NEW YORK (AP) — Amid a surge of public opinion in favor
of gay rights in the U.S., the WNBA is launching a campaign to market
the league to the LGBT community, becoming the first pro sports league
to specifically recruit gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender fans to
its games.
With the marketing campaign, the WNBA is capitalizing
on what it has known for years: The community makes up a significant
portion of its fan base. The difference now is that the league is
talking about it publicly and making it a deliberate part of its
marketing strategy.
The launch of the effort coincides with a
surge of political and legal advances for the gay-rights movement in the
U.S., and shifting public opinion behind many of those advances.
The
campaign, which begins with the debut of a website Wednesday, includes
having teams participate in local pride festivals and parades, working
with advocacy groups to raise awareness of inclusion through grassroots
events and advertising with lesbian media. A nationally televised pride
game will take place between Tulsa and Chicago on Sunday, June 22. All
12 teams will also have some sort of pride initiative over the course of
the season.
"For us it’s a celebration of diversity and inclusion
and recognition of an audience that has been with us very
passionately," WNBA President Laurel Richie said.
It’s taken the
league 18 years to take the step, though it had discussions about the
possibility previously. Teams have done some promotion locally,
sponsoring booths at gay pride events and hosting groups at games.
"We
embrace all our fans and it’s a group that we know has been very, very
supportive. I won’t characterize it as ‘Why did it take so long?’ For me
it’s been we’ve been doing a lot of terrific initiatives. The piece
that’s different this year is unifying it," Richie said.
Before
launching the campaign, the league took a close look at its fan base. It
commissioned a study in 2012 that found that 25 percent of lesbians
watch the league’s games on TV while 21 percent have attended a game.
Rick
Welts, who was the executive vice president and chief marketing officer
of the NBA when the WNBA first started in 1997, said that when the
league began executives figured the fan base would be a carryover from
the NBA.
"We guessed very wrong on that," said Welts, who is the
president and COO of the Golden State Warriors and became the
highest-ranking executive in men’s sports to publicly acknowledge he’s
gay in 2011. "Maybe we should have known better. I think from its
outset, the WNBA attracted a fan with different interests than our
profile of an NBA fan.
"I remember sitting in a few meetings where
we had really interesting thoughtful discussions of: Should we be
proactive marketing to the LGBT community? What does that say if we do?
We certainly didn’t want to position the league of being exclusionary to
anyone. What were we saying if we did it more proactively? Society and
sports culture is very different today than it was back then. Teams were
trying to figure out the right thing to do."
Brittney Griner, who
is one of a handful of WNBA athletes who have publicly identified
themselves as lesbian, was happy the league was embracing the community.
Griner, who was the No. 1 pick by the Phoenix Mercury in the draft in
2013, plans on wearing rainbow-colored shoes during the month of June in
support of the initiative.
"We’ll pave the way and show its fine
and there’s nothing wrong with it. More sports need to do it. It’s 2014,
it’s about time," said Griner, who served as grand marshal of the
Phoenix Pride parade last season.
The league’s campaign comes
after a wave of recent announcements from players who are identifying
themselves publicly as gay. NBA player Jason Collins became the first
player in men’s professional basketball to come out and played with the
Nets. Former Missouri football player Michael Sam, who came out in print
and televised interviews earlier this year, was drafted in the seventh
round by the St. Louis Rams. And Derrick Gordon, a UMass basketball
player, recently described his experience as a gay Division I player.
It
also comes amid changes in the political and legal landscape. Just this
week, federal judges in Pennsylvania and Oregon struck down state bans
on gay marriage, extending a series of such rulings since December. If
the latest rulings stand, there will be 19 states — with more than 43
percent of the U.S. population — that allow same-sex marriage.
That
helps make the timing for the WNBA’s decision right, said Robert
Boland, academic chair of the sports management program at NYU’s Tisch
Center.
"This is a group where there is a natural affinity and
marketing affinity," he said. "It’s a recognition of where the world is
today. I’d be shocked if there was any backlash."
Rebecca Lobo,
who played in the league for six seasons and has been a broadcaster for
the last decade, has seen a change from when the league began in 1997.
"It’s
culturally more acceptable now than it was when it first started," she
said. "The league has been around for so many years they can do these
sort of things without worrying about what some people might think."
It wasn’t always that way.
"For
a long time they were happy to have those lesbians fill those seats in
the stands, but not willing for a long time to embrace the fan base,"
said Pat Griffin, professor emeritus in the social justice education
program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. "I attribute that to
the homophobia, fear that somehow acknowledging the fan base would
encourage other fans not to go to games. What they’ve learned is that
the fan doesn’t keep other people from going to games."