Brands Need Major League Baseball …. and Nashville’s Fan Base Is the Ideal Destination

Commercials, jersey patches, signs on stadium walls. We’ve all seen the various ways in which brands — across numerous industries — leverage the popularity of America’s favorite pastime to showcase their value to fans.?

Last fall, Rolling Stone demonstrated the key reasons why Major League Baseball (MLB) presents marketing opportunities to brands that no other professional sport in the United States can offer.

That’s right, baseball holds immense power.

Therefore, in order for brands to create maximum value, they must remain dedicated to the fans that walk through the gates of every MLB stadium.?

And that’s where Nashville is strong.

When analyzing Major League Baseball’s most loyal and most valuable fan demographics, Nashville not only outpaces the national average in many areas, but also excels as one of the top markets for professional sports in the United States.

Rolling Stone released data from a report by Playfly Sports and Vision Insights , which revealed that Major League Baseball ranks second among major professional sports with more than 171 million fans, but MLB outpaces all other leagues in fans under 18 years old. The connection is clear: According to the report, 70% of MLB fans (118.8 million) became fans of their favorite team before they turned 18 years old. The report also points out that nearly 40% of MLB fans first became fans because they played baseball or softball — often through Little League — as children. The league has noticed, and subsequently has invested heavily in youth leagues to promote its brand more prominently.?

So how does Nashville stack up with these fans? The median age of the Nashville market — 36.8 years — is 1.7 years younger than the national average of 38.5 years. Looking at the youth segment in particular, Nashville likewise outpaces the national average in the percentage of its population that is younger than 14 years old (Nashville: 18.8%, national average: 18.2%) and younger than 18 years old (22.7% vs. 22.1%), as well as the share of the population comprised by young families (21.6% vs. 19.8%). As Major League Baseball continues its focus on youth, that investment will be worth plenty in Music City.?

Nashville has also been a consistently strong market for baseball over the last several years. The Nashville Sounds Baseball Club have ranked top-3 in attendance (both average and total) for every season since the pandemic, and have ranked top-4 in their league in seven of the eight full seasons dating back to 2015. Baseball fandom in Nashville was among the league’s best before the pandemic and has remained among the league’s leaders after the pandemic.

But that’s not all. The amount of visibility — both in the stadium and on television — during the 162-game baseball season is a ripe environment for brand exposure. In that?already-strong environment, the league in 2023 just completed its largest year-over-year increase in paid attendance since 1998. Eyes are on Major League Baseball — and the brands associated with the league — at an extremely high level.?

And let’s go back to those fans that we mentioned earlier, who became fans at a young age. What happens when they grow up and begin their adult lives with families of their own? That’s right, their children also have a good chance of following baseball as well; the positive domino effect continues.

Those who played baseball at a young age, and tend to stick with the sport as they grow up, are categorized by Forbes as “Forever Fans.” This segment — “the most avid fans that have been engaged with MLB from an early age”, according to Forbes — is “2.5 times more likely to watch all of their team’s games, and three times more likely to connect” with the brands and sponsors aligned with their favorite team. The report also found that “Forever Fans” represented a greater share (31%) of the fanbase for Major League Baseball than the fanbase for the NBA, NFL or NHL.

Right now, more and more youth are making their way into Nashville every day. More than 160,000 people moved into the Nashville area in 2022, and more than 18% of that influx came from the under-18 age group. Looking more broadly to include young adults and their families, more than 900,000 of Nashville's residents were younger than 35 years old; more than 11% of those residents had moved here from out of town.?Nashville has already shown itself to be a leading market for baseball fans; by engaging with a vast — and still growing — network of young fans, Major League Baseball in Nashville would check the boxes for long-term viability.

So, let’s connect the dots:

• Major League Baseball is an exceptional platform for brands to advertise to fans, thanks to a 162-game season and the in-stadium, television and digital marketing opportunities that come with each game.
• Major League Baseball represents a long-lasting time capsule through which fans can stick with the game from childhood into adulthood, and subsequently pass that love of the game on to their own families.
• Nashville is a younger city than the national average, growing substantially among youth, and features a greater share of its population inside the “Forever Fans” demographic than is found across the nation.

?Brands flourish with Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball flourishes with youth. Nashville flourishes in the youth demographics.?

Major League Baseball will flourish in Nashville.