T-Mobile Leverages Mariners Stadium Sponsorship In MLB ‘Opening Day’ Campaign

The lead Opening Day commercial is something of a love letter to baseball: it shows in minute, caring detail how it takes more than a baseball team to put on a baseball game and celebrates the unsung heroes who make the magic of opening day possible.

While the supporting spot focuses more on customer benefits.

This Opening Day campaign is actually the latest phase of work in a series of high-performing commercials from the telco.

It builds on the brand’s umbrella ‘T-Mobile Has You Covered’ US campaign that launched in September 2018 and which aimed to introduce a new tone for the brand.

The Opening Day creative saw T-Mobile partner with Hollywood producer Andrew Panay, writer Brian Klugman and the creative team at Panay Films – all also all worked on the broader campaign which included 2018 spots such as ‘T-Ball’

‘Dad’,

as well as the International Women’s Day spot ‘Grandma.’

The aim behind the new approach was to help breathe life into T-Mobile’s newfound purpose of bringing every consumer closer together through the power of coverage.

While the latest set brand spots aimed to offer a heart-warming and emotional approach, the brand’s Super Bowl spots showcased texting conversations and were more light hearted and humorous.

But all the new work aims to be relatable and compelling and to showcase that T-Mobile’s network coverage expansion is about something more than dots on a map or bars on a handset, but is really all about real human connections.

It was back on 19 December that it was announced that T-Mobile had become an official partner of the Seattle Mariners in a tie-up spearheaded by the 25-Year, $87.5m ballpark naming rights.

This meant goodbye to Safeco Field and hello to T-Mobile Park.

In terms of timing and length, this deal aligned with the team’s own new 25 year lease of the stadium – with an annual value of $3.5 million.

(The T-Mobile deal compares to the Seattle Seahawks’ $4.5m per year payment from CenturyLink as its naming rights partner on the same stadium when it NFL mode.

When the deal was announced, Seattle Mariners chairman and managing partner said: “T-Mobile has a deep commitment to this community, a passion for customer service and a well-earned reputation as a leader in innovation. These are the qualities that make T-Mobile the right partner to name this iconic ballpark.”

T-Mobile is also an official MLB partner too.

It renewed its league-wide deal before the season started on 19 March with a four-year extension as the official MLB mobile telco (a title is has held until 2013).

As the official MLB wireless sponsor, T-Mobile also continues as title sponsor of the ‘Home Run Derby’ during All-Star Week and also, beginning this season, T-Mobile is now the official wireless sponsor of Little League International.

The deal also sees T-Mobile customers benefit from a free year’s subscription to the League’s live streaming platform, MLB.TV and the MLB At Bat app’s premium features, a $118.99 (€105) value – via T-Mobile Tuesdays.

As well as free MLB.TV, fans also have the chance to win an all-expenses paid trip to the 2019 All-Star Week in Cleveland, VIP access to other select MLB events through the season, plus T-Mobile will launch a national MLB ticketing program featuring special offers to ballparks across the US.

John Legere, chief executive of T-Mobile, said about the extension: “We love baseball, and clearly, so do our customers. They streamed nearly three million hours of baseball with MLB.TV in 2018 – two times more than the year prior.”