Scylla and Charybdis

I threw this one up because I've been thinking about a recent article from the Orange Country Register:

The TL;DR version:  the Los Angeles Angels (baseball) have seen a decline in their ticket sales.  But their marketing guy isn't worried, because even though they # of fans through the gate has dropped greatly, the "per-cap" expense per fan is greater - the remaining fans are spending more money.

The man got into some trouble by explaining that even though the Angels had high attendance in the past, the higher attendance was made up by fans who might have gotten in with bargain tickets, the kind of fans that don't spend lots of money on souvenirs or concessions.  (It is implied that those fans really aren't missed.)  The remaining, financially better off fans are more freely spending money, so the Angels are still happy.

This makes me think about the WNBA.  In New York theatre, there's an expression called "papering the house".  It means that one gives out discounted tickets, even free tickets, if sales aren't what one wants.  The reason someone would sell tickets at a loss is to increase positive word of mouth among the attendees.

So what should be the goal of WNBA owners? 

To fill up the joint, even if it means marking down tickets and possibly angering season-ticket holders, or even driving existing sales *down*, since there would be a greater incentive for the casual fan to wait for a bargain-price ticket? 

Or should it be to increase the amount of money spent by fans - the "per cap" - and to make the season ticket holder/full price purchaser's experience exemplary, even it if means playing to even smaller crowds?

Right now, I'm in the first camp.  The reason the Angels can afford this strategy in the first place was because they had huge attendance, huge enough to attract these well-heeled fans looking for a big experience.  It doesn't do the sport good to play in front of lightly-attended crowds. Fill the place, first, then upsell.

By the way, the marketing manager in the quoted article got fired for his honesty.   At first I would have wholeheartedly agreed with his firing, now, I'm not so sure.

WNBA Marketing Efforts, Part LXVIII

I'm currently hooked up to one of those NBA polls where I'm asked to fill out surveys regarding WNBA marketing efforts. I was asked to look at five WNBA commercials and give my grades. I managed to get four of the five URLs - I forgot to save the one URL before I moved on to the next question and the survey did not allow backtracking.

I don't know if you can play these, but give it a try:

Video One

Video Two

Video Three

Video Four

They all suffer from the same problems. The survey asked if I had any specific comments; here's what I wrote:

All five videos had the same problem - they all have the same theme, namely "we women can play great basketball, too" - a theme which will convince no one who thinks that the WNBA is per se inferior. None of the videos are particularly clever, nor do any make use of humor. The split-screen video which compares NBA players to WNBA players is particularly annoying; one doesn't compare apples to oranges and the video is guaranteed to please neither side.

WNBA fans don't need to compare their league to the NBA; NBA fans will reject the comparison. I hope the makers of WNBA videos will stop trying to specifically market to disinterested NBA fans and make more videos marketing to those who have been traditionally ignored by sports marketing - more videos on ESPN just isn't going to cut it.

Which reminds me: how come every time I see a WNBA commercial it's always on ESPN2 or on NBA-TV? If you're going to market to people who might become WNBA fans, you need to get out of the male sports ghetto.

The WNBA: New Customers vs. Repeat Business

Someone once wrote that all of women's basketball fandom could be split into three groups. There might be some overlap, but not a lot:

a) the elderly,
b) males taking their young (under 13) daughters so that the daughters will have strong women as role models, and
c) lesbians.

Let's take this bold statement as a jump-off point, and accept it uncritically as fact. The above group is the "repeat business" of the WNBA - these are the WNBA's potential core base, who are going to keep coming to games come what may. They have bought in.

The question is in which direction should the WNBA go if it is to survive? It seems that 100 percent of the emphasis on the WNBA financial future is about new business - we need more fans in the seats. We need better attendance. We no longer need repeat business, we need new customers instead.

Indeed, that appeared to be the emphasis on WNBA advertising from 1997-2000. The goal was to market to the yuppie crowd, and make the WNBA audience a "family audience" - mom, dad, Junior and little Sis. The impression I got from brief glances at the WNBA during the 20th century was that this was to be some vast, untapped market.

Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way. For whatever reason, the WNBA couldn't grab that middle class young professional demographic. Rumor has it that when these middle class right-leaning families came to Utah Starzz games, they were taken aback by the loud and proud lesbian presence - in Utah. (Did they believe that lesbians did not exist in Salt Lake City?) It would have been unseemly for the WNBA to purge the lesbos, so they lost the Young Republicans.

In the 21st Century, the WNBA began looking for some new, heretofore untapped audience. It appears that they settled on attempting to grab fans that had some hesitation about attending a WNBA game because they believed that the quality of play of women's basketball wasn't very good. This culminated in the self-abasing commercials of the 2008 season where players were forced to repeat humiliating lines on camera as to how bad women's basketball was - with video clips to prove the opposite. The new commercials not only confirmed the prejudices of their target audience but alienated their core audience. The core audience had enough problems dealing with the red-bellied woodpeckers out there; they didn't need the WNBA parroting the arguments of the enemy, even if in jest.

One gets the suspicion that the WNBA doesn't particularly like its core audience and if a magic wand could be waived and all three groups above could be replaced by some corn-fed midwestern demographic it would be the solution to all of the WNBA's problems.

This is a shame, because the solution the to WNBA's financial problems might not be in the hunt for new customers - which should, of course, not be abandoned - but to pay more attention to its core base.

One rule of marketing is that is costs more money to create a new customer than to service an old one. Furthermore, it also costs less money to keep an old customer than a new one, because "brand loyalty" sets in. Let's suppose that the WNBA needs to increase its revenues by 20 percent to survive another year. Which do you think would be the more difficult task?

a) get the core base to put up another 20 percent in revenue, or
b) try to increase your fan base by 20 percent and keep revenue charges the same?

I suggest that a) is easier than b). The a) group is more likely to spend money anyway; you just need to give them a reason to open their wallets.

Therefore, instead of looking for new fans the WNBA should market more effectively to its older ones. This could be a three-pronged effort:

1. Commercials that appeal to the elderly base and the family base. You could theoretically appeal to both bases at once. If I were doing commercials for the WNBA, I would emphasize the link between the current WNBA players and their parents. You see Diana Taurasi all the time, but you never see her parents.

A commercial would be narrated by Mr. and Mrs. Taurasi emphasizing the pride they have in Diana's accomplishments. Diana would not have any lines in the commercial, but we would see her play. Diana might appear at the end with her parents, and the messages would be....

...I am a strong child of strong parents
...my parents nurtured me to achieve my dreams
...I am proud of my parents
...my parents are proud of me

Let's see the red-bellied woodpeckers out there mock parenthood. If you get a set of parents that look elderly and wise enough, it would appeal both to the elderly - "hey, that player is just like our granddaughter!" and to the male (married or divorced) who is looking for something to do on a weeknight or weekend with his daughter. If the WNBA is looking to create a family atmosphere...my suggestion is that you emphasize the families that actually exist. If you can get Angel McCoughtry playing one-on-one with her dad in a commerical, that would be great.

2. Commercials that explicitly appeal to the lesbian fanbase. It's time. They have a network for that and everything...ever hear of LOGO?

Face it, of the three groups above, it's the lesbians that have the income. Whenever I go to Dream games, the season ticket areas are packed with older, graying lesbians that own their own businesses, that are executives in companies, that have a lot of disposable income. And, inexplicably, the WNBA would like to ignore that.

Don't worry about getting the reputation of being a "lesbian league". The red-bellied woodpeckers have made that argument for 13 years; they won't be convinced of anything.

If a player is willing to come out of the closet, let her come out and do commercials on LOGO or elsewhere. Hanging out with a bunch of women (the sexual orientation doesn't have to be stated) and just having a lot of fun. "I can be with my friends in the WNBA," would be the message. The WNBA is your friend. Come to the games.

Hell, I'd go all out and see if LOGO could put together a WNBA studio show. Maybe even televise a few games. Why the hell not? I'm sure that a few fiery lesbian fans as announcers could give Art Eckman a run for his dollar. Where is the lesbian Charles Barkley as announcer? Don't tell me that the Lesbian Nation has no opinionated women in it!

