Written by:
Katia Hetter
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this Issue of Curve:
11-6
Playing for Keeps
The WNBA has finally wised up to the fact that lesbians are filling the stands at basketball arenas nationwide — and now they’re reaching out with special promotions designed to get more of us cheering for the home team. But is it too little, too late?
Suddenly struck by the possibility that some lesbians might like to watch Women’s National Basketball Association games, the Los Angeles Sparks partnered with Girl Bar in May to promote lesbian attendance at Sparks games. The Girl Bar pep rally, which featured Sparks players at the Factory nightclub in West Hollywood, was applauded by lesbians — a WNBA team had finally acknowledged the lesbians who make up a significant part of its fan base. The team also sponsored a Gay Pride kickoff game in June.
In fact, several WNBA teams across the country have begun to reach out to their lesbian fans, at their own initiative or encouraged by the WNBA in a pre-season meeting with the teams’ marketing directors. In areas where there are significant numbers of lesbian fans, the WNBA marketing department has recognized a need to reach out to an “obvious audience they couldn’t ignore,” says Sacramento Bee sports reporter Debbie Arrington, who broke the story in July.
IT’S ONE STEP FORWARD
In addition to the Sparks, the Sacramento Monarchs and the Seattle Storm have sponsored Gay Pride nights. The Miami Sol has advertised in gay publications, players have visited lesbian bars and the team has helped sponsor a South Beach gay festival. The WNBA’s All-Star game in Orlando was advertised in the Disney World Gay Day program.
In Los Angeles, where low attendance at home games must have worried Sparks officials, the team took marketing efforts to the next level. There were players signing autographs, free key chains and discount ticket packages. Discount ticket packages were also available on Girl Bar’s Web site.
The mention of “WNBA” and “lesbians” generated stories about the Sparks in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers and on talk radio and sports programs across the country. Girl Bar co-founder Sandy Sachs told the Los Angeles Times that her site sold 75 tickets in two days.
That kind of marketing makes sound business sense, says Wes Combs, a partner at Witeck-Combs Communications, a Washington, D.C., consulting and public-relations firm that specializes in the gay community. Combs points to a Harris Interactive/Witeck-Combs poll finding that 27 percent of lesbian women participated in a team or individual sport in the past month, compared to 22 percent of all heterosexual women. The results of the poll, which was conducted in December, means that lesbians may be slightly more interested in watching team sports, he says.
“Lesbians are the WNBA’s customers, as are heterosexual women,” says Combs. “Why not reach out to them in ways that will encourage them to attend the games?”
With the demise of the American Basketball League in 1998, less than two years after its creation, officials at the five-year-old WNBA know their survival depends on attracting more fans. Last year, WNBA games averaged about 9,100 spectators per game, down from 10,207 in 1999. Although the Washington Mystics drew a league-leading average of 15,258 fans per game, the Sparks averaged only 6,563 fans at home.
Trying to increase its own appeal to lesbians, the Human Rights Campaign has bought hundreds of tickets and held post-game events over the summer in Washington, D.C., Seattle, Houston, New York and Salt Lake City. While WNBA executives, team officials and players were officially expected at some parties, HRC development director Cathy Nelson expected unofficial visits in other cities.
“Women have responded so enthusiastically to these events,” says Nelson, who welcomed WNBA, Mystics and Storm officials to the Washington, D.C., party. The event at MCI Center, the Mystics’ home base, attracted about 800 people.
Nelson, who has spent years building relationships with league and team officials, says WNBA president Val Ackerman “understands how much of her fan base is in the lesbian community.”
TWO STEPS BACK
Still, WNBA officials choose their words carefully when questioned about their lesbian fan base by the media: “We welcome everyone” (New York Liberty) or “We’re all inclusive” (Cleveland Rockers) and “We welcome all groups” (Mystics). It wasn’t so long ago that Sparks owner Jerry Buss, who has apparently reversed his position, wasn’t interested in talking about his lesbian fans. In 1998, he told Sports Illustrated, “I leave them alone.”
The WNBA has also been promoting the heterosexuality of its heterosexual players. The league compiled a fact sheet last year, apparently in response to media questions about the marital and engagement status of its players. The list does not include same-sex domestic partners.
Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Liberty, has even been hostile to a few lesbian fans, says New York City council member Christine Quinn. Quinn, a lesbian who represents the predominantly gay Greenwich Village neighborhood, says that Liberty fans holding signs with the word “lesbian” have been asked to put them away. She blames a history of homophobia in women’s college and professional sports. Team officials “don’t want the reality to be publicized,” she says.
The Women’s Sports Foundation reports that homophobia is still rampant in women’s sports. The foundation claims it’s still common for college coaches to suggest that recruits avoid a college if a coach is a lesbian, for coaching candidates to be presumed lesbian if they are single, and for female varsity athletes to be called lesbians regardless of their sexual orientation.
THE HEAT IS ON
Times have changed a bit, with the Liberty and other teams that don’t acknowledge their lesbian fans coming under increased criticism. The Liberty’s lack of action is even more puzzling to New York activists because team general manager Carol Blazejowski lists her female partner, Joyce, and their two children in the team’s 1999 media guide.
The Los Angeles effort “is a wonderful outreach to an obviously important constituency of the team,” says Matt Foreman, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, New York state’s gay-rights lobby. The Liberty “do all kinds of things to reach out to their [other] most loyal fans,” including games devoted to the Girl Scouts and breast-health awareness. “They should do the same thing for the lesbian community.”
Other professional sports teams have also begun to reach out to the gay and lesbian community. Officials at the Women’s United Soccer Federation’s Washington Freedom, which features soccer star Mia Hamm, have told the Washington Blade they want to follow the Mystics’ lead in attracting gay and lesbian fans.
And although the Minnesota Twins weren’t formally backing the event, the team hosted a July gay game day sponsored by a gay and lesbian magazine. A Major League Baseball official says that wasn’t unusual, pointing to the San Francisco Giants’ annual AIDS awareness days.
The Chicago Cubs took it one step further, publishing 10 full-page display ads in the gay Chicago Free Press, according to Outsports.com, an online sports magazine for the gay and lesbian community. With Wrigley Field located in the middle of Chicago’s gay neighborhood, Cubs special events manager Annie Kleiser told Outsports.com, “it was an easy no-brainer.” The Cubs also agreed to an “Out at the Ball Game” promotion in June, with 2,000 tickets set aside for the Free Press to sell.
“There has been zero negative response” to the Cubs’ promotion, says Jim Buzinski, co-founder and publisher of Outsports.com. “You can’t ignore potential customers. You ignore your fan base at your financial peril.”
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