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Innovating The NBA

The NBA Offers Some Of The Greatest Entertainment On Earth… Here’s How To Make It Even Better.

The NBA Offers Some Of The Greatest Entertainment On Earth… Here’s How To Make It Even Better.

The NBA May Be A Billion Dollar Entertainment Empire…
But That Doesn’t Mean It Can’t Be Made Even Better.

By Rich Harshaw 

Note: This article is part of Monopolize Your Marketplace’s ongoing “Outside The Lines” series, which feature ideas, strategies, and case studies from OUTSIDE the remodeling industry, with suggestions of how to implement those ideas into your contractor marketing efforts.

One Sunday afternoon in 1979, my dad sat me down in the living room for a life changing father-son talk. “Son,” he said in the most patriarchal tone he could muster, “I am about to show you something that will have a profound impact on your life. You must hold what you are about to see as sacred.” My nine-year-old mind raced with anticipation as I speculated what family treasure might be bestowed upon me.

My dad then walked over to the TV, pulled the knob to the “on” position, used the pliers to change the channel (you know what I’m talking about!), and I caught my first glimpse of “Dr. J,” otherwise known as Julius Erving, the greatest player in the history of basketball. My eyes bugged with Christmas-like wonder as dad explained to me the difference between mere mortal basketball and how the Doctor operated on the court.

At least that’s how I remember it. I was hooked immediately.

A year later, the Dallas Mavericks opened shop right in my backyard. Dad correctly concluded that Mavs games would be a perfect father-son bonding event, and ponied up for season tickets in the ‘82-83 season. That began a run of several consecutive seasons in which we attended twenty-five or thirty games a year together. Tickets for GREAT courtside seats (11th row, free throw line) were $12 each. For a measly dozen dollars, we got to see the NBA’s finest up close and personal—including the Doctor—along with a halftime show that consisted of watching ladies shoot free throws for a chance to win a $10 Minyard’s gift certificate or a freaky double-jointed guy who could contort himself through a toilet seat. Good times.

Fast forward to 2015. That same courtside seat will now set you back $150—an increase of more than twelve times… unless you buy it second-hand on StubHub, in which case you’ll probably need at least three Ben Franklins. The game itself is still good… but not quite as good as it used to be. It’s a bit slower, fewer points are scored, and due to league expansion, there are more weak teams. But now, unlike the olden days, they do have cheerleaders, cooler arenas, louder music, and giant video screens. Somehow they’ve managed to keep the same freaky toilet seat guy.

So in other words, you get to pay more than ten times more money to watch a game that’s not quite as good, but with aesthetics that are a little bit better. And oh, by the way, ticket prices will go up again next year, and your seat will be a little more worn out and the same team mascot will still be shooting the same hot dogs and T-shirts out of the same air cannon.

Let me put it to you this way: if the NBA were the computer industry, they’d be asking $22,000 for a three-foot tall, thirty-one pound computer with a 1MB (megs, not gigs) hard drive, 16K of internal memory, a 5 ¼ inch floppy drive, and a monochrome flat screen monitor.

In other news, I recently caught a matinee feature of Unbroken at the Cinemark for 4 ½ bucks. I’m just saying.

I saw an interview with the Maverick’s much-maligned owner, Mark Cuban. He’s gained notoriety (and paid over a million dollars in fines) for challenging the NBA commissioner to get off his haunches and innovate and improve the league. When Cuban was asked what he’d do if he were in charge of the entire league, he immediately replied—with no hesitation—that he’d invest 2% of every dollar of revenue into MARKETING.

Well, I agree with Mr. Cuban. The NBA needs focus some attention to innovate and market itself so that those flippin’ expensive tickets are more worthy of their price tag. And wouldn’t you know it, a few years ago, I finally got a call from an NBA team looking for some help with their marketing. For privacy reasons, I won’t tell you which team it was other than to let you know it WAS NOT my beloved Mavericks.

The team in question was struggling to fill its upper bowl seats on a regular basis despite consistently posting a winning record for several years. Each empty seat represented about $25 in lost ticket revenue, and about $9 in concessions revenue. If 3,000 seats remain unsold, that’s basically $100,000 per game in lost revenue. Multiply that by say thirty games (Bron-Bron, Kobe, and a few others sell out every arena they show up in), and you’re talking a few million dollars a year in lost revenue. Ouch.

The team had just commissioned a major ad agency to conduct a survey of their customers that revealed 1) fans thought ticket prices were too high (shocker), 2) didn’t like sitting in crummy seats (really!?) and 3) they’d rather watch on TV for free (didn’t see that one coming, either). The research report concluded that their advertising messages should focus on the excitement of the game—what they called the “adrenaline rush.” Nice enough idea, but they sort of forgot to say exactly how one might go about translating said adrenaline rush into an actual ad… much less finding a way to communicate that the rush is worth forking over $150 for a seat…. Or even a lousy $25 for the nosebleed section.

