Rob Manfred finally got his marquee World Series. Here’s how he plans to capitalize

This World Series gives baseball a chance to reclaim its own moniker, for the national pastime to again be national. And maybe even more.

Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball’s commissioner, has been gifted a marketer’s dream. Two of the sport’s most iconic brands, the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees, are squaring off in the best-of-seven championship round. Those metropolitan areas happen to carry more television viewers than any other in the country, and their teams are wildly good.

Now in his 10th season leading the sport, Manfred believes baseball is positioned to capitalize on the moment, to propel Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers and Aaron Judge of the Yankees further into the sporting fan’s consciousness.

“This is trying to market to the whole nation and internationally, and it is different than what has been done in the past,” Manfred said in an interview with The Athletic.

A surreal collection of talent will be on display at Dodger Stadium when the series begins Friday. Ohtani, of Japan, enraptured at least two countries this season by becoming the first player to reach 50 home runs and steal 50 bases. Judge hit 60 home runs two years ago and he fell just two short of the mark this year. But Los Angeles’ Mookie Betts might be the game’s most complete player not named Ohtani, and the young Yankees slugger Juan Soto could command a $500 million or even $600 million contract as a free agent this winter.

“There’s a lot to capitalize on here,” said Jim Andrews, a sports sponsorship expert and founder of A-Mark Strategies. “It comes down to the very specific execution. How do you literally produce the right content on the right channels? The core fans are probably very excited for a lot of reasons. But how do you use this opportunity to bring in new fans? That, I think, is the key.”

Manfred and baseball’s teams have long been told they fall short in promoting their stars. On Wednesday, he said that some of that criticism has been fair, and some of it hasn’t.

“When you hear something enough, I think it takes a certain level of arrogance to ignore it, and it certainly was something that was being said,” Manfred said. “As a result, I paid attention to it. It’s a question of focus. The clubs locally did a lot of marketing, and we relied on that local marketing. I think what I’m talking about here is an entirely different focus.”

Manfred outlined four main pieces to the league’s plan to wrangle hearts and minds, with some crossover.

The first is leaning into the obvious: the players. One campaign features Judge and Ohtani with the tagline, “Once in a Generation. Twice.” There’s league content designed around them individually — “All Rise” for Judge, “Sho Time” for Ohtani — as well as others, distributed everywhere from social media and TV, to out-of-home billboards and signage.

The second effort isn’t surprising either, an acknowledgment of history.

“Joe DiMaggio and Jackie Robinson played against each other in a Yankee-Dodger World Series. So did Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax,” Manfred said. “This one is a continuation.”

The third goes overseas. The most-watched MLB postseason game in Japan all-time was earlier this posteason, in the Dodgers’ decisive Game 5 win over the San Diego Padres in the National League Division Series. More estimated average viewers watched the game in Japan on TV, 12.9 million, than in the U.S. One of the two starting pitchers from that game, Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Dodgers, is set to pitch Game 2 of the World Series.

“I think our ratings in Japan are going to be awesome,” Manfred said. “That’s an important market where you can make real money.”

Earlier in the postseason, MLB took out 113 billboard ads around Tokyo, a nod to the combined number of home runs and stolen bases Ohtani reached.

And the fourth part of the league’s plan is domestic, built around a hope that the World Series is regarded as more than just a bicoastal, big-city party.

“We’re in a lot of non-LA, non-New York markets promoting. We got a thing going in Las Vegas at the Sphere,” Manfred said. “Why are we doing that? That’s part of, we want the World Series to be an event where people across America, not just in the two cities, are watching.”

A through-line in the effort is an attempt to focus on younger fans via social media and music, to meet fans where they are. MLB worked with El Alfa, a Dominican music artist, to create a song about Soto heading into the playoffs. Andrews said social media is an area where MLB has historically lagged behind the NBA and NFL.

Last year’s World Series, between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers, did not present the same opportunity. But once any match-up is set, there’s a limit to how much MLB can newly devise to power a series, Andrews said. Success is largely a test of plans already in place.

In that vein, Jon Einalhori, vice president of marketing for the player agency Apex, believes the Series can go so far as to revitalize the game.

