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To say that the journey of the
Charlotte Bobcats over the past few years has been rough, would be putting it
lightly.
Despite sizable notoriety at
the helm of the organization with owner Michael Jordan hard at work, the Bobcats have faced a losing record season after season.
But
there’s a new franchise in the making, a team finding a competitive edge
with the acquisition of Al Jefferson alongside a young core of talented
players, and a new look that will see the Bobcats donning an old familiar
name when they return as the Charlotte Hornets next year.
An
Emory University study highlighted
Charlotte’s basketball fans as some of the most social media savvy, holding steady at 4
th in the league for most engaged fans only after the NBA’s
heaviest hitters (Lakers, Heat, Celtics).
Recently
news broke about the team’s partnership with 10 Foot Wave,
incorporating the company’s FanConnect platform within Time Warner Cable Arena.
The technology combines sponsor messaging with live game content, real-time
stats, NBA scores and social media delivered to screens throughout the venue. I sat down with
Jerome Hubbard, Communications Coordinator for the Charlotte Bobcats, this week
to discuss the new platforms, the exciting re-branding, and the unwavering fan
support as the team begins its journey to capturing a new generation of fans.
On the Challenges of the Digital Information Age…"When I first got
here our record was 7-59. There’s not much good that’s going to come out of
7-59, it is what it is. If you’re the
Miami Heat and you’re winning games and you’re blowing people out of the water,
and you have the best player in the game you don’t really have to worry about
information because at the end of the day it’s pretty much everyday the Miami
Heat win and why they win. When you’re
dealing with losing, and you’re dealing with people who are tired of losing,
who work their tail off and are not seeing the results, then they say that
we’re not showing effort, we’re not showing energy, we’re not showing the
patience and the due diligence and the hard work, and that’s not right. So that’s more of a situation that you
have to really monitor and that goes to the personal relationships. In the past and even now the personal relationships that you gain with the reporters
and the people who are covering the team, whether it’s on the TV side, the
radio side, or the print side, those relationships allow you to give them
information knowing that they’ll use it fairly and that ultimately
they’ll use it in the right way. If you
don’t have those personal skills or that personal relationship then it’s really
hard and that to me really makes or breaks a person in this field."
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On Resurrecting &
Rebranding the Hornets…"There’s certain things about the Hornets that
Charlotte loves. Charlotte loves the colors, Charlotte loves the name,
Charlotte even loves the mascot.
But you
also have to keep in mind at the end of the day that it HAS to be different. We
can’t go back to everything that was the Hornets, but we do want to continue to grow and
galvanize not only our Bobcats fans, but those Hornets historians who love the
Hornets, love the tradition, love everything about the experience when they
first came.
You have all of these
different moving parts, the official name change, the logo, the mascot, the
cheerleaders, the unveiling of our uniforms, all of those
different things are strategic and I think we’ve made a concentrated effort to
continue to make sure that we maximize every opportunity with each phase that
we’re going through.
Everything that we
do we want to be an experience.
Unveiling our logo was an event where we had
our owner Michael Jordan halftime, really bringing out the logo with former
Hornets players with a bunch of fans there screaming, and it was well received,
in the same way that it was well received when we applied and were approved for
the name change. Hats off to not only the organization,
but also the fans that continue to support us.
There’s so much going on and we want to
maximize it, whether it’s thru digital, thru a fan experience, or whether it’s
just the continued process from start to finish. "
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| instagram.com/brooklyn_hun |
On New Technology in
the Arena…"If you look at the NFL, their sales in relation to
attendance has decreased over the past couple years and that’s because a lot of
people feel as though it’s much more convenient to be in front of the TV where I
can watch NFL RedZone and have five different games on at one time and I can
monitor not only the one I want to watch, but also what’s going on here, what’s
going on there, and how this or that game affects my fantasy league or team.
That truly appeals to fans
not only in the NFL, but also in MLB, and also the NBA, so if we can continue
to add various elements to our inner arena experience, that may be something
that somebody else doesn’t have.
And
that may get that one or two or 100 or 200 more individuals attending our
games. So you want to continue reinventing the wheel and keep adding elements and hopefully you get to a point where you have the best inner
arena experience in the NBA, and even more so than that, just sports in
general.
Adding something like the
FanConnect or the Technocom business center in our arena, or adding luxury
suites and a luxury experience for our suite owners, all of these different
things come into play and that’s just added value to our inner arena experience
for those that decide to come to our games."
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| instagram.com/brooklyn_hun |
On Developing the Fan
Experience…The fans are fans, if a team is losing or winning they’re still
going to come out and support. Like the Knicks, they have a loyal fan base,
they sell out every game no matter what. Win lose or draw they’re selling out
every game and that is a credit to the fans.
We want to make the fan experience great in Charlotte and we’ve done so
many things to continue to make sure that the organization and the fan
experience at our basketball games and anytime they come to our arena is up to
par. Whether it’s the interaction with
the players that they possibly can have pregame, the concession stand, the
dance team, the mascot, whether it’s us going out into the community and having
giveaways, or even having trivia contests through social media, there’s so many
different things that we have done in order to continue to keep our fans
engaged, to continue to keep the environment of the games great. So even if we win or lose, we want people to
be able to say, I enjoyed myself at the basketball game, it really was a great
experience. That one-on-one experience
that you can get coming to a Bobcats game is something that you really want to
hang your hat on.
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