Minor League Markets: Fans Love Portland
By David Broughton 10.21.2024, Sports Business Journal
The heart is an endearing symbol for Portland, Maine, and one that its newest minor league team has adopted.
In a New England port town known by outsiders for its lighthouses and shipyards, great beer and lobster, flannels and L.L. Bean boots, Portland, Maine, has evolved into a quintessential minor league sports town.
“Dirigo,” the Latin word for “I lead,” has been prominently displayed on the state’s flag since 1909.
Portland can make the same claim, as Sports Business Journal’s 2024 No. 1 minor league sports market.
Ask the area’s team staffs, venue operators, municipal employees and sports business executives in the city and throughout the country to tell a story of Portland sports, and it’s almost as if everyone is reading from the same lineup card. Portland is about a community whose teams — including one that has captured the city’s hearts even though it has yet to play a game — are intricately connected to each other and to their parent clubs barely 100 miles away in Boston, and whose employees are devout New Englanders who respect their roles as caretakers of a community treasure.It’s about heart. Here are their stories.
The “Maine Monster” rose in left field in 2003 when the Sea Dogs became a Red Sox affiliate.Portland Sea Dogs
Sea Dogs
Geoff Iacuessa, a native of Greenfield, Mass., was in his final semester in UMass Amherst’s sports management program when several minor league baseball teams came on campus to interview for interns.
“I interviewed with all of them,” said Iacuessa, now the Portland Sea Dogs president and general manager. “My adviser told me if Portland offered me a spot to take that, as it was a great opportunity. They offered and I accepted.”
He started as an intern in 2001 and said he’s had opportunities to go elsewhere, but never has.
Times are good in the ballpark. He said the club’s overall revenue has hit record levels in each of the past three seasons.
The Class AA club averaged 6,021 fans per game over the past two seasons combined, a 9% increase over the previous decade. That comes despite making the playoffs only once (2022) since 2015, and without any halo effects from the Boston Red Sox, its parent club that has made the playoffs just once in the past six seasons.
Merchandise sales continue to be strong, even though the team has had the same design for a generation.
“We have been ranked in the top 25 every year since 1993, the first year MiLB tracked sales data, dating back to prior to even playing a game,” Iacuessa said. “When we switched from the Marlins to the Red Sox in the fall of 2002, we changed our primary color from Miami teal to Boston red, but otherwise we’ve had the same logo.”
The club sees a surge in merch sales during its occasional alternate jersey nights, which have included transformations into the Maine Lobster Bakes, the Maine Whoopie Pies (honoring the official state treat), the Maine Red Snappers (the state’s iconic red hot dog, not a seafood), the Maine Bean Suppahs and the Maine Clambakes.
Additionally, the club took its food and beverage operations in-house several years ago, which helps its bottom line.
A decade of future revenue was bolstered earlier this month when the club signed its first naming-rights deal that rebranded the ballpark as Delta Dental Park at Hadlock Field. The team was granted rights to market the name as part of its recently signed 15-year lease (with a five-year mutual option).
The Maine legislature this spring approved a $2 million tax break to the team to pay for renovations to the city-owned ballpark. Diamond Baseball Holdings, which bought the team in 2022, is covering the remaining $8 million to $10 million in upgrades that will be ready by Opening Day 2025. The lighthouse that rises from the center field fence when a Sea Dogs player hits a home run and when the home team wins will remain.
Greg Watson, the city’s director of housing and economic development, grew up going to Pawtucket Red Sox games 30 minutes south of his hometown of Norwood, Mass., and during the recent ballpark lease negotiations, he stressed to local officials that Portland did not want to lose the Sox affiliate like its Rhode Island neighbor did. The new lease calls for the city to receive a portion of a ticket surcharge that will be put into a fund earmarked for future stadium upgrades. The city will receive 25 cents per ticket sold in 2025 and 2026, with an escalator that peaks at 50 cents over the course of the lease. The city is projecting up to $150,000 per year from the surcharge.
The team’s connection to the Red Sox is strong. Both teams are sponsored by L.L. Bean (see list, Page 27). The club has played at Fenway Park four times. Those games did not include revenue share, Iacuessa said, “but provided a unique experience for our fans and players, and exposure for minor league baseball in general.”
The Sea Dogs’ “Maine Monster” was built in 2003 when the club became a Red Sox affiliate (and the same year the seats were added atop the Fenway Green Monster).
Additionally, Sea Dogs broadcasters Emma Tiedemann and Rylee Pay, who in 2023 became the second pair of female broadcasters in professional baseball, called three innings of a Red Sox game on NESN in August.
After DBH bought the club, the company retained the front office staff, respecting the decades of stability and community equity the crew had earned.