“No, it’s not hyperbolic, because there really is an opportunity here,” said Einalhori, who represents several of the series’ participants. “You look at all the data on how many fans came through, the TV ratings, the eyeballs, the social-media impressions, there’s trends going upwards. Everything’s been building up for years.”

The league said the median age of ticket purchasers had dropped to from 51 to 46. FOX, which broadcasts the World Series, has seen a 39 percent increase in the 18 to 34 demographic for this postseason compared to last year, their best since 2017.

SponsorUnited, a platform that tracks sponsorships across sports, published a report Thursday that said the number of Japanese brands in MLB stadiums has risen 218 percent in two seasons, a development tied at least in part to Ohtani’s stardom.

The Dodgers and the Yankees combined for an estimated $300 million in sponsorship revenue this year, which makes for a big-money match-up in ways other than payroll. SponsorUnited’s founder, Bob Lynch, described their meeting as the “equivalent of the Dallas Cowboys competing against the Golden State Warriors: two entities that generate more sponsorship revenues combined than any other two that have ever played each other, in the U.S.”

“The way I look at this World Series is that we’ve had two really good years in a row,” Manfred said. “Attendance is up, our ratings are good, our demographics — both ticket purchasing and broadcast audience — are really improving. … And I think that this World Series provides an opportunity to appeal to a national audience because of the matchup and the players involved.”

The start of the 2023 season is a line of demarcation. Manfred bucked traditionalists and introduced a pitch clock, forcing faster game action and making games snappier.

Lynch said too that he’s noticed the league has boosted its own internal business operations, which advise the clubs. MLB teams saw a collective 20 percent increase in sponsorship revenue this season.

“They had an amazingly successful season off the field,” Lynch said. “This is a lucky culmination of a great year in business.”

Not everything will be in MLB’s control for the next eight days, the maximum amount of time the series can run. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Einalhori said he understands MLB is being flooded with requests from celebrities to attend the games.

“You’re going to have hundreds of millions, if not — I kid you not — billions of social-media impressions from outside the baseball sphere,” Einalhori said. “That’s the most immeasurable thing I think as far as capitalizing, but it’s probably going to bring the most value.”

FOX also will have a large say in how the game is received. From the presidential election, college football and NFL and now NBA seasons, it’s a crowded news cycle baseball has to break through, Andrews said.

“Clearly, your broadcast partner needs to be helping you out,” he said.

MLB and FOX did give consideration to one special accommodation that didn’t wind up being necessary.

For the first time this year, the World Series had two possible start dates: Oct. 25, or Oct. 22. The earlier date would have helped avoid a long layoff if both series of the prior round, the National League and American League Championship Series, finished in five games or fewer.

But when both the Dodgers and the Yankees were both entering their fifth game with a chance to close out that round, MLB and FOX considered keeping the World Series on the later schedule anyway, so it could marinate.

“That was really, in large measure, driven by the desire of our broadcast partners to have a little more time to sell,” Manfred said of the discussion.

In the end, because the Dodgers needed six games to advance, the conversation was moot. But an L.A.-New York meeting is a boon for FOX, which is tapping into fan bases from the two most populous cities in the country.

Naturally, some fans in smaller markets will in turn complain that those teams, and their large payrolls, are the last two standing. But Manfred defended the state of competition and parity across the sport.

“Our record on competitive balance is darn good,” Manfred said. “I just don’t think you can scream about the Yankees and the Dodgers given the matchups that we’ve had in recent years.”

In this hallmark World Series, Manfred said “long term efforts are starting to bear a lot of fruit.” Quickly, the question will be how long it can stay ripe. MLB in coming years may try to launch a national streaming package with a major digital company. How much money it can make from those media rights will depend on how well it commands attention across the country.

“The NFL has just done such an amazing job of really creating year-round content and things to talk about, whereas baseball tends to fade away in the depths of winter until spring training starts,” Andrews said. “Lean into your socials and say, we’ve got these stories of, ‘Hey, if you missed it, here’s a reminder of all of the exciting stuff that happened last fall, and make sure you don’t miss out in 2025.’”

(Illustration by Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Heather Barry, Todd Kirkland, Rob Tringali, Kevork Djansezian /Getty Images)