In short, in times this bad economically, I suggest to the WNBA that it stop running after the pot of gold behind the ever-further-away rainbow and reach out to what it has. Word of mouth helps business a lot more than the most spectacular commercials anyway. To borrow an old sterotype, it's time for the W to stop trying for the spectacular slam-dunk and put its emphasis on the old-school game.

The Snow Marketing Program

Does the Dream Front Office know how to market or what? Looks like they had this well prepared ahead of time.

P. S. How did they get Michelle in that Dream uniform? Photoshop?

The WNBA Fan Marketing Problem

Note: This is a long opinion piece. Forewarned is forearmed.

I found this article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (*) that explains that the governing body of Washington High School Athletics is proposing to ban booing at high school games.

"I don't know why people think it's acceptable to boo in the first place," WIAA Executive Director Mike Colbrese said. "It's a pretty novel concept to me."

Policies are still in the draft stages, and would add to WIAA rules that prohibit hand-made signs and artificial noisemakers at state tournament basketball games. Some schools, including those in the South Puget Sound League, prohibit students from painting their faces.

This leads me to conclude the following - why go to the games at all? Why not just watch the games on TV? Why not just wait for the boxscore to come in the paper?

"But if you don't go, you're going to miss the amazing athleticism of these fine young athletes!"

Well...athleticism only goes so far. If you watch, say, the NBA Network, you can see amazing athleticism (or great team play, if you're watching women's basketball) almost 24 hours a day. If the entire purpose of attending a sports game is "to see these wonderful players in real time", then television suits those purposes just as well. Furthermore, it's free, or at least it's cheaper than paying $10 to park and $35 for a ticket where you're surrounded by people that you'd normally cross the street to avoid. (**)

I'm not really so much interested in what the article is about - you can have your own opinions regarding how much abuse opposing teams should face from the crowd, or how officials should be treated, and how much is too much. My main point is that the entire concept of being a fan has become quite sanitized and passive.

Think about your basketball experience. You show up at the arena. You sit down and get a good (hopefully) seat. From that point on your participation is not only unnecessary, it's also probably not wanted, either, as the article above shows. You let the fans start showing up with their own signs and costumes and immediately fear sets in from echelons above reason that something might get all out of control, the bete noire of organized sports.

Remember the "every-bo-dee-CLAP-YOUR-HANDS!" chant that you hear piped in to just about every basketball game around? It's a sad state when the audience has to be told to show its appreciation.

I remember an Atlanta Dream game where the crowd went deathly silent. It was odd. We were getting stomped by twenty points again. I don't think the crowd knew what to do. They were afraid to boo, so they just did - nothing. I swear if two fans were chatting about the weather at the opposite end of Philips Arena, I could have told you the temperature outside from hearsay.

I think you have to give fans a reason to attend games other than "boy, these players are great". There are a lot of great players in the world. Me, I'll be attending Dream games until I die - "loyalty until death" - but the problem is that there's no reason to attend WNBA games, other than "support women's athletics". Come to think of it, there's no reason to attend NBA games, either - which is why attendance is dropping in both leagues. You attend basketball games because a) you like basketball - a lot, and b) you have nothing better to do with your time and money.

So here's the conundrum the WNBA faces - how do you get people to watch WNBA games when there are other things they could be doing with their time and money? This is the conundrum faced by sports marketers across the board.

My solution: make the game a communal experience again. Make the thrill of attending an WNBA game something that can't be replicated by watching the game on TV.

Some of the funniest and most memorable parts of basketball games are the promotions. Anything that involves the audience is a winner. Anything that takes them out of the seat and makes them a part of the action is a winner.

What are the winners?

* Giving away free swag. I love it when the Dream dance team starts throwing around free crap or shooting T-shirts in the air. The rule is that you should not give away too much stuff - then it becomes "everybody gets a trophy" day. There should be some real doubt left in the audience as to whether or not you'll get any swag.

