A women's professional basketball team has launched a new marketing strategy that involves direct outreach to lesbians.
The Women's National Basketball Association's Los Angeles Sparks, the Los Angeles Lakers' sister franchise, added lesbians to its existing "family-oriented" marketing plan last week.
"We want to market this basketball team to fans whoever they might be, be they an inner-city youth basketball team or someone of an alternate lifestyle," Joe McCormack, vice president of the Los Angeles Lakers organization, told the Los Angeles Times.
The new campaign kicked off last Friday with a rally staged in partnership with the nation's largest women's dance club, Girl Bar Los Angeles. An estimated crowd of 1,200 to 1,500 showed up to get players' autographs, stock up on team paraphernalia and buy season tickets.
Sparks team member DeLisha Milton told the Times she was surprised by the attention the outreach to the lesbian community was getting, "If we want to keep getting paid to play basketball, we've got to get fans. That's what we're doing -- getting fans to come to our games. That's all."
Girl Bar founder Sandy Sachs, however, said the move had wider significance. Women's sports, she told the Times, have traditionally tried to distance themselves from the perception that female athletes are largely lesbians. "The LPGA wants nothing to do with us," said Sachs, who markets a trip to the annual Nabisco Dinah Shore Golf Classic to lesbians. "This is precedent setting," Sachs told the Times.
"Women's sports have moved beyond the old stereotypes," Sparks General Manager Penny Toler told the Times. "We don't sell tickets for Section D, Rows 1-4 for black fans and Section C, Rows 1-4 for white fans and Section F, Rows 1-4 for lesbian fans. We just want fans.
"This isn't about marketing to sexual lifestyles," she said. "It's about marketing to a group of people we think will buy tickets."
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.
