The minor league baseball team that beat out 47 others for the opportunity to be renamed by John Oliver‘s Last Week Tonight says they have yet to sign a contract with the HBO series.
As we’ve reported, following a segment earlier this month about Minor League Baseball and the creative ways teams have gone about trying boost attendance at their games, Oliver invited any and all Minor League Baseball teams to apply for the opportunity to hand their brand and marketing efforts over to Last Week Tonight, promising to use the show’s resources to deliver a “personalized” and “bespoke” name, mascot, and theme nights for one lucky team.
The catch: the “winning” team would need to sign a contract agreeing to go along with all of the Last Week Tonight team’s creative choices.
Two weeks later, Oliver announced that the show had received a deluge of interest, with 40% of all Minor League Baseball teams applying for the rebrand, with Pennsylvania’s Erie SeaWolves emerging the winner—pending a signed contract.
As SeaWolves president Greg Coleman told the Erie Times-News yesterday, the team has indeed been in touch with the Last Week Tonight team to discuss the potential collaboration, and while they remain fully open to the idea, the relationship has not been made official.
“We have not seen a contract, name or logo yet,” said Coleman. “Until we do, we have to remain open to all possibilities.”
Coleman says the SeaWolves organization and staffers at Oliver’s show did hold a call recently. At the meeting, the Last Week Tonight team said they’d begin researching a potential new name and logo for the SeaWolves.
Coleman added that the team expects to hear an update from the show by the end of June, noting that the show and Major League Baseball (which is affiliated with the MiLB) “have to hit key deadlines before there can be a firm timeline” for the collaboration.
“We anticipate the new name, logo and uniforms will be used on the field at least once this season,” he told the Times-News. The team is apparently not clear on whether the rebranding will be permanent or just serve as a short-term promotion.
The Erie SeaWolves’ season is scheduled to run through September 14. Last Week Tonight is scheduled to return Sunday night with its first new episode since announcing the SeaWolves’ win on May 18th.
