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Custom Sports Mascots Case Study: Milwaukee Brewer’s Racing Sausages

To help discuss how an organization can use a mascot successfully, let’s take a look

at how something that started small has grown to represent a company, a

professional baseball team, and a city – the Milwaukee Brewer’s Racing Sausages.


Racing at the Milwaukee Mile (left), Press conference introducing the new Chorizo costume (middle), Warming up for the Chorizo's introductory race

In the early 90’s it all began simply enough as one of many scoreboard races. This

race featured pictures of 3 of the more popular grilled sausages served at Brewers

home games racing one another while “Chariots of Fire” music played in the

background. Klement’s Bratwurst, Polish, and Italian sausages became a staple of

every home game racing after the 6th inning to an enthusiastic crowd.

The scoreboard race became wildly popular and someone had the foresight to

develop character costumes for the racing sausages. The idea was to have the 3

sausages race one another on the field. In 1995 the Bratwurst, Italian and Polish

took the field for the first time---Klement’s and the Brewers have not looked back

since.

At first the race consisted of the three original racing sausages. However, since the

Brewers also serve hot dogs in addition to polish, Italian, and bratwurst, a Hot Dog

Character was added to the line-up. In July of 2006 the Brewers, in an effort to

appeal to the Hispanic community, expanded their mascot family by adding a Chorizo

costume to the race.

The success of the promotion is evident by the demand the costumes generate.

There are countless requests for appearances and the sausages even travel around

in their own fully decorated van. They have made guest appearances around the

country, been featured in 100’s of newspaper articles, starred in an ESPN

commercial, and they even have their own 5K run/walk. When the announcement

was made that the Brewers were adding a Chorizo costume, there were over 100

press releases in papers nationwide, the race was televised and analyzed on ESPN

and Fox Sports and was the topic of conversation on countless national radio

programs.

The characters have become one of the more popular and unique features of games

at Miller Park and the Brewers have capitalized on their success. In the stadium you

can now buy a variety of items featuring the sausages including: key chains t-shirts,

plush toys, bobbleheads, pins, dolls, etc. The Sausages have brought unimaginable

amounts of publicity to the Brewers and Klement’s (the sausage manufacturer). By

coming up with a creative idea and running with it the Brewers and Klement’s have

brought themselves priceless free advertising, publicity, and goodwill.