Buckle up, baseball and oat milk fans alike, because Oatly is taking over the dugout in what must be the most unexpected crossover event of the season. Oatly, the charming oat milk company from Malmö, Sweden, is stepping up to the plate in Minor League Baseball (MiLB) with its newly minted team, The Malmö Oat Milkers, the league’s 121st team.
Oatly
This isn’t your average marketing stunt; it’s a full-blown, pink-jersey-wearing, oat-milk-chugging declaration of Oatly’s love for both vegan milk and America’s favorite pastime.
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Blending oat milk and baseball
Rather than being a single team located in a specific city, the concept of the Oat Milkers is brought to life as each of the existing 120 MiLB teams will, at some point in the season, adopt the Oat Milkers identity for a game. This includes wearing special pink-accented jerseys that distinguish them from their regular team branding.
Oatly
Oatly first began working with the MiLB last summer when it brought its vegan ice cream novelties to stadiums nationwide. In addition to doing “Oatfield” activations, it also described itself as “The Official Oatmilk from Sweden That Started Like 35 Years Ago But Is Now All Over America Where It’s Promoting Various Kinds of Frozen Dessert Products In One of Those First-Ever Plant-Based Sponsor Deals You Know The Kind We’re Talking About of Minor League Baseball.”
“When Oatly asked us if they could create a new team, we initially just laughed and hoped they would give up on it,” Uzma Rawn, Major League Baseball’s Senior Vice President, Global Corporate Partnerships, said in a statement.
“Ultimately, we couldn’t say no to their Swedish charm and the convincing arguments they made for head-scratching antics and out-of-the-carton ideas—and the chance to introduce umlauts to baseball fans across the country,” Rawn said.
This is how The Malmö Oat Milkers were born.
“After such a successful partnership with Minor League Baseball last year, we wanted to think of something even more creative to elevate the fan experience this year by going beyond just being a ‘sponsor,’” an Oatly spokesperson tells VegNews.
Oatly’s plunge into MiLB wasn’t just a wild pitch. It was a calculated effort to blend the brand with the fabric of American culture in a space where community, entertainment, and sportsmanship reign supreme. “We don’t know a whole lot about baseball, but we do know the fans love entertainment,” the spokesperson says.
Oatly
The underlying message? Both MiLB and Oatly cherish the joy of bringing people together, albeit usually in very different arenas.
Batter up: Oatly takes the field
The antics of The Malmö Oat Milkers promise a season filled with unforgettable moments. Imagine the traditional first pitch replaced with an oat milk carton toss, and opportunities abound for fans to “sign a contract to be an Oat Milker for a day.”
“We have an incredibly talented creative team at Oatly that is skilled at coming up with truly wild ideas,” the spokesperson says. “MiLB has been a great partner to really let us introduce some unexpected touchpoints that we think—or hope—fans will really get a kick out of.”
In addition to fun activations on the field, Oatly will be bringing its products, including vegan ice creams, to fans at concession stands to give them a taste of what all the hype is about. Ultimately, the company hopes to inspire baseball-loving Americans to embrace its vegan milk as a home run for sustainability.
“It has always been our goal to make plant-based eating delicious, fun, and accessible to consumers, and we’re looking forward to continuing this commitment with our Oat Milkers team at the helm,” the spokesperson says.
Every MiLB game is a home game
With every team in MiLB taking a turn as the Oat Milkers, Oatly ensures that its message of sustainability and innovation reaches as wide an audience as possible. This creative tactic means fans from coast to coast will get a taste of what it means to root for the Oat Milkers, complete with non-generic, but not too outlandish, pink-accented jerseys.
It’s a reminder of Oatly’s commitment to adding a dash of fun to the fan experience, all while pushing the envelope on what corporate sponsorship can entail.
Oatly
“We’re very excited to continue on this path with the launch of The Malmö Oat Milkers, the only sports team of its kind (that we know of at least),” Armando Turco, SVP Global Brand & Creative at Oatly, said in a statement.
“We’re not the type of brand to slap our logo on a jersey and walk away (cue the small minority of fans that will in fact want us to walk away),” Turco said. “Instead, our goal was to do our small part to add something to the fan experience, and to rethink the very notion of ‘sponsorship’ by creating something entirely new and characteristically irreverent.”
“We’re hopeful that MiLB fans will reward us by opening their hearts, minds, and fandom to the Oat Milkers, and cheer us on as we take to fields all across the USA,” Turco said.
And if you want to be the number one fan of The Malmö Oat Milkers, you can enter their sweepstakes for free season tickets.
The Malmö Oat Milkers are Oatly’s latest creative campaign focused on Americana which has previously included a diner takeover in America’s dairyland; the “Update Milk” campaign where Oatly replaced milk’s on-screen presence in vintage broadcasts; and a hotline that helped vegans cope with Thanksgiving shenanigans.
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Anna Starostinetskaya is the Senior News Editor at VegNews and is always keeping an eye on all things vegan in her home city of San Francisco, CA and everywhere else.
