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.
In 1990, Sandy Sachs (reclining) and Robin Gans moved from New York to Los Angeles, only to find lesbian nightlife a little lacking. That year they opened Girl Bar, with an emphasis on hot DJs and a sexy and very visible clientele. Not a pair to rest on their laurels, they've expanded their sapphic domain to Girl Bar nights at clubs in Phoenix and Chicago, and to Palm Springs, Calif., where they cofounded the annual Girl Bar Dinah Shore Weekend, the largest lesbian event in the world. Sachs (who was the inspiration for L Word character Dawn Denbo, played by Elizabeth Keener) and Gans's most recent joint venture is Murano Restaurant & Lounge.
