How Miami Marlins Partners Use Photo Booth Activations to Drive Fan Engagement

A logo on a sign gets ignored. A branded experience gets a line of fans waiting to take part. Over the past year, Esteem Photo Booth Rentals has run five different photo and video booth activations tied to Miami Marlins partnerships at loanDepot Park, and every one of them was built around a different goal. Some were about pure fan engagement. Some were built to capture leads. One lived inside a private suite. Here's what each activation looked like and why the format changed every time.

AI Photo Booth Activation: Batter, Pitcher, Base

For a Marlins game day activation, the goal was getting fans into the action before first pitch. Esteem built three custom AI scenes rendered around the Marlins brand. Guests could step into the batter's box, take the mound mid-windup, or sprint toward the base with a crowd behind them. The AI placed each guest into the scene in real time, and the output looked like a broadcast still instead of a filtered selfie.

Two booths ran side by side to handle game day volume, and every guest left with a printed photo. That print carried the brand into the seats, onto social media, and home after the game. Local news covered it, and Billy the Marlin stopped by the booth.

This is the same AI photo booth technology Esteem runs for brands nationally, adapted to a Marlins theme for this event.

AI Photo Booth Activation for Perry Ellis

Perry Ellis International's Cubavera brand took a completely different AI concept for Guayabera Day, the day marking the anniversary of Cuba naming the guayabera its national dress shirt. Cubavera served as presenting sponsor for the Marlins vs. Twins game, handing out branded guayaberas to the first 3,500 fans through the gate.

Esteem ran two custom branded AI photo booths to match the moment, and every photo carried a custom overlay tied to the Marlins' marketing initiative. The shirt giveaway and the photo activation reinforced each other instead of competing for attention. For a brand rooted in Miami's Cuban heritage, a stadium of fans wearing the shirt and walking away with a branded photo says more than a billboard buy ever could.

Campaigns like this fall under Esteem's brand activation work, where the booth gets built around a sponsor's specific event, not a generic template.

Custom Photo Booth Build for ADT: Lead Generation at loanDepot Park

ADT needed a different kind of result: real leads off a new product launch, not just impressions. Esteem custom fabricated a photo booth shaped like ADT's new security doorbell and ran it across the Marlins' full home season at loanDepot Park.

Guests scanned a QR code, completed a short survey, chose their photo experience, and had the result sent to a branded microsite. Every scan and survey response fed straight into ADT's lead pipeline. It looked like a photo op on the concourse, but underneath it was a data capture campaign running home game after home game.

This custom build is the kind of project covered under Esteem's corporate photo booth services, where the booth itself is fabricated around a client's product rather than pulled from a standard lineup.

Roaming Photo Booth Activation in a Private Suite

Not every activation needs to sit in a concourse. For law firm Werner Hoffman Grig & Garcia, Esteem brought a roaming photo booth directly into their suite at loanDepot Park. Instead of asking guests to leave their seats and find a booth, the booth came to them, working the room while the game played out below.

For a suite full of clients and referral partners, that's the difference between an activation people have to seek out and one that shows up as part of the hospitality itself. The photos became a personal keepsake from the game, with the firm's branding built into the shot.

Trading Card Photo Booth for Marlins Season Ticket Holders

The fifth activation shifted format again, giving Marlins season ticket holders custom trading cards built around their own photo. Where the AI booths and the ADT doorbell were built for volume and data, this one was built for loyalty. Season ticket holders already show up every year. A card that turns their photo into a collectible gives them something to hold onto and something worth showing off, which reinforces the relationship the team already has with its most consistent fans.

Five Activations, Five Different Jobs

Line these up and the pattern is clear. The Marlins' own AI booth needed pure fan engagement. Cubavera needed cultural relevance tied to a giveaway. ADT needed leads. The law firm needed hospitality that came to the guest instead of the other way around. Season ticket holders needed something that rewarded loyalty rather than driving volume.

None of these were a generic photo booth parked in a hallway. Each one was built around what the partner actually needed out of game day, whether that partner was the team itself, a sponsor, or a suite holder entertaining clients. That's the difference between renting equipment and running an activation, and it's the reason Esteem Photo Booth Rentals keeps getting called back for stadium and arena work across Florida and nationally.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between a photo booth rental and a photo booth activation? A rental is a booth dropped into an event with a standard template. An activation is built around a specific partner's goal, whether that's lead capture, brand awareness, or fan loyalty, with custom branding, scenes, or hardware built for that one campaign.

Can a photo booth activation be built to match a specific product, like ADT's doorbell? Yes. Esteem fabricates custom enclosures shaped around a client's product or brand, not just a wrapped standard booth. The ADT doorbell build at loanDepot Park is one example of a booth designed to look like the sponsor's actual product.

Do photo booth activations work in a private suite, not just the main concourse? Yes. A roaming photo booth can work a suite directly, so guests don't have to leave their seats to take part. This works well for corporate hospitality and client entertainment during a game.

Can a photo booth activation generate leads instead of just photos? Yes. Adding a QR code, a short survey, or a data capture step before the photo turns the activation into a lead generation tool. The ADT activation used this exact structure, sending guest data to a branded microsite tied to the survey.

Does Esteem Photo Booth Rentals only work with sports teams in Miami? No. Esteem has run activations for Miami Marlins, Miami Heat, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, F1, and other partners, and travels nationally for brand activations and large-scale events outside South Florida.