That will be $100,000 for the research report, please.

The team showed us an assortment of print ads and television commercials they’d been using over the last season or two. They all featured images of their more popular players and phrases like “Schedule Your Excitement” and “Rival Week. Be There” (featuring popular players from other teams) and “Reward Yourself.” They then asked us what we’d do to improve the ads.

Which leads us to our first major point:

Fifty years ago, advertising legend Rosser Reeves said, “You must make the product interesting, not just make the ad different.” So instead of trying to make a better ad to try to trick people thinking that it’s worth $268 per family to sit in the nosebleeds (yes, $268 per family), let’s try to make the product more interesting (valuable) so the $268 per family is actually worth it. Novel concept, I know.

In other news, you can now buy a 80” HD television at Costco for $2,200. Interestingly enough, you can watch NBA games AND any other television program you can imagine on it. I’m just saying.

It’s real simple: if we can make the game experience better and add more value, then we can get some of the people who only come to one game a year to come to two or three. We can get the people that come to two or three games a year to come to 6 or 8. We can get those who come to ten games a year to come to twenty.

Yea, I know. More obvious stuff. But here’s what might not be so obvious. Even if you never got one single EXTRA person to attend a game (i.e., non-users), you could still solve the “fill the seats” problem from current customers. It’s that ridiculously trite old saying: it’s cheaper to keep a customer than it is to find a new one. But here’s what else is cool—if you innovate this thing, you’ll also get former non-users lining up to get in.

New customers!

So how do we innovate this and make it better? The first thing we want to do is simply want look at the product or service in question (in this case the NBA game experience) and pick apart all the things people don’t like about it.

Talk about obvious—find out the stuff people don’t like and then improve it. But just because it seems obvious, don’t assume companies actually do it. Cars didn’t have cup holders until 100 years after they were invented (thank you Ford Taurus!). And the NBA still has the toilet seat contortionist halftime guy. People, I think we can do better than this.

To find out what people don’t like, sometimes it’s useful to look at what people DO like in other, similar products… and then simply emulate. The guys over at Apple saw that iPod users liked cell phones, email & internet—BOOM, the iPhone. For the NBA, we’ll do this by looking at alternate forms of entertainment and find out what exactly people like about them. The idea here is simple: if we can isolate the best benefits from indirect competitors, we can start to see where we fall short, and get ideas of how to make our product better.

For example, let’s take a look at going to the movies. I’ll tell you why I like going to the movies. For starters, it’s cheap. Depending on the theater and time of day (and maybe your age, AARP!), ticket prices range from $4 to $12—let’s call it nine bucks. And that’s for a great seat that’s nice and close and has excellent sound and a cup holder. The movie might have cost $100 million or more to produce, but my ticket’s still only 9 bucks. Even when you factor in the cost of popcorn and drinks and my wife (or heaven forbid it’s a kid flick and I’m toting five to ten kids), it’s affordable. Parking is free. The NBA, on the other hand, costs a family of four $268. To take my family of eight and to get DECENT seats, I’d have to take out a second mortgage. We’d have to smuggle in our own peanuts and folded up paper cups and fill them with water in the sinks in the bathrooms during timeouts.

Will Smith makes over $20 million per flick, and I get to see him transformed into a super hero up close and personal for just 9 bucks. There’s no chance I’ll ever show up at a Will Smith movie only to find out that he wasn’t feeling well that day and so I’ll have to watch some spare try to fill in instead.

Here’s what else I like: Movies are really convenient. There are 4 different movie theaters within twenty minutes of my house—and one that I can get to in three minutes if I hit the lights just right. I can decide to go on the spur of the moment, and be watching previews and chomping popcorn less than an hour after getting the idea. I have to get my ticket for the NBA weeks in advance unless I want to pay outrageous scalper prices, and I have to plan an entire evening to drive downtown, fight traffic, pay $10-$20 to park a mile away, and so forth. I’m beat down before tipoff.

Had enough? I’m not even close to finished. There are a wide variety of movies to choose from, so there’s almost always something interesting to go see. And it’s not always the same thing. I can see Project Almanac with my teenage son, SpongeBob Sponge Out with my younger kids, and Selma with my wife. Big movies like Star Wars can generally be counted on to deliver a great movie-going experience. Sometimes a movie like Napoleon Dynamite even sneaks out of nowhere to captivate the audience. Even the clunkers (anyone see Wicker Man?) have some entertainment value and only costs ten bucks.

The NBA always features the same fifteen guys doing the same thing over and over again. And over again. It’s almost like watching Karate Kid part twenty-seven. We get it—somebody’s going to hate Daniel-san, try to kick his butt, then the old Japanese guy’s going to pull a miracle out of his wazoo and Daniel-san will emerge an improbable, dorky hero. The end. The NBA will feature 3 ½ quarters of running up and down the court with an occasional slam dunk, followed by a fiercely competitive last 3 minutes that takes 40 minutes to play and has absolutely no rhythm due to what feels like 100 timeouts. Throw the toilet seat contortion guy in there somewhere. The end. Imagine if the movie industry tried to pull that one on us.