* The kiss-cam. You don't see kissing on televised basketball.

* The dance-off. Now the fans are cast in the role of judges.

* Having fans shoot free throws for cash, little kids dressing up - "Hey! That could be (me, my kid) down there!"

What are the losers?

* "Everybody-clap-your-hands."

* Mascots. Not all mascots though. The Famous Chicken knows how to do it. (Can't we get him at a Dream game?) He uses props, humor, and you never know what the hell he's going to do next. A guy standing around in a suit looking goofy just doesn't do it.

* "Free swag to the first five thousand who show up." Everybody gets a trophy. Meh.

If the WNBA is going to move tickets, the audience has to be made active participants. They have to have some sort of emotional investment in coming to the games other than a love of basketball. This is how you draw in the casual basketball fans and turn them into screaming maniacs that would run through Hell in a gasoline suit before they'd miss attending a game in person.

The most involved fans in the world are English (and European) football fans. They have it going on; it's a friggin' religion over there. They have team scarfs, team colors, dances, signs (gigantic mo-fos that cover several rows of seats), chants (that's why I included those chants). Going to a Premiere League football game is about more than just watching football. It's a communal experience, in the same way that going to The Rocky Horror Picture Show is an experience.

"But what about hooliganism? We don't want a bunch of gaily-painted psychos at WNBA games! We don't want riots!"

True. "Hooliganism" is just fan participation that's completely out of control. There's a spectrum.

Fan participation scale

0 - reading the boxscore, watching highlights on ESPN
1 - watching the game, passively, on television
2 -
3 - fans come to games but are passive observers - the norm at WNBA games - in some cases, this is actually a "2" on the scale and not a "3"
4 -
5 -
6 -
7 - an interesting English football game, most Japanese baseball games
8 - a really interesting English football game
9 -
10 - the roof is raised, violence may spill over
11 - firehoses and teargas - police are called

My theory: If you move the participatory experience to a 7 or 8 from the current 2 or 3 it is now, more people will attend the games. We don't want hooligans, but we don't want passive attendees, either.

How do we get there? Anyone running a WNBA marketing plan would not want to lose control. However, I think more can be added in, in small steps, such as:

- A creative cheering section. Make one section of seats the "official cheering section". (You limit the riotousness to one area.) Fans are offered reduced costs for good seats - you don't want to displace season tix holders who have paid full value for their seats. Here's the rub: you have to audition to get in. "Hey, Dream fans! If you show that you're willing to go the last full measure, you'll get great seats for $5 a game!")

Yes, you lose the value of the tickets - but in exchange you get something that no other WNBA team has - a group of fanatics that are willing to raise the roof for the entire length of the game.

- Chants. The chants can be posted on the jumbotron. They can be laudatory ("la la la the Dream is great la la la") or they can be centered around individual players. Or even the enemy - hey, in NHL games in Nashville they would show little vidoes of the Nashville Predators mascot making the enemy mascot miserable. Why not a few catcalls.

- Prizes for creativity. "Wildest costume." "LARGEST sign." Winner gets a private chat session with Dream players.

- The (Atlanta Dream, Washington Mystics, etc.) Band. At last, the Brooklyn Dodgers Sym-PHONY Orchestra can be recreated! "Fans, if you can form a *band* that will play at games, not only will we *let* you play while seated in the audience, but we'll reduce the price of your tickets.")

(* * *)

The more the fans are involved, the more tickets you'll sell. Really, what does the WNBA have to lose?

As a marketer, you try the ideas, making sure the proper controls are there. If an idea works, you keep it and introduce it to the other teams. If it fails, you either adjust it so that it works next time or forget it. But a marketer should be doing new things every single game. I suggest that the book WNBA marketers should read should not be "Sports Marketing 101" but the autobiography of John Boyd - you should always be doing something different at every game - "by the time the opposition figures out what you're doing, you're doing something else".

Imagine this:

A WNBA fan comes to his or her first game. Let's say it's a Minnesota Lynx game.

