Oatly's Malmö Oat Milkers Hit the Baseball Diamond

Baseball, apple pie and Oatly. It’s what American summers are made of these days.

For 2024, the oat milk brand expands its partnership with the U.S. minor leagues by launching a team … sort of.

Each of MiLB’s 120 squads will play one game this season dressed as the Malmö Oat Milkers, paying homage to Oatly’s hometown in Sweden.

The stunt represents an effort by Oatly to further ingrain itself in the nation’s consciousness at a time when category sales have, well, soured. MiLB attendance is up, so milking minor league games, where it already has a presence, probably makes sense for the brand.

“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,” says Armando Turco, Oatly’s creative SVP.

“When Oatly asked us if they could create a new team, we initially just laughed and hoped they would give up on it,” says MiLB senior vice president of global partnerships Uzma Rawn. “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.”