Last June, during a weekend series against the Phillies, a secret shopper from MLB came to Oriole Park at Camden Yards to rank the stadium.

As it often is when popular teams such as Philadelphia and New York are in town, the stadium was overrun by fans of the opponent. The secret shopper noted the atmosphere, and that, along with the in-game entertainment that didn’t engage the crowd and the poor sound system that made it impossible for those who wanted to follow along to do so, went into the ranking.

The result? A failing grade.

Of all 30 teams, the Orioles were ranked in the bottom five for in-game entertainment, a source with direct knowledge told The Baltimore Banner. Players have noted this for some time, pitcher Dean Kremer said. Playing at Camden Yards hasn’t always given the Orioles the advantage that it should.

“When we go to other places, we feel like the away team,” Kremer said. “Sometimes at this ballpark we don’t necessarily feel like the home team.”

The Orioles are trying to change that. Mark Fine, hired in January as chief marketing officer, has taken on that project as one of his first acts, bringing in Cuento, a San Diego-based marketing agency, to spearhead it. Cuento previously worked with the Detroit Tigers, who Kremer noted had a better game-day atmosphere when they visited in April compared to previous years.

Fine met with Kremer and other members of the team this season and asked what entertainment factors they’d like to see added during the game. They told him that they really like the “woo woo” noise the Red Sox play, so the Orioles added a sound effect of their own after strikeouts.

The players also noted that sometimes the crowd loses its momentum during a pitching change or break in the action, so they now have prompts such as “make some noise” or put a noise meter on the scoreboard during these times. Although they’ve had these in the past, the timing is being carefully plotted now.

“One thing we saw in our surveying both from MLB and our fans was that there were too many times where it felt almost too quiet and lower energy, and that’s something we want to improve on,” Fine said. “We’re kind of pushing that button more than we have in the past because we’ve noticed that it really has an impact on how our players are feeling a lot of times too.”

Some of the changes are based on what other teams do. They introduce the Oriole Bird before every game now, just as the Phillies do with the Phanatic.

Not all of the things they have added have succeeded, at least at first. Like the Padres, the Orioles are making Sundays more family-friendly by giving kids an opportunity to take the field with the starters. When the players run out to begin the game, they are supposed to stop at their designated kid to sign a baseball.

But the first time they implemented this, the majority of the players ran right by the kids and didn’t acknowledge them. The children were left standing by themselves, looking confused as the players began warming up around them. Two weeks later, in the second attempt, every player stopped.

They have also changed the music, parting with longtime DJ Bob Popik in favor of someone who would add more pop and electronic dance music into the mix. Popik said there were too many voices influencing what he was playing — from public relations staff to his direct supervisors, who he claimed banned certain songs such as “Party in the U.S.A.” because it “wasn’t appropriate.”

He was paralyzed, he said, on what to play. He said he called off for all but three games in the second half of the 2024 season and asked not to be scheduled for the first month of the 2025 season, at which point he was told he was let go.

“They were taking so much away from me and putting it toward their own input. ... They would constantly come down on me about the music I was playing,” Popik said.

But even as the team’s new DJs get set, the music over the temporary speakers can come off as overwhelmingly loud, depending on the seat location, making the experience unenjoyable for some fans.

“It is overwhelming,” Seth Maiman said. “Way too loud and way too often, hard to have a conversation. ... Even though the PA is louder, the words are still not very discernible. While the music is incessant, it is hard to know who is coming in to pitch.”

A full sound system overhaul is expected for the 2026 season.

The Orioles have to walk a fine line with changes. Baseball fans, more so than in other sports, are traditionalists who are not receptive to change, said David Reibstein, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania who served on an MLB task force focused on fan engagement under former Commissioner Bud Selig. Making too many changes can cause a rift between the traditional fan who just wants to watch the game and the casual fan who is there to be entertained.

“The old fans are stuck in the tradition of the game and everything that they remember from their childhood, from the ’60s and ’70s, and yet you want to appeal to a new fan,” Reibstein said. “You have these two different audiences that need things fast moving and exciting that may be different from what the traditional fan has been interested in, and it’s a hard balancing act but it is absolutely essential. ... You maintain all of those traditional things, and you try to weave in a few of the new ones. It takes time.”

The time element, he said, is key. In Philadelphia, he noted, traditional fans didn’t like the Phanatic, the Phillies’ furry green mascot, when it was created in the 1970s. Now he’s a beloved part of the fan experience.

MLB teams need only look to the rise of the Savannah Bananas, essentially the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball, to see casual fans are coming for more than the game on the field. Bananas games include players on stilts, song-and-dance routines and other gimmicks.

“You don’t have to go that far,” Reibstein said. “If you can integrate some of that in, if we want to preserve this game, we need to be able to bring new fans into it and it’s going to require integrating some of these things, and the older fans will adjust.”

Some fans have adjusted to some of the changes, just as Reibstein expected. The Orioles have done away with the beloved digital hot dog race and soundtrack, and instead they stage a live hot dog race at every home game. Although it’s taken time, the stadium is catching on to the new version and starting to react to it.

“I do miss the virtual hot dog race because it had more action,” Sam Leger said. “However, I enjoy the visual appeal of the live race. Maybe they could boost the entertainment factor there.”

Other things aren’t quite sticking. In the bottom of the seventh during a Friday night home game in May, with the Orioles up 2-0, a “two strikes” message was put on the board. Fans did not react, and the stadium was silent at a crucial part of the game. But in a recent game a drum cam for which fans are asked to fake playing the drums for a chance to be on the scoreboard seemed like a big hit.

That’s all OK, for now. The rest of this season is essentially a trial run, Fine said, to see what works before they have a new video board and sound system next season, in addition to a new in-game entertainment director, whom they hope to have in place soon.

They are taking qualitative and quantitative data to determine what’s working and what’s not, sending out a survey to fans after games and speaking with season ticket holders and players.

Fine knows they will never please everyone. But that balance, pleasing as many of the traditionalists and casual fans as possible, is what they are after.

“You don’t want to upset your base or be at a place where you’re doing something that is going to be discouraging for people who have obviously been with us for a long time,” Fine said. “It’s hard in a 43,000-seat ballpark to play music that everybody wants to hear. There’s no ballpark or entertainment venue in the country where that’s going to be the case, but you utilize data to make the best choice of what works best for almost everybody.”

This story has been updated to correct the date of the Phillies series.