The Arkansas Travelers and professional baseball with Rusty Meeks

On this week’s episode, Arkansas Travelers’ CEO Rusty Meeks joins Rex to talk professional baseball and the changes in Minor League Baseball in Central Arkansas.  The pair begin their discussion with a recap of the recent sale of the Travelers – a Class AA team that’s been in Little Rock more than 60 years – to Diamond Baseball Holdings, a transaction that took place earlier this Spring. This leads Rusty and Rex into chatting about this year’s team, the Travelers’ affiliation with the Seattle Mariners, and how professional baseball has changed in recent years, particularly since the onset of covid-19 in 2020.  Rusty describes the ways in which professional baseball has become a much larger business lately, pointing to the development of unions and more revenue streams, as well as the evolving relationship between Major League Baseball (MLB) and Minor League Baseball (MiLB).  Rusty and Rex conclude their discussion by focusing on new ways to attract fans to the game and make the minor league experience more enjoyable and family friendly, including new technologies, the Wi-Fi the Travelers have incorporated into Dickey-Stephens Park, and a host of promotional tactics the club is implementing for the second half of the 2024 season.  Follow Rex Nelson's Southern Fried Podcast on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, or visit arkansasonline.com/podcast23 for an exclusive subscription offer available only to podcast listeners.