One franchise in the Women's
National Basketball Association, which has broken new ground as the country's
most successful female pro sports league, is pioneering in another
arena-marketing to the gay community.
In what experts see as a
turning point for major-league teams of all kinds, the Los Angeles Sparks are
promoting their games to the lesbian fans who have been a core-if officially
unacknowledged-constituency of WNBA ticket buyers.
On Friday, in a WNBA first,
some Sparks players brought pennants, basketballs and key chains to The
Factory, a West Hollywood bar, as part of a deal with a team sponsor, Girl Bar
Los Angeles, a 12,000-member lesbian club sponsoring a "Gay Pride
Kick-Off" for a June 14 game.
"The Sparks are
breaking new ground," said Wes Combs, president of Witeck-Combs
Communications, a Washington, D.C., strategic marketing firm that helps
companies target gay and lesbian consumers. "It's a smart business
decision because as a group, many lesbians are interested in basketball, just
like women in general are."
Combs said "franchises
in major markets such as San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta and Miami
will be looking very closely at this, especially if they are not selling
seats." The WNBA as a whole and its New York entry, the Liberty, have
found a wide following among lesbian fans, but have not specifically promoted
the game to the community-and that strategy will not shift.
"We represent the best
women's basketball in the world, and we've prided ourselves on our appeal to
many segments of society," said WNBA president Val Ackerman.
Barry Watkins, a spokesman
for Madison Square Garden, which operates the Liberty, declined to comment on
the Sparks' marketing initiative. "The makeup of our fan base is not and
has never been an issue," he said.
"We welcome everyone
and anyone and have a diverse, very passionate fan base." Unlike the
Sparks, whose average home attendance of 6,563 ranked Los Angeles 14th in the
16-team league, the Liberty already draws well, averaging 14,498 fans per game
at the Garden.
But even the Liberty could
gain more fans with the right approach, said Rosanne Siino, a vice president
for PlanetOut Partners in San Francisco, an online media service company aimed
at gays and lesbians.
Marketing to lesbians is
"long overdue," she said, adding, "It's amazing how teams in
the WNBA wanted to distance themselves, but I don't know how long you can
ignore it.
"If you tailor it
correctly, it could be a slam dunk. They're just getting in step with the
general business climate." Companies such as Subaru, American Airlines,
American Express, AT&T, Coors and IBM have begun to tap the U.S. gay and
lesbian market, whose spending power has been estimated to top $400 billion.
"Most of the marketing
in the gay community is driven by economics," said Howard Buford,
president of Prime Access Inc., which worked on the AT&T sponsorship of
the Gay Games. "There really is a feeling that women's sports have gone
out of their way to dispel the notion that lesbians are involved in golf,
tennis and basketball, so this is a breath of fresh air." In fact, one
team in another women's league is courting lesbian fans-citing the success of
the WNBA in that market.
Ann Marie Wallace, director
of communications for the Washington Freedom of the Women's United Soccer
Association, told the Washington Blade, a gay weekly, that the gay community
is "definitely a demographic we want to work with. The [Washington]
Mystics [who have led the WNBA in attendance for three years] is a model for
us...We want the gay and lesbian community to come out and support our team as
they have in the WNBA.
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