Let’s sum up what I like about the movies: it’s close up, cheap, and convenient. There’s variety, drama, fun, and plenty of reliable star power. It’s also gender inclusive and kid friendly.

You might read the preceding few paragraphs and think that I hate the NBA. That’s not true—I love the NBA—but it’s also not the point. The point of the exercise is to simply pinpoint the things that people DO like about alternate forms of entertainment and then see if we can emulate our existing product (NBA) to include some of those things. You might have also noticed that we didn’t spend any time talking about the things I don’t like about the movies—and for good reason. Why would we want to emulate stuff we don’t like! Hey I know, let’s put grimy sticky crud all over the floors at the Mavericks games!

Let’s Dedicate One To The Ladies…

Let’s start by making the game more gender inclusive. Sure some women love the NBA, but if 50% of the population is only somewhat interested in what you sell, that’s a great place to innovate. And now that they’ve done away with those John Stockton-esque short shorts, the “extra” reasons for women wanting to attend have vanished. Here’s a list of a few innovations to get the ladies excited about NBA.

Give Us A Peek Behind The Scenes: Women love entertainment news and celebrity gossip. I mean really, who do you think is watching Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, Extra, and TMZ? So why not use this to our advantage in the NBA to get women more interested? There are a dozen celebrities sitting right there on the bench every night, and we know practically nothing about them. We’ve had Dirk Nowitzki in Dallas now for 16 seasons now and we know practically nothing about him except he almost got scammed by a woman he almost married a few years ago. What a missed opportunity.

The Innovation: Start a series called “Home Court” that profiles players on the team in their personal lives. Show us Dirk’s crib (thanks MTV!), Monta Ellis’ family, and Richard Jefferson’s My Little Pony collection. Okay, I made that one up. What does Tyson Chandler do for fun outside of basketball? How does a 7 foot man go about buying clothes? Why is Chandler Parsons so determined to put on youth basketball camps every summer? Why does Charlie Villanueva have no eyebrows? We need to know these things. Not only would they be interesting to know, they would form a tighter, more intimate bond between fans and players.

They’d need to show us this stuff in four key places: on television broadcasts, on the team’s official website, at the game on the jumbo-tron, and at the game in the printed program. When I was a kid, we always watched the end of “The Electric Company” because the best part, Spider-man, was always on last. Women would be backing up their Tivos to see Devin Harris’ wife bring the new baby home from the hospital. “Oh look how cute… I really like that Devin Harris. He is such a sweet father.” Trust me, your wife will feel a lot better about that $501 ticket after she’s seen how sweet Devin is to his wife. The same scenarios could play out online.

But TV just needs to be a tease—a mere sampling of what’s in store if you plunk down the big bucks for the game. Why not show four segments of two minutes each during some of the (hundreds) of timeouts? The teams could run television, radio, and print ads teasing the video clips that would be shown at any given game. Here’s a good formula: for each game, do one profile of one of the three best players on the team, and two profiles of any of the other 9 players. Our women will even be interested in the benchwarmers—trust me on this one. After they find out that Bobby Nobody has two basset hounds and proposed to his wife underwater while scuba diving, they’ll be chanting for him to get some playing time.

If the top three star players are profiled once per game, that’s a total of about fifteen profiles needed per player (assuming 45 games per season), and only about eight to ten profiles for the other players. You could even get away with half that many and just show each profile twice during the year—but don’t overdo it. Showing the same clip at every game will quickly ruin the concept. The fourth Home Court video segment should be of one of the top players on the opposing team (although I am philosophically opposed to this because our wives will now like the other players). But it would definitely help sell tickets. If you think I’ve spent too much time on this and Home Court wouldn’t make that big of a difference, you’re probably a little too interested in Star Wars, if you know what I mean.

The last part would be to print profile stories about the players in the printed game program. The jumbo-tron would play the 2 minute segment, then say “To read more about Devin Harris’ new daughter, and to see photos, please turn to page 54 of tonight’s game program.” Women are bored during most of the game anyway, so let’s give them something to read or look up on their phone. The magazine would then show the profiles, and give previews of what profiles would be shown at the next game. Plus, all of the previous profiles could be stored on the team’s website, and a password could be given in the game—another perk for women who actually attended the game live.