Attendance at Cross Insurance Arena grew by 16% last season, to an average of 4,377 a game. Connor Blake / Maine Mariners
Mariners
The original Maine Mariners began play in 1977, and the city’s hockey fans supported the team through several affiliation changes and periods of instability. But on May 4, 2016, they were blindsided when the Portland Pirates (a Florida Panthers AHL affiliate) announced they were relocating immediately to Springfield, Mass., after 23 years in Maine, and barely two years after a $34 million arena renovation had been completed. But within weeks, several groups were forming to bring hockey back. At the end of the 2016-17 season, Comcast Spectacor (the owners of the original Mariners in the 1970s) announced that it was bringing hockey back to Portland.
The new era has been a success.
The ECHL club averaged 4,377 fans per game last season, an increase of 16% over the 2022-23 season, and a jolt of 30% over what the Portland Pirates drew in their final season.
Adam Goldberg, Mariners president and governor, said the club last season saw a 28% year-over-year increase in merchandise sales, a 21% increase in season-ticket sales and a 39% increase in group ticket sales, which all led to a franchise record for overall revenue.
Local brewery Lone Pine has sponsored the Mariners’ Zamboni since 2018.Maine Mariners
Similar to the team’s baseball counterparts, a new naming-rights contract will help provide guaranteed revenue. Cross Insurance’s 10-year, $2.724 million naming-rights deal expired this year but was recently renewed for another decade for $2.94 million, according to county documents.
The arena is owned by Cumberland County and operated by Oak View Group.
The front office has several New England natives: Jordan Place (director of partnerships), Ian Nagle (director of finance) and Kathryn Horrigan (director of marketing), who grew up on Boston’s North Shore and worked as a Fenway Park greeter for two seasons.
The club was purchased earlier this month by Dexter Paine, a North Conway, N.H., native who grew up with the famous Bobby Orr poster over his bed and remembers the 90-minute rides back home from the original Portland Mariners games at night, “often in New England weather.”
He earned his economics degree from Williams College in Massachusetts and has spent nearly four decades simultaneously in the private equity world (he is the co-founder and chairman of Paine Schwartz Partners, a private equity firm specializing in sustainable food chain investing) and building an extensive sports résumé. A former ski racer, he has served as a member of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee board of directors since 2021, and is on both the boards of U.S. Biathlon and U.S. Ski and Snowboard. He was also actively involved in Salt Lake City’s successful 2034 Olympic Winter Games bid.
But something was missing.
“My real passion has always been hockey,” he said.
He looked around a little at possible markets and called Todd Halloran, a friend from private equity. Halloran, who bought the Charleston (S.C.) Stingrays in 2018 (the city was SBJ’s No. 1 minor league market in 2022), gave him some simple advice:
“Buy a team you like in a city that you’d want to go to.”
Hello, Portland.
Paine’s mother and two sisters live in the Portland area, so it all made sense.
The entire process took nearly two years, he said, saying Comcast Spectacor was “fantastic to work with.” He paid the $6 million franchise fee, as well as other expenses, and now is excited for the season to start on Friday night.
“The first two weeks of ownership were easy,” he said. “There were no games.”
Maine Celtics
Celtics
The Maine Celtics might be the most over-indexing team in the city.
Playing in one of the G League’s smallest markets, the team previously called the Maine Red Claws was second in the league in per-cap revenue and fourth in merchandise sales.
Last season’s ticket revenue and corporate partner revenue were all franchise records, said team President Dajuan Eubanks, who has lived in Portland since 2005 and been with the team since 2009.
Since 2021, the team has seen significant improvements in all revenue streams, he said. The 2023-24 season saw a 35% increase in season tickets, and they have topped 1,000 full-season tickets for 2024-25, which means that nearly half of the 2,400-seat Portland Exposition Building, also known as The Expo, is filled with long-term fans.
Past No. 1 Minor League Markets
The top minor league market in each of the 10 rankings Sports Business Journal has compiled since 2005.
| Year | Market |
|---|---|
| 2005 | Rochester, N.Y. |
| 2007 | Fort Wayne, Indiana |
| 2009 | Hershey-Harrisburg, Pa. |
| 2011 | Hershey-Harrisburg, Pa. |
| 2013 | Toledo, Ohio |
| 2015 | Quad Cities (Illinois-Iowa) |
| 2017 | Des Moines, Iowa |
| 2019 | Grand Rapids-Comstock Park, Mich. |
| 2022 | Charleston, S.C. |
| 2024 | Portland, Maine |
The city-owned venue is the second-oldest arena in continuous operation in the United States, behind Matthews Arena in Boston.
Additionally, the team saw a 30% increase in group tickets sold and an overall ticket revenue surge of 39.7%, with 15 sellouts. The team’s per-game revenue increased by more than 20%, and was ranked fifth in the league.
