All professional sports teams give things away as part of a promotion, including the St. Louis Blues. It is the quality that can sometimes be lacking, but that is changing.
Like all sports franchises, the St. Louis Blues have had various promotional giveaways and theme nights, often designed to attract the casual fan or a collector. The quality of these items has not always been something that was really of any value, however.
Initially, it sounded great to get a Blues jersey or St. Louis Cardinals jersey for free with the price of your ticket. Often, sadly, one trip through the washing machine would wipe out half the printing or make a white shirt some mixture of whatever other cheap dyes were used.
That has been changing in recent years, across the board. The Blues have been offering items that are still relatively inexpensive for them to produce, but will last a little longer.
From personal experience, the long sleeve performance shirt and medical night t-shirt have lasted very well from 2017-18 and 2018-19. The quality of these items have gone up, as have some of the other items.
Star Wars Night t-shirts do not disintegrate, per orders from Lord Vader himself. Bobbleheads don’t sleep with the fishes after one twist of the neck.
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Teams are putting more heart into their giveaways as well. The St. Louis Cardinals replica championship rings have become a very popular item and, so far as I know, they don’t turn your skin green either. Maybe one day we will get a St. Louis Blues championship ring replica, but since the players do not even have their real ones, 2019-20 might be too early for fans to get one too.
If there is a drawback to higher quality free items from teams, it is the fact of fewer items available. These franchises, including the Blues, are not throwing money away for the sake of it, so if they are going to pay more per item, they will have fewer items they want to pay for.
In recent memory, the Blues would have nearly half their home games with a giveaway of some sort. In 2019-20, they currently have nine promotional nights.
Thus it is a double-edged sword. You’re getting better quality, but fewer chances to obtain them.
On top of things, with fans still suffering from Stanley Cup fever, the placement of promotional nights is a bit odd. It used to be a team would use a promotional night to get more fans in the seats against an opponent that did not draw well or simply on a week night.
The very first two giveaways are the very first two home games. The first one, the team calendar, is on opening night. “Cheap seats” are already over $200 on StubHub for this game because the Blues will raise the championship banner.
The next giveaway is a replica banner against the Dallas Stars. This is a Saturday game against a division rival, so it would have been sold out anyway. The tickets will go even faster with that kind of giveaway.
You’ve got your fallback items, such as a magnet schedule, team poster and yearbook too. The interesting one might be January 15.
Blues fans will receive an NHL All-Star Game tumbler. There is no picture available, so who knows what that will be or what size or what design they will use. Slap Winter Classic, All-Star Game or Stanley Cup on anything and it will get people in there.
The Blues will also give away a replica Stanley Cup in December, which might be worth it since those things can cost more than they are worth buying it for. Just don’t leave it laying anywhere, because the vultures that scour the aisles for scraps after games will snatch it up.
The item that may have cost the team the most will be given away February 20. The Blues will be giving 12,000 fans a fleece vest.
There are different quality fleeces, some that fall apart and some that are soft as velvet. Regardless, fleece anything can cost you north of $40 in a retail store, so this is kind of a big one. It would be nice if it had the Stanley Cup Champions logo on it, but beggars can’t be choosers.
Of course, you will have your theme nights along the way. The issue there is you have to buy a special ticket to obtain that night’s item. So, season ticket holders are out of luck, unless they want to pay an extra fee, because your game ticket is not enough.
That is the world of marketing though. We are all consumers and the market is there or else these teams would not do it.
All in all, who can complain? You’re essentially getting something for free one way or the other. You can view it as getting an item for free while paying for a hockey game or vice versa.
The quality has gone up, but the amount of nights, overall, has gone down. Such is life.