Anaheim Angels Making Play for Latinos

Seven years after pulling the plug on their Spanish-language radio broadcasts to save money, the Anaheim Angels are once again courting the Latino community.

They have resurrected Spanish broadcasts, hired Spanish-speaking ushers at their newly refurbished stadium, and printed everything from team schedules to beverage cups in both Spanish and English.

The signs of this outreach are everywhere: No fewer than 27 bilingual signs dot the hallways and concessions at the Angels’ new Edison Field--to say nothing of the free bus rides to and from the stadium into predominantly Latino neighborhoods on selected game days.

The move came after an Angels-commissioned poll last year of Spanish-speaking residents in Santa Ana, which has the highest concentration of Spanish speakers in the state. The poll found that the Latino community most favored the Dodgers, then the Florida Marlins, followed by the Texas Rangers--baseball teams that have Latin American-born stars, broadcast their games on the radio in Spanish and have extensive outreach programs in the Latino communities where they play.

The Angels--which could boast of none of those qualities--weren’t anywhere near the top, even though the team plays its home games just a few miles away.

“There was some injury, I think, in the Hispanic community,” Marie Moreno, the Angels’ manager of Latino sales and marketing, said of the team’s past dealings with the community. “I think it really hurt us in the long run.”

It’s a hurt that the Walt Disney Co. has worked--and is working--feverishly to repair since taking over the team two years ago from Gene Autry.

Last season, the organization promoted Moreno--who had been hired under Autry--from manager of community relations to her current post, making the Angels one of just five major league clubs with such a position.

The club tapped Jose Tolentino and Ivan Lara to call their games on XPRS-AM (1090), a 50,000-watt, Baja-based signal that extends the team’s presence to at least three states, as well as parts of northern Mexico.

“It fits in nicely with what we’re doing here,” Moreno said. “It’s reaching the audience we want to reach,” which includes an estimated Latino population of 1 million in Orange County and 2 million more within an hour’s drive of the Angels’ home field.

“We’re really focusing on the Hispanic market, and the broadcasts are like the frosting on the cake,” Moreno said.

The team also is reportedly negotiating with KVEA-TV Channel 52 about Spanish-language TV broadcasts, but a station official said a deal is far from being sealed.

All this is not just about promoting goodwill.

Disney and the team are trying to tap a group of consumers who spend billions a year in the Los Angeles-Orange County area.

The financial fields are particularly ripe in the Latino radio market: Total radio revenues in the Los Angeles-Orange County market for 1997 were $575.5 million--the fifth consecutive year the nation’s largest market has set a record. Of that total, nearly $100 million was generated by Spanish-language stations.

Besides bringing back Spanish-language broadcasts and the other moves, the Angels have recruited a small army of bilingual employees from throughout the Disney empire to accompany its interactive Grand Slam Van on promotional campaigns across Southern California.

Beginning Tuesday, Cinco de Mayo, the team will offer free bus transportation to selected games from sites throughout Orange County. Those who ride the bus may also pay reduced ticket prices.

There is precedent for such bus programs, namely the San Diego Padres’ successful “Domingo Padres” program, in which the team and corporate sponsors have joined to offer fans in northern Mexico bus transportation and discount tickets to Sunday home games. In three years, the Padres have brought more than 225 busloads of fans across the border, helping to set club attendance records in the process.

When John Moores and Larry Lucchino took over the team in 1994, they instituted Spanish-language classes for club employees, opened a store in Tijuana and even talked major league baseball into allowing them to move a regular season series with the Mets to Monterrey, Mexico, two seasons ago.

Those measures, combined with grass-roots efforts in predominantly Latino neighborhoods in San Diego County, have helped boost Latino attendance at Padres games from less than 5% of the audience in 1994 to more than 20% last season, according to Enrique Morones, the club’s director of multicultural marketing.