Whether or not the White Sox make it deep into the playoffs this season, there’s one thing you can never take away from them: They’ll always have “Pope Hat” night.
Two seasons after setting an MLB record for futility with a record 121 losses, the White Sox are in the postseason, the fans are back in the fold and the team is leveraging its success with increased attendance, TV ratings and some very creative promotions.
Throw in some divine intervention with the first Chicago pope confessing his allegiance to the South Siders, and the Cinderella story has captured the nation’s imagination.
“Everyone knows who we are,” said Brooks Boyer, White Sox executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “We’re America’s team right now.”
The Cubs and Sox are both in the playoffs for only the fourth time in history. The North Siders were supposed to be there, but the Sox, after three straight 100-loss seasons, came out of nowhere, exceeding expectations of fans, experts and the team’s own front office.
But Boyer and his staff were nimble and opportunistic enough to engineer a promotion that may prove as historic as the team’s remarkable turnaround, making the Pope Hat giveaway of 40,000 Sox-branded papal mitres in August nearly as memorable as the ill-fated Disco Demolition riot nearly a half-century earlier.
“People are still talking about it,” Chicago-based sports business consultant Marc Ganis said of the Pope Hat giveaway. “When was the last time anyone talked about a Sox promotion? Disco Demolition.”
The Sox, who were at the top of their division for most of the summer and earned a wild-card berth, were in Houston this week trying to keep a magical season going into the postseason.
The on-field success has already translated into a huge increase in attendance, drawing close to 2 million fans to Rate Field, up 500,000 or 40% over last season. Ratings on the Chicago Sports Network, the team’s pay-TV home, more than doubled this season to an average of 60,400 viewers per game, according to Nielsen.
Ganis said that none of those gains happen without a better product to sell — namely a winning baseball team.
“Winning games and being in a pennant race is the single most important thing after three 100-plus-loss seasons,” Ganis said.
At the same time, capitalizing on that momentum with promotions can be the icing on the cake, and sometimes, achieve mythical status in the process, Ganis said.
Going into the season, the White Sox had a long list of traditional giveaways lined up, including bobbleheads, T-shirts and more.
But the promotion to honor Pope Leo XIV, a south suburban Dolton native and the first-ever American pope, who grew up a diehard Sox fan and continues to root for his childhood team, was executed and ramped up on the fly, Boyer said.
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Initially, the Sox planned to give away 1,500 Pope Hats for the Aug. 11 night game against the Cincinnati Reds, Boyer said. But when the promotion went live in April, it became apparent that demand for the towering headgear was through the roof, with ticket sales upward of 400 per hour.
The Sox quickly upped the giveaway to 3,000 hats.
Within a few hours, Mike Downey, who heads promotions for the White Sox, told Boyer they needed to go all Oprah on this one and give everyone in attendance a Pope Hat. The next morning, the team called back the vendor and increased the order to 40,000 Pope Hats.
“We were taking a little bit of a risk,” Boyer said.
The outlay for the $5 hats ran $200,000, making it the most expensive promotional gamble of the season, Boyer said. But it paid off big for the team.
And on a Tuesday night in August against the Cincinnati Reds in Rate Field, the White Sox sold out, giving away nearly 40,000 Pope Hats. It was a promotional miracle and nondenominational success, Boyer said.
“It was really a unifying night,” Boyer said. “Unfortunately, the White Sox got off to a quick lead and ended up losing that game. But ironically, people left the game pretty happy because they felt like they experienced something pretty unique.”
The Pope Hat giveaway captured the zeitgeist of the moment in a way the Sox and the city haven’t seen since 1979’s Disco Demolition at Comiskey Park, when then-WLUP-FM morning man Steve Dahl incited a riot during a doubleheader as thousands of fans stormed the field.
In fact, the peaceful papal promotion may have finally exorcized the demons of Disco Demolition, generating positive worldwide buzz on legacy and social media, so-called earned media.
Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, called Pope Hat night a promotional “home run” for the White Sox.
“Agility is so important in marketing these days because it’s hard to figure out exactly what’s going to connect with people,” Calkins said. “But when you see something that can connect, you really want to take advantage of it, and I think you have to give the Sox credit for seeing that opportunity and making the most of it.”
Meanwhile, the pope continues to bestow his blessings on the team, sending a letter of support before the Sox beat the Astros in the first wild-card game Tuesday. The Sox completed a two-game sweep Wednesday in Houston and head to Cleveland this weekend to begin the American League Division Series against the Guardians.
As the Sox advance in the playoffs, the team is planning to promote a home fan apparel “blackout” — with everybody showing their colors to make Rate Field an “intimidating place” for the visiting team, Boyer said.
But don’t be surprised if a few Pope Hats pop up as well, which may have an even bigger impact.
Ganis said a long playoff run by the Sox, and a marketing campaign that builds on this season’s momentum, would likely mean increased ticket sales and higher TV ratings next year for a team on the rise. But the by-the-numbers sports industry analyst doesn’t discount what having your No. 1 fan living in the Vatican means to the Sox fortunes as well.
“If anybody wants to talk about stars aligning and the White Sox making the playoffs and turning around three 100-loss seasons the same year as this pope was elected, you can’t make that stuff up,” Ganis said.
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