Major League Baseball teamed up with MLB The Show 22 and Canada’s OLG (Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation) to honour an historic Ontario baseball team from 1934 in an in-game initiative called ‘Chatham Plays On’.
To bring to life OLG’s commitment to Ontario communities in an authentic and tangible way, the innovative digital, in-game campaign honoured the ‘Chatham Coloured All-Stars’ – the first all-Black team to win an Ontario Baseball Association Championship in 1934. To keep this historic team’s memory alive and enable Ontario baseball fans to connect with the team in a modern and meaningful way, the original 13-man roster was recreated in baseball’s most popular video game – MLB The Show 22.
The organisations teamed up with Fergie Jenkins Jr, Blake and Pat Harding, Dorothy Wright from the Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society and Dr. Heidi Jacobs from The University of Windsor to help tell the team’s story.
An integrated September campaign promoted the initiative and explained how to build and play as Chatham in MLB The Show 22 simply by downloading the logo and roster from the game’s vaults, select Franchise Mode and create a new custom team and then ‘play ball’.
The campaign, created in harness with Toronto agency The Hive, was spearheaded by a hero ‘Chatham Plays On’ film which dropped on 21 September and was supported by additional social content pieces and PR which sought to drive viewers to find out more at olg.ca/ChathamPlaysOn.
Comment
This admirable and imaginative initiative leverages the new iteration of the game and adds to a growing group of alternative teams and players available to be played in sports gaming franchises: one which ranges from Apple TV+’s fictional Ted Lasso-managed AFC Richmond in EA Sports FIFA 23, Coca-Cola’s fictional player ‘Alex Hunter’ and Burger King’s ‘Stevenage Challenge’ in earlier versions of FIFA.
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