Okay, so there’s the first innovation to get women more interested in the games. Let’s keep going. I’ll give you some more innovation ideas in quick-hit fashion: How about the following:

  • An Emcee: Get a young, good looking guy to be the emcee of the game. Why isn’t there an emcee for a basketball game? I’m not talking about the PA guy who nobody sees (“Now checking into the game, number 32, Brandon Bass.”) I’m talking about a guy with some personality who directs the fans’ attention to the right place at the right time. Once you see some of the other innovations below, you’ll see why we need an emcee. For now, just make a note that the emcee should be a young (mid- to late-20’s), good looking guy.
  • Male Dancers: And no, I’m not talking about Chippendale’s… and I’m also not talking about the fat guys they have at the Mavericks games (“Mavs Maniacs” which should be renamed the “Mavs Constricted Artery Bunch” or the “Mavs Look-What-Nonstop-Pounding-Of-Cheeseburgers-and-Beer-Will-Do-To-You Group”). Get some guys out there that women will want to look at—no different than the cheerleaders. Okay, I admit, I hate this idea.
  • Women-Friendly Apparel: Go to the fan shop and look at the garbage they have for sale for women to wear. Somehow the brilliant clothing designers decided that if they make a shirt pink, then women will want to buy it. That’s it—pink. My wife is more interested in “cute” than she is in “pink.” So why not hire a fashion consultant to come up with some better looking duds for the gals? And while we’re on the topic of team apparel and souvenirs, here’s another good suggestion. How about lowering the price of the junk that people are going to buy and wear to ADVERTISE YOUR TEAM FOR FREE. I never pay $35 for a T-shirt, yet that’s what they want at the fan shop. Lower the prices, let the fan feel like they’re not being plundered, and get some more free advertising. Hello!!?!?!
  • On-Site Babysitting: There’s a place near my house called “Adventure Kids” that bills itself as “hourly playcare.” It’s something like $7 an hour to dump your kid there to play on slides and video games while you go do something else. Why isn’t one of these places located in the arena? They figured out how to put a Pizza Hut and Whataburger in there, why not an Adventure Kids? Plus think about this—they pimp the place out in Mavericks colors, toys, basketball courts, etc. and start brainwashing the kids to be Mavericks fans from age zero. And they get paid. What a great concept. Plus, the parents would still be on site, so they could give you one of those coaster-looking-pagers that you get when you’re waiting for your table at a restaurant to alert you when your kid poops his pants. Speaking of restaurants and waiting, to avoid overcrowding, they could accept reservations—after all, you don’t want to plan your evening around the game only to find out AFTER you get there that they can’t take your kid. This isn’t rocket science.
  • WNBA Tie-In: We don’t have a WNBA team in Dallas (I’m not quite sure why), but for cities that do have a franchise, they should create heavy tie-ins to the NBA team. Require at least three or four of the players to attend every game wearing their team uniforms/sweats… they could then patrol the common areas before, during, and after the games and talk to fans, sign autographs, and get more visible. Not only would this help sell more WNBA tickets, it would also get girls more interested in basketball. I wanted to be like Dr. J when I grew up—who does my daughter want to be like? The WNBA players could also be profiled in the game program so we can see that they are normal people—and perhaps overcome some of the stereotypes surrounding the players.
  • Lady’s Night: Choose 5 games per season where the home team is playing crummy teams and make them a Lady’s night. These women don’t care who the opponents are anyway—they don’t know Chris Paul from Paul Shirley. So next time the Bobcats drag their dog butts into town, have a Lady’s night where discounts are offered for the ladies—cheaper tickets, concessions, souvenirs, parking, programs, and drinks. Once they’re in the building, now they can be wowed with all the female-friendly stuff—and make them want to come back later for more.
  • Real Quick Hits: I have several other ideas to get women interested in the games, but I’ll save them for other sections below since they tie into other themes—particularly giving away prizes and post-game parties. Here are a couple of other really quick hits for women: more bathrooms, and bathrooms that are decorated cute (yes, decorate the women’s bathrooms. Men don’t care and wouldn’t notice anyway. Women will love it.). Also, encourage mother-daughter attendance, get some female-friendly halftime entertainment, plant a few celebs in the crowd, put a Sudoku in the game program, and send them funny text messages on their cell phones.

Now Let’s Get The Kids Involved

Go to an NBA game sometime soon and count how many kids you see there. I have—it’s pathetic. As I sat in the nosebleed section of a recent game to get a feel for the fan experience up there (bring oxygen), I counted how many kids under the age of twelve I saw—drum roll please…. FOUR. Glad to see that future generations of fans are being nurtured along here. In the last section we already talked about adding on-site child care to take care of the really little nippers. Now let’s talk about how to capture that important four- to twelve-year old crowd. We might even throw in a few ideas for teens while we’re here.

The first thing to realize is that for most kids in this age bracket, the actual game is most definitely going to take a backseat to everything else that’s going on around them at the arena (not unlike the women). Anyone who’s ever taken a five year old to any pro sporting event knows what a beating the last part of the game is—right when the action’s heating up, the kid’s whining about going home. It’s an honest-to-goodness beating. That’s why there were only four parents in that nosebleed section dumb enough to attempt it. So to get their little paying butts into the seats, let’s make the peripheral stuff surrounding the game more interesting for them.