Since being purchased by the Boston Celtics in 2019, the affiliate has also seen a dramatic increase in corporate partners, Eubanks said. The former Harlem Globetrotter said that included an 18% increase in associated revenue last season. The club also enjoyed a 40% year-over-year increase in merchandise sales last season, certainly bolstered by the club’s first appearance in the league finals.
Additionally, the team has 120,000 Instagram followers, more than any other account in the Portland market, said Evans Boston, the club’s senior director of public and community relations. The Maine native joined the team in 2014, after covering the Red Claws since their inception as sports anchor and reporter for WGME, Portland’s CBS affiliate.
The Hearts of Pine brand reveal event attracted more than 1,000 in April. Portland Hearts of Pine
Hearts of Pine
When the Hearts of Pine take the field for the first time next spring at the nearly century-old Fitzpatrick Stadium, it will mark the culmination of a seven-year process that started on a chilly, rainy November day in 2017, when executives from the USL toured Portland and decided that the city would make an ideal market for a new franchise.
Sheila Brennan Nee, strategic director of the Maine Sports Commission, spent much of 2018 working her sources and looking for the right person to steer the initiative.
She connected with Gabe Hoffman-Johnson, a two-time All-American and Maine state soccer player of the year at nearby Falmouth High School, former team captain at Dartmouth and former player on the USL Championship Saint Louis FC. Hoffman-Johnson had graduated from high school with Nee’s youngest daughter and had just opened his sports marketing agency in town, and they both shared their dream to launch a pro soccer team.
Hoffman-Johnson’s father was a collegiate soccer coach and athletic director, and his mother is what he calls “an international peace-builder,” characteristics that the son has embraced.
“We began knocking on any doors we could think of, including a conversation with the then-City Manager Jon Jennings [former Boston Celtics coach and co-founder of the then-Maine Red Claws],” Nee said. “He immediately bought in.”
And now, just six months after revealing the team crest, the city has embraced the Hearts.
“We plan to have 4,000-4,500 season-ticket seats for 2025, which would be double the number of the leading League One team last season, and would rank in the top three out of the 24 [higher division] USL Championship teams,” said Kevin Schohl, team president and chief business officer, noting that there is now a wait list for such tickets.
The team is spending nearly $3 million to upgrade the stadium for its games and for public use, and expects the seating capacity to be approximately 5,500.
If anyone doubted Hoffman-Johnson’s goal of fielding one of the most community-focused pro teams in the country, they need to look no further than the team’s shield.
The Dirigo Heart is the club’s unique interpretation of “Dirigo,” replacing the traditional star seen on the state flag with a heart honoring the city’s Valentine’s Day Bandit tradition; the crest features the custom typeface “Pine Bandit,” with Portland arched across the heart shape; waves celebrate Maine’s maritime history; Hearts of Pine is displayed in a scroll, a nod to the state’s literary contributions, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Stephen King; and, of course, the eastern white pine, Maine’s state tree.
The team hosted season-ticket holders and their families at a Heartsapalooza special event in September.Portland Hearts of Pine
“When I saw the Hearts of Pine name and logo, I got chills and I also teared up at their launch events, seeing the community rally behind this team,” said Portland resident Kristen Fulmer, head of sustainability for Oak View Group and director of GOAL (Green Operations and Advanced Leadership). “The organization is so community-first, and their focus on impact is authentic and so specific to what Mainers love about our state.”
Schohl said the club has sold $170,000 in merchandise since the April brand launch (the USL record is $202,000 for any expansion team prior to its first kickoff), and that “we’ll have that record in hand soon, and we are aiming to double it after the Nov. 21 kit reveal.”
Schohl spent most of his life in the Boston area, with a résumé that includes stints at Bain & Co., the Red Sox and DraftKings. He spent four years as director of analytics and strategic initiatives for AMB Sports and Entertainment, launching Atlanta United and the opening of Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Similar to the town’s other clubs, the team’s full-time staff roster is stocked with Mainers, including Brian Wold, vice president of marketing and communications; Hannah Sirois, director of operations; Nick Russo, senior manager of ticket sales and service; Mark Leach, senior manager of ticket operations and CRM; and marketing manager Pat Ouellette.
The teams’ investor group consists of regional executives and philanthropists, including eight-time New England Emmy Award winner NESN reporter Tom Caron, who grew up playing soccer in nearby Lewiston, Maine, was the sports anchor at Portland’s WGME for five years and spent several seasons as radio play-by-play announcer and communications director for the AHL Portland Pirates.
Caron said he met Hoffman-Johnson five years ago at a Boston sports event. “Gabe said, ‘I’m thinking about putting a pro soccer team in Portland.’ It was the shortest and greatest idea I’d ever heard,” Caron said.
The more Caron heard about Hoffman-Johnson’s “civic-first vision,” the more he wanted to be part of it.
“This wasn’t a business decision for Gabe, it was a cultural decision,” he said. “And that’s what Portland is really all about.”
