Terry Lefton

Startup agency Echelon has been named as the first sponsorship agency for Major League Volleyball, which is experiencing a growth spurt, along with the rest of women’s volleyball.

Longtime Cubs marketer Alex Seyferth, who starts today as chief revenue officer at the Chicago Black Hawks. Seyferth has been with the Cubs for 13 years, most recently as SVP, corporate partnerships. He’s also worked for Marquee 60, the agency owned by the Ricketts family holding company.

Alex Seyferth has left the Cubs to join the Blackhawks as CRO, where is experience with Wrigleyville should help the NHL team with the 1901 Project. Also: Major League Volleyball signs Echelon for sponsorship duties.

Across the sports licensing community, there's a fair amount of America 250 logos in use, but it's really more of a throw-in than a featured item.

MLB’s quest to claim Independence Day as its own holiday and its pursuit of a commercial hook to attract sponsors were the accelerants that put the league into the drive-in movie business this July 4 with the “MLB Summer Drive-In.”

MLB sponsors such as T-Mobile, Ford and Mastercard are preparing their activations and other activity around the MLB All-Star Game.

MLB’s corporate sponsors are finalizing plans for activation around next Tuesday’s All-Star Game in Philadelphia. CMO Uzma Rawn Dowler noted MLB has “lots of buy-in from partners wanting association and support of America 250.”

MLB's Chief Marketing Officer noted the league has “lots of buy-in from partners wanting association and support of America 250.”

Some seven years before this year's All-Star Game in Philadelphia, Major League Baseball announced its location — unusually early.

In his new book “The First All-Star Game," Randall Sullivan maintains that the 1933 Mid-Summer Classic helped save the country.