  • Candy: I can’t overstate the importance of candy to children. I took my daughter to a Rangers baseball game one time—within 60 seconds of sitting down she asked for cotton candy. I told her they didn’t sell it, she quickly corrected me and told me she saw a guy carrying some around selling it. When I asked her where, she pointed (literally) about 300 yards away—clear across the field on the complete opposite side of the stadium—to a guy carrying that thing. From where we sat, he was about a half an inch tall. How she found him without a telescope is a mystery only a child can understand. That candy isn’t a central part of an NBA game for children is incomprehensible. It’s the easiest way to hook them in.

How about this—have a guy whose job is to walk around in the stands and pass out FREE candy! Yes, FREE candy… make sure there’s no chance that they’ll get scrooged by their dad who already maxed his credit card just to show up to the dumb game. And not crummy, off-brand candy. Trust me—I know my kid’s candy—the free candy guy should be giving out baby bottle pops, airheads, sour patch kids, and stuff like that. Start handing out the “Brach’s variety mix” and it’s over. Take that kid home at the end of the night and ask him how he liked the game and I’ll make you an iron-clad promise—he’ll say it was great because he got free candy.

Note: this strategy also works great for waiters, pizza delivery, haircut places, dentists, and doctors (Stickers? Give me a break. You just stuck my butt with a needle, you owe me at least a Laffy Taffy.)

  • Kid’s Zone: Kids love Chuck E. Cheese, so why not put one inside the NBA arena. Not literally a Chuck E. Cheese, but the entertainment equivalent. Then open the arena for a good hour before the game, and bring them in to play video games, rides, skeeball, shooting baskets, etc. Make all the games FREE (dude, we just spent $268 to get in here), and all the games should dispense tickets that can be exchanged for prizes and/or… CANDY! Everything could have the team’s theme—it would be a lot of fun.

I saw one NBA team that attempted this, but they had most of the components wrong. They tried to make it educational—stuff about the history of the team, being a good citizen, junk that no kid in his right mind cares about. They charged money for their video games. The only area anyone was interested in was a free basket shooting competition. What if the team created a check-in procedure where you could leave your kid in there for part of the game and dad could go back and watch the game and mom could watch the male dancers. Why not? You know this is a good idea.

  • Kid’s Pack: When the kid walks into the arena, hand him or her a little goodie bag. Kids love goodie bags, right? So what to put in the goodie bag? You’ve probably caught on that there should be some candy in there… but here’s what else: First of all, a program designed especially for kids. It would have games and puzzles in there, along with some stuff to color (yes include some crayons). There could be a profile of the players, and an “I Spy” game for the arena. Trust me, they’re going to spend at least an hour just staring around the arena anyway, so you might as well give them some specific things to look for. Make sure it’s got at least thirty pages in there, because the game is going to be very long (if you’re seven years old 150 minutes is an eternity). How about some kind of team souvenir—it wouldn’t have to be a bobble head or anything, just something simple like some stickers or a keychain or a mini squishy basketball. Do you realize the team wouldn’t even have to pay for all this stuff—they could easily find a sponsor that wanted to be seen as kid friendly and family friendly that would foot the bill? Come on, let’s get with the program already!
  • More Free Stuff: One time I took some of my kids to a Mavericks game and they had a promotion where Chick-Fil-a tied little cows to parachutes and threw them out of the rafters. We happened to be sitting right under one of the launch points and we collected three or four of them. My kids were thrilled—in fact, my son Jonah asked about two years later (when he was six) if we could go to another Mavericks game because he wanted to catch a parachute with a cow (forget the game—I want the $150 cow parachute). Couldn’t we get Chick-Fil-a or McDonalds or Coke or Old Navy or somebody to throw parachutes out at every game? And not just twenty or thirty like at the game I went to… throw out two or three hundred at every game. Remember the Emcee? His job is to make sure that everyone knows that they should give the parachutes to KIDS when they catch them. Social pressure would force all the adults to cough them up. And the kid already has a bag to put it in after he catches it, because he got one when he walked in the door. And why do the cheerleaders only throw ten or twenty shirts into the stands? Even the high school football cheerleaders throw at least fifty plastic footballs into the stands. Can’t an NBA team (or sponsors) spring for 100 shirts and 250 foam basketballs per game? Kids won’t care if this junk has corporate logos on it—to them it’s all the same—FREE STUFF!!! Just the chance that they might get some free stuff will keep them enthused.
  • Pre-Game and Post-Game Festivities: As long as we’re paying for the equivalent of a small vacation, why not extend the game beyond just the 2 ½ hours while the pros are dribbling and shooting the ball? Why not create a party atmosphere before the game and after the game? Here’s the problem. The ding-dongs that plan out the game experience for the customers (oops, fans) are so close to the game—with such easy access to attend as many games as they want—that they forget that coming to the game is a BIG FAT DEAL, especially to youngsters. The suits in management pay a lot of attention to season ticket holders (and rightfully so; more on them later) who go to so many games they don’t necessarily care about any peripheral fru-fru—or how much the game costs. But we’re not thinking about those guys right now… we’re thinking about the common man. Trying to fill that upper bowl, remember? Quit thinking like an NBA team and start thinking more like Disney World! Make every single game a memorable experience!

