Transforming the NBA Fan Experience

Conventional wisdom holds that if a professional team boasts winning record fans will buy tickets and attend home games.

In the late 1990’s Ascension consultants helped the NBA Atlanta Hawks basketball team realize that consistently putting on a great show is more important than winning!

Despite having reasonably priced tickets and a winning record the Hawks under-performed other NBA teams on average game attendance and overall game revenue production. As we know today professional basketball competes with an ever expanding range of entertainment options – Netflix, Video Games, Theatrical Movies to name a few.

Working closely with team senior management Ascension consultants developed a custom insight mining process to poll fans in game on a range of entertainment and operational dimensions.

Working closely with Hawks senior management Ascension consultants developed a custom insight mining process to poll fans on a range of entertainment and operational dimensions.

The research revealed critical fan perception “gaps” related to operation and entertainment aspects of the experience. Once these gaps were addressed by management the overall game experience improved for fans resulting in positive word of mouth and improved ticket and merchandise revenues for the team.

The Ascension model was shared with NBA Commissioner David Stern and then NBA Properties President Rick Welts who promptly emulated the approach to develop TMBO – Team Marketing & Business Operations.

This strategic NBA group consists of 40+ staffers from management consulting backgrounds focused on developing strategic best practices to maximize revenue for all NBA teams.

Ascension’s role inspiring NBA Commissioner David Stern to develop this program underscores our ability to create game changing paradigms.