Covering All The Bases

For baseball players in the minor leagues, the season goes from April to early September. Not so for those in the front office. Lancaster JetHawks General Manager Brad Seymour and his staff are a year-round sales business during the off-season plugging ticket packages and getting businesses as sponsors of the 6,800-capacity Clear Channel Stadium; group sales take priority during the months the team plays. For five years now, Seymour has headed up the business operations of the Class A California League team based in the Antelope Valley. The JetHawks had been affiliated with the Arizona Diamondbacks until last year when the team became part of the farm system for the World Champion Boston Red Sox. The team is owned by Cleveland attorney Peter Carfagna. While having a winning team on the field is nice, Class A ball places an emphasis on developing the players and preparing them for the parent club. Seymour’s role is creating an environment where the players can focus on their careers. Some 70 JetHawks have made it to the major leagues. “It is fun to see the guys that come in unheralded make their name here and then be able to accelerate themselves to the big-league level,” Seymour said. “It seems that every year we have one or two of those guys.” Q: What are the duties of the general manager? A: The primary duties for me are the business side. What I tell people is I take care of everything in foul territory. It’s handling parking and personnel to the sales and marketing of the club. I am the main liaison between the JetHawks and Boston, and in that I make sure we are providing an environment that is comfortable and meets their expectations so they can develop players and move them on and eventually get them to Fenway Park. Q: How long have the JetHawks been playing and what is your background? A: We are going into our 13th season and this is my fifth season in Lancaster. Prior to here, I spent nine seasons in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I began my career in San Jose with the San Jose Giants. I got into this when I realized I wasn’t any good at playing baseball and wanted to figure a way to stay involved. I’ve really turned this franchise around into a profitable business and into a business respected within the community, not that we always haven’t been. The team started out gangbusters, kind of dipped down a bit and now we are on our way back up. Q: What’s your role been in that turnaround? A: Each year I set a challenge or a goal for a major project; something that keeps me challenged but keeps the organization challenged. My first couple of years we were able to sell naming rights to the facility here. The affiliation change was a challenge last year. We are going through an entire team identity process this year where we are changing the logo, changing the uniforms; that’s been a fun project to work through. A couple years ago we added the first capital improvement to the facility, which was our video board. That’s also through a partnership with Clear Channel Radio. We measure our success by attendance and by revenues and those have continued to increase each of the last five years. Last year we had a big jump in attendance; a big jump in overall revenues. That is how I am judged and that is how the front office is judged. Q: When did Clear Channel buy the naming rights for the stadium? A: That was before the 2005 season when we sold the naming rights. It’s a 10-year agreement with Clear Channel in which we and the city of Lancaster split the revenues for it. It is a true partnership. Clear Channel is involved here at the facility in different events and obviously they get the brand recognition from having their name on the ballpark. Q: What was that process like? A: When I came in 2004 my primary goal was to get a naming-rights agreement. It is something you are seeing industry-wide. I felt if I could get that it would set the organization on the right track and give us the recognition that we need and get us a great partnership. We put the word out and started to meet with some folks. Clear Channel expressed immediate interest. The process moved fairly quickly. Q: The Antelope Valley is 60 miles from Los Angeles and on the edge of the desert; would you consider this to be a sports-starved area? A: The area is not driven toward sports entertainment or anything of that nature. I think it’s driven toward quality-of-life entertainment; things to do on the weekend, things to do after work. We play a major part of that. Between us, Lancaster Performing Arts Center, there is a fairly new amphitheatre in Palmdale; I think all of these things is what the community wants and needs. As this area continues to grow at a record pace those are the natural things that go along with it. Q: Is it a situation where because there are so many people moving up there that they become the new fans rather than going out and attracting people to come to the park? A: I think it is a combination. Certainly a big part of our job is marketing and educating the new folks who have moved up here. A lot of folks moving from the Los Angeles basin don’t know what minor league baseball is. A lot of what we do is education we are professional baseball, we are an affiliate of the Red Sox and before that an affiliate of the Diamondbacks, and talking of the quality of play and quality of entertainment. Q: It’s interesting that after the 1994 strike major league teams began using the same promotions and between-innings entertainment used by the minor leagues for years. A: Those are the things we need to do survive. We don’t have the big name player coming through that the fans will want to see or buy a ticket for. Certainly in the last year we have attracted a new demographic/fan base with the Boston connection and we are getting a lot of Boston fans here that are very baseball knowledgeable. By and large in our research we have figured that over 80 percent of our fans are here for reasons other than baseball. They may be here for watching their granddaughter or son perform in their band pre-game, or they are here for a bobblehead give away or t-shirt giveaway or a social event. That’s our bread and butter. That’s why we do all the different promotions because it’s attracting the whole fan base. We can’t just focus on the baseball fan so to speak. At the major league over the last decade, decade-and-a-half you see them trending more toward the promotions, more toward the different entertainment aspects. Q: Can you talk how you go about marketing and getting sponsors? A: It’s a lot of cold calling; it’s building relationships. We have been very fortunate to have a good group of core sponsors that have been with us for many years. Naturally you have turnover and you have to go out and solicit new businesses to promote their product out here. We are different from a radio station, or a newspaper company or a billboard company. We can offer so much. If your focus is on print we have scoreboards, we have pocket schedules, and we have branding on the outfield signs. Another popular thing that we can do to make business stand out is the promotions. The giveaway items go so far in branding your product but it also gives the ability to be part of the community. It’s putting your product in a positive light. SNAPSHOT: Brad Seymour Title: General Manager, Lancaster JetHawks Professional Baseball Club Age: 32 Education: B.S. Business Management, Colorado Technical University Career Turning Point: Being given the opportunity at a young age to take on tremendous responsibilities and learn things about operating a business earlier than most people have the chance to do so, thus accelerating my career quickly and providing a solid foundation for my current role. Most Admired Persons: My parents, for setting the example of what it takes to be successful and for encouraging me to pursue my career in baseball and successfully attain many of the goals I set for myself when I began this journey. Personal: Wife: Michelle; Children: Brandon, 7 and Ashley, 4