Yes that rant has a purpose! Make the game a DESTINATION for the fans—especially the kids. Why not have an area set aside before the game with bounce houses, shooting contests, games to play, wheels to spin for prizes, people painting faces, balloon tying guys—in other words, make the pre-game into a dadgum carnival. It wouldn’t hurt to have a place to throw darts at balloons, a team mascot circulating, or a guy who guesses weights and ages. Throw some candy in there somewhere. You don’t think your kids would be begging you to go to games? Are you kidding me? In my home it takes two days after a Chuck E. Cheese commercial runs on TV to get them to quit bugging me.

Then after the game they should have a huge post-game party. This would be the perfect place to shoot off the fireworks, listen to the live band, and participate in all the carnival stuff that’s still in place from before the game. And it’s not just kids that would love this—women would be all over this. Think about it men… when was the last time you took your lady to an event that had this much going on? You’ll look like a hero! Throw a post-game party!

  • Birthday Parties: Speaking of parties, why not do birthday parties for kids? The birthday party industry has grown huge in recent year—not just for the previously mentioned Chuck E. Cheese, but also places like Pump It Up, Sweet & Sassy, and American Girl, just to name a few. If you think parents won’t plunk down $500 bucks on a birthday party for Joey or Suzie, you’re wrong. Let’s take Sweet & Sassy as a template—they are making a veritable fortune hauling girls around in pink limousines to birthday parties. Their parties all accommodate 8 girls, and cost anywhere from $189 to $450, plus an extra $150 to $200 if you want the limo. And what shmoe of a parent’s going to do the Sweet & Sassy birthday without the limo? None, that’s who. And what do you get for the money—complete hair and nails and dress up, and a goodie bag full of lotions and makeup to take home in the limo with you.

So why doesn’t the local NBA franchise offer the exact same service, minus the makeover? Little girls and boys alike would be THRILLED to be picked up by the Mavericks limo and taken to the game in style. Then check this out… the party starts two hours before tip-off—that’s one hour to have the entire pre-game carnival to themselves (plus any other parties that are being held), then another hour to have a “party” in a special party area inside the arena. The party could consist of basketball games on a mini court, a Mavericks cake, and all kinds of basketball themed stuff. Would it be asking too much to send the 11th player on the roster into the party for pictures and autographs for nine minutes? It’s not like he has to actually get ready for the game. Which brings us to a whole other point that I haven’t even touched on yet—player accessibility. Hang on, it’s coming. But back to the party, which naturally, includes tickets to the game and the requisite spotlight on the party in the stands, name on the Jumbotron, and oh yea—remember the emcee? He’ll announce the birthday and the camera will show the kids enjoying themselves in the stands. Who knows, the kids might even catch a parachuted cow.

Or how about scheduling the party on a day when there is no game—but letting the kids play basketball on the big court—the real NBA court. I don’t want to hear the front office whine about liability and insurance and junk like that—figure it out for crying out loud. Heck, they could sell this package to adults who were looking to play a little pickup on the big court. There’s no reason this shouldn’t be offered. You’re telling me that that grown men wouldn’t pay a few hundred bucks to play some full court on the big court in a pro arena?

The SpongeBob Effect: This might be more well-suited for the NBA as a whole, but I think an individual team could pull it off… why not have an ongoing tie in with a kid’s character like Spongebob Squarepants or Scooby Doo? The characters could appear at the games and television broadcasts, and the team could be cross-promoted on those shows. Just imagine the little nippers getting their daily fix of Spongebob and seeing a commercial with Spongebob and Patrick talking about how great the Mavericks games are for kids to attend. And how you get free stuff. And how there are games to play. And bounce houses and birthday parties and parties with fireworks after the game. And oh yea, FREE candy. Honestly, the kids would think the game sounded MORE FUN than Six Flags.

  • Kid Quick Hits: Okay, enough on making the NBA more kid friendly. Just a couple of quick hits and then we’ll move on. Yes, there is more. How about moving the starting time of eight to ten games a year an hour earlier (from 7:30 to 6:30) so that kids can actually attend and party without being a zombie at school the next day? What about a movie shown at midcourt after the game? If none of that works, give them some more candy. Like I said, I can’t overstate the importance of candy.

So before we move on, let’s review the main point at the beginning of this article: If we want to write better ads, we’d better find something worthwhile to write those ads about. Can you now see how easy it would be to write ads about the various items we’ve discussed so far? It’s so tempting to think that your product or service HAS to be not just the MAIN attraction, but the ONLY attraction. But the truth is there are plenty of opportunities to innovate around the periphery.

