For the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels minor league baseball team, the Fourth of July isn’t just a festive night at the ballpark — it’s one of the most profitable weekends of the season, expected to generate about 10% of the team’s annual revenue.
The Mighty Mussels have an all-in approach to using fireworks as a promotional tool to put fans in seats, with 11 postgame fireworks shows on the promotional calendar for the 2025 season. Most of those shows fall on “Fireworks Fridays.” With July 4 falling on a Friday this year, it makes for a figurative perfect storm of business — providing there’s not a literal storm in the area.
John Martin
“It’s a huge deal to really knock this weekend out of the park,” said John Martin, managing partner of Kaufy Baseball, which owns the team.
It’s also the biggest demand day of the year for large-scale fireworks companies.
Pyrotecnico Fireworks Inc., which has offices in Jupiter and Tampa, produces the Mighty Mussels’ fireworks shows. The team has an edge booking the company for July 4 because it also hires Pyrotecnico for 10 lower-demand nights throughout the season.
“Nobody is doing more fireworks during a calendar year than the Mighty Mussels,” Martin said. “We can negotiate a better price with them. Everybody in the world wants Pyrotecnico to come out on July 4 or July 3. Everybody wants them. They’re not going to be busy on all these other Fridays. We’re going to give them 11 events instead of one.”
But the July 4 event will be grander in scale than the other 10 nights. About $20,000 worth of boom as compared to $10,000 going up in smoke the other days.
“They come and do about double the show,” Martin said. “Double the normal show on the Fourth of July. I say this is the biggest show in the history of Hammond Stadium. It is the most extensive and expensive. In terms of duration and intensity, it’s about double what you would normally see. And what we normally see is no slouch.
“This is a Major League-level fireworks show.”
The return on investment — without divulging it — can be huge, Martin said.
“Every year, we talk about putting out a splashy marketing campaign,” Martin said. “And we did. But don’t overthink it. Fireworks Fridays work, so we stick with that. Everything else comes and goes. If you want to draw a crowd, you have fireworks.
“The people love it. The kids love it. They look forward to it. You don’t have to be a brilliant marketer to lean into Firework Fridays.”
It’s such a pivotal day that Kaufy Baseball takes out an insurance policy in the event of rain.
“We actually have to insure this event against rain, because we’ve got so many dollars put out there, not only in fireworks but in staff,” Martin said. “We need every single employee.
“So, we put tremendous money up front. Our insurance company, you do it based on rainfall.
“If it rains at 5 o’clock, and everyone decides they’re not leaving the house, that could be catastrophic. We do it based on the amount of rainfall during a certain time period.”
As of noon July 2, the forecast for the evening of July 4 looked “dicey,” WINK News Chief Meteorologist Matt Devitt said.
“Scattered storms are in the forecast for Friday evening, but with a little luck, hopefully those storms will avoid the ballpark,” he said.
