Best Team Operations
Which team is doing the best job in their game operations and game presentation. We level the playing field by considering budget constraints to minor league teams. Consider creativity, value to fans, overcoming sport and budget limitations, quality of presentation, and attention to detail.

You can submit nominations for Best Team Operations here (in the comments)or via email.

Last year’s winners included the New Orleans Hornets, Fresno Grizzlies and Phoenix Suns.  2006 winners included the Miami Heat, Hagerstown Suns, and San Jose Sharks.

Nominations this year already include the Lowell Spinners and Minnesota Twins.

Nominations are open.

-Cudo

Us and our rival hockey team are preparing for a home and home mascot boxing intermission where their mascot wins in their building and ours wins in our building etc… Anyway, I am looking to purchase inflatable boxing gloves. Do you sell or can you point me in the right direction?

Barry R.

Thanks for your question Barry.

We are proud to offer over 100 items in our store, many related to promotions, contests and mascots.  In cases, like this one, where we do not offer a product to fit your needs we are always happy to try to locate a product or service for you.

Contact us anytime from our site and we will do what we can to help.

The best way to reach us is the Contact Us link at the top our home page.
And in case you have the same plans as Barry…here is one option for you:

Inflatable Boxing Gloves on Amazon.com

–Cudo

The Cleveland Indians put the rally in rally caps this weekend with a giveaway of Rally Caps to all fans in attendance for the Sept 20th game against the Detroit Tigers.  And the best news:  They seemed to have worked.

The Indians rallied in the bottom of the first to pull from a one run hole, to tie the game….and they never trailed again.  Talk about successful promotions, this was it.

Actually a great twist on an old tradition.

It did leave me to wonder, when you really need the rally cap do you turn this inside out and then have a normal cap that would clearly hurt any rally?  I think I just crossed over the “overthink a promotion” line.

–cudo

With the year coming to a close, we are ramping up for our annual Best of Gameops.com Awards.  Our annual review of all things operations and entertainment was done by polling a dozen of our most trusted non-biased industry pros.  We made a slight adjustment last year to our categories, and now have seven categories:

• Best Mascot
• Best Act
• Best On-Field Promotion/Contest
• Best Game Promotion
• Best Team Operations
• Best Entertainment Team, and
• Best Introductions

This is the eighth year of our awards and the second year that winners receive the highly-prestigious Golden Steagle Bobblehead award for excellence.

Over the next several weeks, much of the blog will be focused on the awards, both highlighing the categories, linking to past winners and accepting new nomination.  When we rebuild the web site this year there are parts that are still being reformatted, including the Best of Awards.  So each week we will add another year of awards so you can see past winners and we will feature a new award topic.

We accept nominations from anyone.  Nominate your favorite team, something you saw or read about, nominate yourself, or nominate someone in your league you admire….in the end nominations help us compile a more complete list to consider.  You can nominate by commenting on a blog, faxing to our office, or emailing us (info @ Gameops.com).

We have reformatted the Best of 2007 and it is now live.  Read about last year’s winners, including Parker, Benny the Bull, Red Panda, the President’s Race, Bob L. Head, the Hornets, Grizzlies and Suns.  The new updates will all have some YouTube video to further highlight the winners.

It’s not only a great spot to see the best of the best, but to find ways to improve your own promotions.

–Cudo

Benjamin Hill of MILB.com fame has his year’s round-up of the best in minor league baseball promotions on MiLB.com.  it’s a great list with a summary of the Top 10 promotions and your chance to cast your vote for the best of the best.

You can read the story and vote here.

As I told Ben, if we could just get Parker and the Phanatic to grow mustaches and have a pillow fight while Dave Rozema carved a spam in the shape of Spyder Webb’s car while getting a tattoo during an inning break we would really be on to something.

If that last paragraph made no sense to you, you need to check out the list and vote.

Have a great weekend.

-Cudo

We are trying something again.  Something I have tried a few times, each time with some glitch or another.

Over the course of working with teams, developing new ideas, and testing products we end up occasionally with tested products, used products, or products we decided not to run with.  In summary:  We have some One-of-a-Kind products for sale.

• Mini-Tramp
• Huge T-Shirt Cannon

In the past we have tried a Classified Ads Board (3 times), each time coming up short with the technology.  This time we decided to give it a try on our new on-line store.  We have added a couple products in the store, and will add a couple more in the coming days.

In these cases we are offering one-of-a-kind products, usually at deep discounts.  Its the products that we can’t sell, no longer need, but they have too much value to just pass on to the Salvation Army (and they don’t accept mini-tramps or shirt cannons).

I will try to post a note on the home page or the blog when I add a new round of products, but in the short term check out the new section and see if there is a deal for you.

–Cudo