3 Ashley Madisons would like you to have ‘a love affair’ with the Hawks
If you haven’t found rooting for your hometown team particularly satisfying over the past few years, and have wondered once — or maybe more than once — what it might feel like to step outside the bonds of the commitment you made to the local squad lo those many years ago, the Atlanta Hawks have a message for you:
They’re here, they’re exciting and they’re more than willing to be discreet about indulging a little roundball-focused fling.
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Yep, that’s right: the Hawks announced Friday that “they have signed three real-life people named Ashley Madison” — you know, like the name of the “online dating service and social networking service marketed to people who are married or in a committed relationship,” the one whose slogan was “Life is short, have an affair,” the one now facing a $578 million class-action lawsuit resulting from a data breach last month that exposed the personal information of its 39 million avid/curious “networkers” — to promote the team’s new 10-game flexible ticket plans.
“Fans are encouraged to start a new love affair with the team by customizing their own unique ticket plan to ensure they are at all of the top games during the 2015-16 season and receive the best selection of games, seats and pricing,” the Hawks wrote in their statement.
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The tongue-in-cheek parody of the crashed-and-burned infidelity-focused site closes with Hawks mascot Harry the Hawk putting his finger to his lips while new signee Madison says, “And don’t worry: your old team never has to know.”
Beneath the surface of the ripped-from-the-headlines nature of the goof and the sort-of shock of an elbow-in-the-ribs alignment with, y’know, cheating on your significant other, the campaign takes aim at a long-held and somewhat damning belief summed up earlier this year by ESPN.com’s Kevin Arnovitz:
Somehow an NBA-mad city cares almost not at all for its local team.
Atlanta consistently has some of the highest television ratings in the nation for the NBA Finals, All-Star Game and the like. When the Knicks, Lakers, Celtics, Bulls and Team LeBron come to town, Philips Arena is packed, with fans rooting for the opposition.
Atlanta isn’t a lousy pro basketball town — it’s a lousy Hawks town.
Among the 122 big-four sports teams in North America, no brand may be more anemic in its local market than the Hawks. According to the ESPN Sports Poll, only 20 percent of respondents in the Atlanta area who identify themselves as NBA fans name the Hawks as their favorite team. […]
That condition is even more true among African-American NBA fans in Atlanta; only 14 percent call the Hawks their team.
And so, the messaging changes: Yeah, maybe we’re not Your Team for the rest of your life. But, for a nominal fee, we can be Your Team tonight.
Let it never be said that Hawks chief executive officer Steve Koonin — the mastermind behind “Swipe Right Night,” a Tinder-themed event aimed at helping Atlantans make “some more love connections at our games” that serves as the clearest example of the Hawks’ (pretty successful) efforts to target millennials and entice a a younger consumer base into supporting the club — is anything but completely committed to selling tickets … even if it means calling the very idea of fan commitment into question. Liberated fandom has never felt so naughty.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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