The Bowie Baysox are becoming the Chesapeake Baysox.

During a Friday presentation in Annapolis and streamed on social media, team officials announced the name change, saying it is meant to take in more of the Chesapeake Bay region than just Bowie, the largest city in Prince George’s County.

In a video that showed images of Annapolis, Baltimore, the Eastern Shore and Bowie, the team said it’s “time for a new chapter in Baysox baseball, for you, for us, and for the entire Chesapeake Bay” area. The Baysox’s new primary logo features “an audacious crab holding a baseball bat and the Maryland flag,” according to a news release.

The Baysox, the Double-A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles, played its first season in 1993 and was purchased in 2022 by Attain Sports.

The Baysox have ranked 10th out of 12 teams in the Eastern League for home attendance in each of the past three years, averaging 2,685 fans per game in 2022, but seeing an increase to 3,500 in 2023 and 3,505 this past season. Last season, fans from 378 Maryland ZIP codes (and 1,733 ZIP codes outside the state) and each of the state’s counties attended games at Prince George’s Stadium, the ballpark near Bowie where the team will continue to play, the release stated.

“We are here for everyone who calls the Chesapeake region home, as well as those who come to experience the beauty and spirit of our area,” Attain Sports founder and CEO Greg Baroni said in a statement.

Del. Adrian Boafo, a Democrat whose district includes Bowie and who formerly served as the city’s vice mayor, criticized the name change. He was invited to Friday’s Baysox announcement and planned to go, but, upon realizing the team would be dropping Bowie from its name, declined to attend.

He called the renaming “disappointing” and said that seeking to attract a wider audience outside of Bowie was “kind of a lame excuse” for the pivot. After he voiced his frustration on social media, several constituents reached out in agreement, he said.

“The reality is that this team is the Bowie Baysox. It’s been known as the Bowie Baysox forever,” Boafo said in an interview.

Pro sports teams are often identified geographically by the city where they play, but some teams — like the NFL’s New England Patriots or the NBA’s Golden State Warriors — changed their names in an effort to align with a larger area. The Orioles’ Single-A affiliate, the Delmarva Shorebirds, is named for a peninsula, rather than the town, Salisbury, in which it plays.

Vassilis Dalakas, a marketing professor at Cal State University San Marcos who has studied sports branding, said that naming a team after a wider area could be beneficial, but it’s difficult to measure.

“Conceptually, most of us would say, yeah, that probably would be a good move in the sense that it will be more appealing, geographically, to a large group of people. Empirically, we don’t have any evidence to actually confirm that is the case,” he said in an interview.

When a team changes geographic names, it is difficult to isolate the variable to understand whether the change has had an impact on attendance, marketing sales, and so on, Dalakas said. Other factors, including accessibility and ticket prices, likely have a larger impact, he said.

The Baysox name change is the second splash that Attain Sports has made in as many months. In October, the group purchased a majority stake in the Orioles’ High-A affiliate, the Aberdeen IronBirds, from hometown hero Cal Ripken Jr. and his brother, Billy (both of whom remain part of the IronBirds ownership group). The Ripkens first bought the minor league team in 2001 and placed it in Aberdeen.

The move expanded Attain Sports’ footprint in Maryland. In addition to the Baysox and IronBirds, Attain Sports owns the Frederick Keys, a collegiate summer league baseball team, and Loudoun United FC, a Virginia-based United Soccer League Championship team. (The ownership group also owns the Spire City Ghost Hounds, an Atlantic League of Professional Baseball team that played its inaugural season in 2023, but has been on hiatus since.)

Ownership and marketing changes to Orioles’ minor league affiliates come amid a state-funded renaissance, of sorts, for ballparks across the state. Roughly $300 million total was set aside to renovate five ballparks, as well as to build a new one in Hagerstown.

The ballpark projects — in Aberdeen, Bowie, Frederick, Salisbury and Waldorf — are at various stages of completion, with the goal being that each one will be upgraded to modern standards set by Major League Baseball in 2021. The City of Frederick said in August that its ballpark, Harry Grove Stadium, would receive $39 million in upgrades. Attain Sports has a lease with the ballpark through 2032.

The state also funded a new ballpark in Hagerstown, which was completed this spring and hosted an Atlantic League team, the Flying Boxcars, this past year.