Boston’s hottest summer accessory? A Fenway Frank fanny pack.

Sport admin July 23, 2026 0 Comments

Boston’s hottest summer accessory? A Fenway Frank fanny pack.

The Red Sox are on a hot streak. So is their merch.

It’s so good, in fact, that people are turning to eBay to get their hands on it.

See: This Red Sox hat embroidered with a Dunkin’ iced coffee reselling for $90. This Fenway Frank fanny pack? Try $130. And the granddaddy of them all: a ballcap speckled with embroidered hot dogs going for $150.

And I got them all, each for the price of a bleacher seat.

The marketing team has been hitting home runs all season with a slew of ticket specials, theme nights, and cultural and identity celebrations, where fans can take home a unique piece of Red Sox merch with the purchase of their ticket.

“We saw these were such a great opportunity to attract new fans … but also sort of attract more of your avid fans that are looking at Fenway Park as more of an experiential outing,” said Travis Pollio, Red Sox senior director of ticket strategy and promotions. (John Henry, principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, is also the publisher and owner of the Boston Globe.)

And that bet is clearly working: The Dunkin’ hat sold nearly 5,000 tickets; the hot dog hat and fanny pack each sold about 8,000, and 12,000 fans bought tickets to the “Heated Rivalry” night slated for August.

Factor in other blockbuster moments like the “Real Housewives of Rhode Island” and “One Piece” nights, and around 200,000 fans are projected to attend the ballpark in the 2026 season just to land a piece of coveted merch. Their long-term goal? Have 250,000 fans attend a home Sox game via these offers.

But perhaps the most interesting nugget of them all: Nearly 40 percent of these buyers haven’t been to Fenway before, according to their data.

These ticket offers are “keeping our ecosystem fresh … and giving us the opportunity to make those individuals Red Sox fans later on,” Pollio said.

Take the recent sale of their “Heated Rivalry” night slated for Aug. 31. Nineteen thousand fans signed up for a pre-sale to get their hands on an “I’m coming to ~~the cottage~~ Fenway” hat (IYKYK), then rolled over to a general public sale à la mega stadium tour. “People were like, that’s crazy for a promotion,” Pollio said. After all, it’s just a hat!

But that hat essentially sold out in a few minutes. About 12,000 fans bought tickets, nearly 50 percent of whom have never been to a home game.

Sometimes, it’s the stuff that has nothing to do with the Red Sox that gets new fans in the door. We’re looking at you, “Fourth Wing” night.

“People can be passionate about multiple things,” Pollio said, “and then we bring those together at Fenway Park.”

And while the smutty hockey hats and weenie bags have been having their rightful moment in the social media sun, it took years of perfecting the special ticket sauce to become an overnight success.

There was “a bow tie giveaway that was pretty bad,” Pollio said. “If someone still has it, I commend them, whoever that is.”

But then, a switch flipped in 2023. Enter: Kenway Park.

“One of our head designers and the creative team thought of this Barbie Night at ‘Kenway’ … Like, Kenway Park,” Pollio said.

It was the perfect cultural storm: Barbie was already a massive box-office hit, the Kens had reached certified meme status, and Fenway squeaked in the rights with Warner Bros. just in the nick of time.

They sold around 3,000 tickets in a few days. The specialty merch? These adorable “Barbie” Red Sox T-shirts (also reselling on eBay, for the more reasonable price of $40).

It was that kind of viral moment that gave the marketing team permission to have more fun and take creative risks. Like last year’s golden child: the elusive hot dog hat, that’s admittedly become one of my prized possessions.

“I remember talking to my boss, saying I had this vision,” Pollio said. “There’s that white hat with little lobsters on it [he’s referring to this bad boy] … And I was like, what if we took that lobster hat and had little hot dogs around it?”

Once Pollio saw the first mock-up from their designer, he thought, “I’m either on to something here, or this is gonna be a total flop.”

It instantly became the hat of the summer. Seriously, a random guy at the ballpark offered me $100 on the spot to give him mine. (Obviously, no.) Unsurprisingly, other teams like the Phillies and Rockies have also hopped on the hot dog hat bandwagon.

It’s these kinds of ticket offers that often have fans buzzing about a game before they even step foot into Fenway. “It’s sort of like, alright, well, I have to go to Fenway, and I have to get this [hot dog] bag, right?” Pollio posed. (Literally me).

Other recent hits this summer include the ‘Tini Hat ticket special where around 5,000 fans took home an exclusive dirty martini or espresso martini hat with a Red Sox twist.

Now on deck: An RMS Mystery Squishy Dumpling ticket offer (parents are already rolling their eyes), where fans can hopefully take home a rare Wally-themed Squishy Dumpling.

“I love when we’re winning,” Pollio said. “But that doesn’t really factor into what we’re doing here.” As he noted, there’s more to coming to Fenway than the wins and losses.

Sometimes, it’s about drinking a beer with your buddies in the bleachers. Other times, it’s about scream-singing “Sweet Caroline.” And now, in some cases, it’s about taking home a baseball hat covered in hot dogs.