Mets Radio Team Builds Creative Sponsorships Into Broadcastt

It’s been a rough season for the New York Mets, who went into the 2026 campaign with high expectations but are currently mired in last place in the NL East. The business of baseball is a little tougher when the team isn’t winning, but there’s at least one aspect of the business that has continued to hit home run after home run despite the outcomes on the field.

See what we did there, using baseball terminology to get our point across? That’s the successful strategy used by Audacy, the Mets’ radio partner, to sell sponsorships.

It’s not a stretch to get an injury law firm to sponsor the in-game injury report, or an accounting firm to attach its name to the pregame “crunching the numbers” segment. The Audacy team takes that approach as far as it can.

“I think it's pretty straightforward at the end of the day,” said Brandon Renick, Audacy’s director of sports sponsorships. “I think it's rooted in the fact that we have salespeople who really understand and care about the broadcast, who listen to the broadcast, who understand the sport, and they're going out the door and presenting these ideas kind of as custom ideas before we even have a lot of conversations. Oftentimes we're leading with these ideas as a way of starting sponsorship conversations and getting people excited about what it would sound like to actually be integrated into the broadcast.”

Like getting a decking company to sponsor the on-deck batter. Or giving an insurance company a read when the Mets score a late-game insurance run. Or mentioning a local hotel casino when talking about a winning streak.

My favorite: When a relief pitcher is brought in to put out a fire, that’s a hot spot that calls for good central air conditioning.

“Any part of the game that you're thinking of is something that we have probably considered trying to find a clever way to tie a sponsor to,” Renick said. “There's no shortage of clever little wordplay things that we've got built in throughout.”

Renick is quick to credit the broadcast booth for making it all work. Longtime Mets radio producer Chris Majkowski is quick to recognize situations that call for a sponsor read and hand the card to one of the broadcasters, including Howie Rose, who is in his 31st and final season doing play-by-play for the Mets.

“I think probably what sets this Mets broadcast apart is how nimble and excited our broadcast booth is, Howie in particular, to integrate these sponsors and actually make it sound good,” said Renick. “I think he takes pride in making these sponsorships sound like a part of the broadcast as opposed to just another box he needs to check.

“I can come up with an idea and within a day or two, they're executing it like flawlessly in the broadcast. So they're really the secret weapon to the whole thing, in my opinion.”