More Innovation Strategies

Player Accessibility: The team I spoke to prided itself in having more public player appearances than most others. They’d require their players to commit to X number of appearances at local grocery stores, shopping malls, car dealerships, and so forth. The idea, of course, is to get some foot traffic into some of the sponsors’ locations while giving the fans a chance to see their idols up close and personal. They rationalize that by doing so, they’ll extend their fan base to these neighborhoods. A pretty decent idea, in theory.

But here’s the problem: it doesn’t do anything to reward those fans who are kooky enough to shell out the big bucks to actually attend the games. In the book Blue Ocean Strategy, authors Kim and Mauborgne introduce a concept called “cold spots,” which are areas where companies spend a lot of time, attention, and money, but for relatively little return on that investment. Or in other words, the “bang for the buck” isn’t there. Instead of spreading the players thin and “getting out into the community” so much, why not make players available to PAYING fans—on a limited basis—after each home game?

Yes, I know that the players are tired and they need to catch a flight to the next game. But so what? These guys get paid mega millions of dollars, they can spend half an hour meeting with all us dopes who are paying their salaries, right? Here’s how it could work. At the end of the third quarter, the emcee could spin a wheel with every section of the arena represented. Whichever section came up on the wheel would be invited to a special area where a reception would be set up for them to meet three of the team’s players. Just like with the Home Court idea above, it would be important to make sure there was an even distribution of big-name players and bench players represented—at least one big and two spares per appearance. Assuming you had five “big” players on the team, that would mean each one would have to appear about eight to ten times per season. The no-names would be thrilled just to have a chance to participate. In the reception area, the players could be set up at a certain place with a backdrop and a photographer who snaps pictures FOR YOU, and then hands you a card with a code on it where you can download the pictures from the internet. There should also be some food, drinks, and (you saw it coming) candy in place for everyone to enjoy.

The spinning wheel could even have sections listed for each winner—one upper deck section and one lower deck section. Or they could make it ONLY contain upper deck sections to make the cheapos feel like they finally got the upper hand on their snotty rich lower-bowl compadres. Of course, all those lower level seats are held by season ticket holders anyway, and they could have their own player interaction sessions held separately. Speaking of which…

Keep Season Ticket Holders Loyal: Everyone knows that the season ticket holders are the bread and butter of the NBA teams’ profit model (aside from TV money, of course). So let’s treat them a little bit better. Normally they’re taken for granted and treated like a cash suckhole rather than the most valuable customer. They’re expected to pay more money each season for the same seat. Here are a few quick hit suggestions for keeping these folks happy:

  • Make the players accessible. Hold events before or after games. Anyone who pays $10,000 or more sure as heck ought to get a photo and autograph from their team’s Kobe, Dirk, or LeBron. Seriously.
  • Give food discounts for season ticket holders. How about a card worth 20% off anything in the building. I can hear the front office grumbling already… “but these are our wealthiest customers who are most willing to pay the high food prices.” Think long term customer loyalty already.
  • Let them play on the court. We already discussed this previously; why not reward your best customers with the most access? Perhaps a tournament could even be initiated.
  • More player access: why not take four season ticket holders on the team plane, stay in the team hotel, etc. on road trips. This is very doable. So do it. There could be a drawing. Or it could be based on “seniority” or other criteria. After 10 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, a couple days on a plane with the boys would be a nice treat.
  • Seat Upgrades: Teams will frequently have good seats that become available at the last minute… why not allow your best customers to upgrade to better seats for free? This could be easily managed by simply having a database of interested ticket holders and send out an email or text blast the morning of each game. The tickets would be swapped out—no upgrade charges—and the team could then sell their original seats, or swap them out to other ticket holders with worse seats. I guarantee you a computer geek could create a password protected online portal for this in less than two days to completely automate this.
  • Random quick shots: valet parking, free souvenirs, limo pickup, profiles in the game program, rewards/recognition for number of number of games attended or consecutive games attended, etc, birthday club, and private bathrooms.

Added Value Strategies: Adding extra value to the game ticket is a good way to make people feel better about the amount of money they’re spending. Here are a few quick-hit value-adds:

  • What if that $30 or $150 ticket was actually worth COLD HARD CASH after the game in the form of real discounts from participating sponsors? For instance, what if the ticket could be used for $500 off your next Dodge, Ford, or Chevy, or a free appetizer at TGI Fridays, or a free can of Coke, or a quarter-pounder with cheese at McDonald’s or $10 of free groceries, or $100 off carpet or hardwood floors, or $5 off your next oil change at Jiffy Lube, or a buy-one-get-one-free ticket at the movies, or $100 off of each replacement window you buy? Or what about all of the above? It would be very easy to organize—the sponsors would love all the extra traffic they’d get and resulting incremental sales. You’d want to make all of the offers time sensitive so the discount would have to be used within seven or ten or thirty days of the event date. Each vendor could mark the ticket once used to deter cheaters. Then the tickets could be marketed as “worth $2,112 in real discounts after the game.” If the local high school drill team can sell me this same concept for $20 in the form of a “Dragon Card,” then why on earth can’t the local NBA franchise pull this off? This one’s so easy to pull off it’s embarrassing they’re not already doing it.

