled the situation differently. "If you're going to wade into this pool, maybe you wrap yourself in the flag a little bit. They really couldn't have picked a more in-your-face place to start than with the release of a motion picture."

One published report said MLB will receive about $3.6 million for the Spider-Man program. Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group spokesman Steve Elzer declined comment beyond the press release, while a Major League Baseball Properties spokeswoman did not return calls for comment.