SALT LAKE CITY — Utah baseball fans have cheered on many different home teams during the game’s long history in the state.
Just this year the Salt Lake Bees have played as the Buzz, Gulls, Occidentals, Trappers and Stingers to name a few. Even the Bees moniker has come and gone multiple times in history.
However, fans likely haven’t seen anything like they will when the team takes the field Tuesday evening.
The Bees won’t play as any other alternate identity from city history or even anything that has to do with Utah whatsoever; rather, they will transform into the Malmö Oat Milkers when Salt Lake plays host to the Sacramento River Cats.
That’s right, the Malmö Oat Milkers.
It’s all in reference to Oatly, an oat milk company based in Malmö, Sweden. The Swedish company struck a multiyear sponsorship deal with Minor League Baseball last year and then expanded that partnership well beyond the jersey patches top sports leagues, including Major League Baseball, have adopted.
Every minor league baseball team has played as or will play as the Oat Mikers this year. Oatly has touted the Oat Milkers as the “121st team” because of this riveting deal. Armando Turco, the company’s senior vice president of brand and creative said it would be “the only sports team of its kind (that we know of at least)” after the announcement was made in March.
“We couldn’t say no to their Swedish charm and the convincing arguments they made for head-scratching antics and out-of-the-carton ideas,” added Uzma Rawn, Major League Baseball’s senior vice president of global corporate partnerships, in a statement.
A photo of the Malmö Oat Milkers uniform every minor league team will have worn once this season. The Salt Lake Bees will play as the Oat Milkers on Tuesday. (Photo: Oatly)
It isn’t immediately clear if this is a one-year thing or a tradition moving forward. Turco said back in March that he knows some fans will “want us to walk away,” but the idea behind the team was to go beyond the standard jersey patch sponsor.
“Our goal was to do our small part to add something to the fan experience, and to rethink the very notion of ‘sponsorship’ by creating something entirely new and characteristically irreverent,” he said. “We’re hopeful that (minor league) fans will reward us by opening their hearts, minds and fandom to the Oat Milkers, and cheer us on as we take to fields all across the USA.”
The Oat Milkers are 61-54 heading into this week, when counting up every team that has worn the “non-generic, but also non-outlandish pink accented jerseys” this season. As the company puts it: “It might be the most important (game) of the season or the least, but either way it will probably be the most unforgettable.”
Only time will tell if it ushers in a new era in sports sponsorship deals.
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Publish date : 2024-09-02 11:09:00
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