Kansas City Royals: Marketing vs. Product Quality

For years the Kansas City Royals have seriously struggled marketing their product. This has been evident in their very poor attendance.
But, this has not been for lack of effort. The Royals have had ads running consistently on local television. They have capitalized on the local celebrity of past players, such as George Brett. They have advertised using pride in the city of Kansas City. They have special promotions such as the “fun run” (allowing fans to run the bases), “kids eat for free,” “autograph afternoon,” “the blue crew,” food coupon giveaways with team wins, and firework nights. The Royals have also been able to use “buck night” (peanuts, coke, and hotdogs for one dollar) to great success. They also have many attendance give-aways for items such as schedule magnets, wristbands, baseball cards, T-shirts, jerseys, bobble head dolls, baseball bats, bags, hats, pennants, and other items. Additionally the Royals have tried to have a strong presence in the community through many charities, their mascot Sluggerr, George Brett’s youth program and Frank White’s Classic. The Royals have also had many special prices on their tickets.
The Royals not only have many marketing schemes but are also very good at focusing on their key marketing demographic. The Royals have focused on marketing towards families, as seen with “kids eat for free” and the “fun run,” and have done a good job in doing it.
There are countless things that the Royals do to market themselves, and they are focused in on one specific market. In my opinion the Royals have done a good job marketing their product.
But, if this is true, if the Royals do such a good job marketing, then why are their sales so low? It is the age-old marketing debate, do sales occur due to marketing or due to product quality.
Unfortunately for the Royals, the product seems more important than marketing. The Royals baseball team has been consistently one of the worst teams in Major League Baseball. Over the last 14 seasons, since 1994, the Royals have only had one winning season. Over the past four years they have lost over 100 games three times. During the past season they almost broke the all time loss record and were considered one of the worst teams baseball had ever seen. The only thing the Royals are good at is being consistently bad.
The Kansas City Royal’s have had terrific marketing efforts that have been in vain due to a terrible product.