Baseball United Live Virtual Draft
The 6th Annual Awards
- Best New Fan Experience
ABOUT THIS ENTRY
Baseball United is the first-ever professional baseball league focused on the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent, which began play November 2023 in Dubai, UAE. Our mission is to inspire one billion new fans to fall in love with baseball. Prior to our inaugural games this past November, we held a live, virtual draft announcing our first four franchises and their corresponding player rosters via our website and social channels. Each announcement was timed and coordinated, driving thousands of digital conversations and generating awareness for our new league. In total, the virtual draft garnered over 680M social media impressions and drove a 25K+ increase in our combined organic social followings.
How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?
Our Baseball United fanbase is extremely diverse, encompassing more than 150 countries across the globe. For our first-ever player draft and roster reveal, we created a format that allowed all of our fans to participate in a live experience and be a part of this history-making moment. By making our Player Draft fully virtual, driven by coordinated digital and social activations, we allowed for realtime viewership and dynamic digital conversations across our growing, global fanbase.
Objective
Baseball United is the first professional baseball league focused on the Middle East and South Asia. The ownership group includes CEO and award-winning entrepreneur, Kash Shaikh, and more than 15 Major League Baseball (MLB) legends, including Hall of Famers Mariano Rivera, Barry Larkin, and Adrian Beltre. The organization hosted the first-ever professional baseball games in the history of the region in November of 2023, bringing together 50 of the world’s best players to play on a completely custom-built field in Dubai. Leading up to the launch of our league, our objective was to create a live, virtual player draft experience that would allow for global fan engagement as we selected the first-ever round of players for our new league.
Strategy & Execution
Through our flagship digital property, baseballunited.com, we live-streamed a custom-produced player selection video that followed a familiar “on the clock” format. Each franchise announced their picks through custom animations, graphics, and media assets. As player selections were announced via livestream, social posts were shared in realtime to each team’s Instagram and Twitter accounts. IG posts were published as collaborations with players. Select players also submitted BTS videos of their real-time reactions to their draft selections.
Organizations
- Baseball United
- BSB Group International
Links
Credits
Kash Shaikh
Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO
Baseball United
John Miedreich
Co-Founder, Vice Chairman, EVP
Baseball United
Herbie Pallotta
Senior Vice President, Marketing
Baseball United
Joshua Varughese
Senior Director
Baseball United
Celebrate in NYC
Join us for the 6th Annual Hashtag Sports Awards™ on the evening of June 6, 2024 as we celebrate finalists and reveal the winners of this year's awards live during the show.