They immediately enter a sea of color. There is green and white everywhere. The arena is packed. Fans are waving around flags - not just little flags, but giant banners. The atmosphere is reminiscent of a Mardi Gras. Fans are shouting encouragement at their favorite players, who are taking their warmups.

The Lynx take the field as the lights dim. The crowd goes wild. The Minnesota Weakest Lynx "Band" begins to fire up their somewhat out-of-tune instruments and the crowd begins chanting the Lynx Fight Song.

As the game continues, the crowd - never stops talking. There are claps. There are chants. There are chants at the enemy, creative stuff, too. The crowd gets involved before the game, stays involved during the game, and indeed, only breaks up slowly after the game.

It's an experience he or she never forgets. Tickets are purchased for the next game.

And the cycle continues....






(*) - for some reason, they call the website seattlepi.com, leading one to think that this is a website devoted to private investigation.

(**) - one could argue that movie goers are not only passive spectators, but are happy in being passive. The difference, however, is that movies by their nature are radically different experiences each time that require passivity for the suspension of disbelief whereas sports are just variations on a theme.

Becky Hammon, Bankability and Homosexuality

A very interesting blog article can be found here at the Girl in Short Shorts Blog, discussing the entire Hammon/Russian team angle from an angle different from the angle usually taken.

From what GiSS writes, the WNBA has made Becky Hammon one of its more bankable stars. She has this Sweet All-American Girl look, Bill Clinton supposedly came to a WNBA game to watch Becky play, and she's that (white) face of bankability to make the WNBA a "family" game.

When last year's WNBA MVP runner-up was inexplicably left off a list of 23 invitees to the U. S. Basketball Women's Olympic Training Camp, this set off a chain of events than ended with Hammon on the Russian team. So the WNBA is concerned about its new sweet All-American bankable star ending up with the Russians. It makes Hammon less "saleable".

However, I suspect there is a further concern. According to the Girls in Short Shorts blog, Hammon might be -- and I am not saying this, not claiming this, not having any evidence that it is the case -- gay. Which is no damn big deal. We know at least 5 percent of the WNBA would have to be gay based on demographics alone, and the number is probably greater due to the fact that lesbians have been attracted to sports since time immemorial. (The Sapphic Games competed with the all-male Olympics for years, but sadly, the yearly winners have been lost to legend.)

I'm sure part of the WNBA's fear might be that inquiring reporters will expose the nature of Becky's (hypothetically gay) love life, and the VFW crowd will throw up their hands and say, "That's it! All women's basketball players are gay." If this would be true, women's basketball would join the list of all-gay professions, such as the steel industry. (According to sociologist Moe Szyslak.) The WNBA has to Keep Becky Hammon Marketable, which I suppose is synonymous with Keep Becky Hammon Heterosexual. (Ask Ellen DeGeneres how her career was destroyed by coming out. Ask Sheryl Swoopes, too.)

Ah, what interesting times we live in. All the dumb ass suggestions we've heard. Makeup classes, the suggestion of the liberal masters of the WNBA. Dressing like Olympic beach volleyball players, the suggestion of the conservative masters of...well, whatever.

Here's a suggestion to the WNBA and its fans: you're outsiders. You're an outsider league. The beer-and-pretzel crowd isn't going to accept you. The mere fact that you're women who are successful at sports threatens them already. An entire team of sweet-Becky-Hammon-looking girls would only be accepted at an eye-candy-hot-ass level, and never for sports skills.

MARKET TO THE OUTSIDERS, WNBA! The outsiders in this world laugh at the beer-and-pretzel crowd. They have nothing but contempt for the jock/fratboy crowd, and they'd be quick to claim solidarity with the WNBA. X-Games are very popular, so there's room for outsider sports in America. Maybe when Hammon is asked by a sports reporter, "so, do you feel like you've betrayed your country?" she should just flip him off, kick him in the groin and shout, 'Next time, don't ask such a dumbass question!'"

Hammon would probably lose a lot of fans...but gain a lot of others. I'm not saying this is the way the WNBA must go, I'm just throwing it out there. Now let me get back to my Soviettes albums.