For months—years, even—we’ve been hearing about professional sports’ efforts to cultivate the female fan. There are merch collaborations with Abercrombie, new fashion brands like Off Season, efforts to make NFL game day more appealing for the “millennial mom,” and even Hallmark movies. Most of that is happening in the NFL, but still—the value of the female fan has started to catch on in other sports too.
Or has it? Case in point: An NBA team just tried to host an event with a strip club. A few weeks ago, the Atlanta Hawks announced plans for a “theme night” celebrating Magic City, a famed strip club in Atlanta. The night was planned for when the Hawks were playing the Orlando Magic. The Hawks are owned by Tony Ressler and Jami Gertz; Gertz, an actress and filmmaker, was an executive producer of the five-part Starz docuseries Magic City: An American Fantasy. “The iconic Atlanta institution has made such an incredible impact on our city and its unique culture,” she said in a statement when the theme night was announced.
But for those who haven’t seen the documentary and aren’t familiar with Atlanta culture, the plan did not land well. San Antonio Spurs player Luke Kornet was among the first to speak out. “The NBA should desire to protect and esteem women, many of whom work diligently every day to make this the best basketball league in the world,” he wrote in a Medium post. “We should promote an atmosphere that is protective and respectful of the daughters, wives, sisters, mothers, and partners that we know and love. Allowing this night to go forward without protest would reflect poorly on us as an NBA community, specifically in being complicit in the potential objectification and mistreatment of women in our society.”
And so the league got involved. “When we became aware of the Atlanta Hawks’ scheduled promotion, we reached out to Hawks leadership to better understand their plans and rationale,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “While we appreciate the team’s perspective and their desire to move forward, we have heard significant concerns from a broad array of league stakeholders, including fans, partners and employees. I believe canceling this promotion is the right decision for the broader NBA community.” The Hawks said in a statement that they were “very disappointed” but “fully [understood]” the decision.
The reaction has been mixed. Some fans agreed with Kornet that the promotion was disrespectful; others thought the reaction was overblown (the promotion involved selling lemon pepper wings and a hoodie, not actual stripping). Some called out the NBA for stepping in here, but still promoting other arguably more harmful partnership deals, like sports betting.
Within Atlanta, Magic City is well known, but it was easy for this promotion to reflect badly on the broader league. The team should celebrate its city, absolutely—but maybe not with a strip club.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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