The 2014 Baseball Winter Meetings Trade Show had vendors catering from small businesses to major corporations. The Winter Meetings attract executives from the biggest clubs in Major League Baseball down to the smaller affiliates with far smaller budgets than their parent MLB clubs. And while MLB often operates in a federal, league-wide manner in many business dealings, there generally seemed to be more independence among minor league clubs (even those in the same league). This could be due to the sometimes ephemeral nature of MiLB clubs and their affiliations, but, regardless, there are a lot of big and small decisions when it comes to selecting service and product providers.
With little to no value for media rights, a lot of vendors are focused on helping MiLB clubs maximize game attendance and per capita fan spend, as well as being as efficient as possible for all services. Therefore, things like promotional merchandise and giveaway items, digital inventory systems, food and entertainment supplements, and ticketing solutions. Of course, there was also a lot of other cool tech, too, from player performance to digital signage, and even some pyrotechnics.
Check out part two of three of your tour of the majority of the booths at this year’s Baseball Trade Show in San Diego, California. You can see part one here. [put link here, once part one is published]
See a full list of exhibitors here and discuss the Trade Show with us: @SportTechie and @njh287.
This just one of dozens of Digital and Social Media Sports posts created by Neil Horowitz. Be sure to follow Neil for a business-minded look at all things digital and social in sports.