20 Things To Do Besides Watch The Game: As you walk into the arena hand each person a printed sheet that says “20 Things To Do Besides Watch The Game” with a checklist. Many of the things we’ve already discussed would go on the list—catching parachutes, playing I-spy, watching “Home Court” videos, watching the dancers, playing free video games, and so on. This would not only give people something to do, it would cause them to recognize and appreciate all the extra stuff that’s been innovated.

Get People More Involved With The Game: How about providing a game that fans could play to help them follow the game? It would be easy: print up about twenty-five or thirty questions that people would need to answer as the game unfolds—things like: who scored the first basket, what time the first reserve checked into the game, the score at the end of each quarter, how many rebounds your best player had at halftime (it’s shown on the big board at the game), how many air balls the opponent shoots, how many dunks your team gets, the names of the referees or opposing team’s coaches. You get the point. Trivia questions about the Home Court videos could also be included to encourage people to pay attention during timeouts. Then at the end of the game, fans would then submit their completed game sheets and be eligible to win a prize if they get a certain percentage of the questions correct. It could be done via smartphone app. Since the fans’ personal information would be required to notify them of their prize, the team could start to build a database. This game would fill multiple purposes: 1) it would be another of the 20 things to do on the list, 2) it would give kids something to do (adults too!), 3) it would help people follow the game closer, 4) it would allow the fan to get a prize, and 5) it would allow the team to build a database of fans. Team logo pens could even be given away so fans have something to use to fill the sheets out—they’re only like seventeen cents each if you buy them by the trainload. Another free souvenir! And more free advertising for the team—as well as another memento for the fan to look at every day and say “Man, that game was awesome! I can’t wait to get back for more!”

Fabulous Free Prizes: Here’s a fact: everyone loves free stuff. That’s why we all come home from trade shows with a new hoard of pens, letter openers, coasters, and koozies. We can’t resist ourselves. So why not commit a budget for each game to give away free stuff to the best customers—the ones who actually shelled out the big bucks for the game ticket? We’ve already covered some of the free stuff—candy for kids, prizes for people who complete the game sheets, snacks for after-game player meeters, and parachuting cows. But I’m also talking about here is giving away some really COOL free stuff that people would really LOVE to get.

For instance, why not give away ten iPhones at each game? Each could be loaded with all that season’s Home Court video episodes, and a mix of each of the player’s favorite music. The emcee could milk this for great theatrical value. And don’t just say “pick up your prize on the west mezzanine after the game.” Instead, have a mammoth spotlight and video camera aimed directly at each winner so everyone in the building can see their ecstasy in winning. Sponsors would most likely be willing to pay for this stuff—I’m sure Dr. Boothe would be willing to spend $1,500 a game to get a few iPhones into lucky fans hands while his Lasik practice is being touted (and put him on the ticket discount card while we’re at it!).

While we’re at it, let’s get each of the major car companies that sponsor the team to give away two vehicles per year. If there are 4 manufacturers, that’s eight cars a year—or one every five games. If the average vehicle is worth $25,000 at retail, that’s about $1,000 per game on average. Drive the cars out onto the court during a timeout and make a big deal of it. Give away free Lasik, free barbeque for a year, and free dry cleaning. Give it all away! And give enough stuff away that people feel like they’ve actually got a pretty decent chance of winning something. And of course, make sure you have some large kid-friendly and women-friendly prizes as well—makeovers, massages, and handbags for the women (after all, those sponsors will be banging on the door one a team becomes more female friendly) and scooters, X-Boxes and giant Sponge Bob dolls for the kiddies. All in all, give away at least FIFTY cool free things every single game. So what if the team brass has to pull $10,000 out of their own pocket to pay for it. They’re so quick to spend tens of millions on players, and so slow to give a flippin’ nickel to the fans who make it all possible. Come on guys!

Okay, enough already. Remember the point of all this innovation is to give us marketing guys something to actually write about in the ads. And look how content-rich these ads could now be! Ads about free giveaways and meeting players… and bounce houses and parachutes and getting to know the players on a more personal level. Ads about the actual cash value of the ticket and the things to do besides watching the game. Let’s get some butts off the sofa in front of the TV and down to the arena for some real fun. Statistically speaking, half the teams aren’t doing that great during a given season, so let’s make attending a game an event, not just an exercise in live X’s and O’s.

Then once the arenas are sold out all the time, we’ll discuss innovating even further by joining forces with local movie theaters to show the games on the big screen, with all the same cool stuff going on. And not just for home games. But we’ll save that discussion for another day.

Now if we could figure out something for halftime better than the toilet seat contortionist….


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© 2015 – 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.

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