Atlanta Hawks games deliver nonstop entertainment. It begins with an eye-popping, pre-game visual that turns the court into the ultimate high-definition TV screen.
The entertainment keeps going: flying gymnasts slam-dunking, parachuting Chick-fil-A cows, enthusiastic cheerleaders taking the court.
Meanwhile, you can always depend on Harry the Hawk to be there at the game — running up and down the aisles, being silly and dancing — anything to keep fans engaged and entertained.
Sporting events have evolved. Fans want a competitive game — but they also are seeking an experience. The goal, of course, is to create a game experience with various layers of entertainment, and to present something for everyone.
And with a major renovation of Philips Arena underway and other new elements on the horizon, the Hawks hope to bring the fan experience to another level.
The AJC recently connected with Joe Abercrombie, vice president, fan experience at Atlanta Hawks, who recently joined the hometown team after 14 years with the Houston Rockets, to discuss staples of the Hawks experience and what's coming down the road. This Q and A was edited for length.
Q: Talk about your job as being in charge of fan experience.
A: When you think about sports, really the fans are the first thing. We have the players and we have this sporting event, but around that is the experience the fans get, and to me, that starts from when they get out of their car at the parking lot until they get in the car and leave. That is the fan experience. Holistically, we are looking at that at the Atlanta Hawks. We are doing a major renovation to the entire building, so start to finish, we are going to try and make sure to take care of the fans so they get bang for their buck when they come here to Philips Arena.
It’s food and beverage. It’s quality of food, quality of seating, quality of service. And once you are finally here, it’s the quality of the presentation. The game is the most important thing, but everything ancillary to the game is critical to making the fan say, “I had a blast.”
There’s so many facets — how we shift, transitions from one to the next — the dancers to the floor to the new video board back to the floor to fan cams, dance cams, kiss cams. This all plays a role in how it’s scripted, and how it flows from one to the next is critical. I don’t want them to remember (just) one thing that they saw. It’s four hours of programming. I want them to say it’s all good.
Q: What are some of the staples of the game experience that will remain and what is new that’s coming?
A: Atlanta has made its name traditionally with music, and we want to continue to do that. We have one of the best DJs in the business, DJ (Big) Tigger, and we also have Sir Foster, who is our keyboardist and very unique, and we have Ryan Cameron as our PA announcer. These are all three elements that have been around for a long time in our game presentation, and they're not going anywhere — they are some of the best in business. We do want to try to align how they are factored into our game presentation and make things flow better.
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Court projection has always been a huge factor here at the Hawks. This is our fourth season we’ve done court projection here and it’s awesome. We are going to look hard at what its future is because we are going to renovate and there will be new video boards. We are talking millions of pixel displays in the future.
Q: Talk about the planning that goes into the entertainment features during a game.
A: If you go to the game, we have a script we follow. Everything from pre-game to all of the quarter breaks, we script according to the game. We want to make sure as we go through this game, we are hitting a lot of our minor elements first, and as we progress through the second, third and fourth quarters, we want the energy to rise. It's like telling a good story.
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As games progress, we have what is called a hot timeout, which means if we were down by 6 points and we went on a 8-point run and took the lead and forced their coach to call a timeout, we may take this (holding several pages of a script) and throw it out the window. We want to maintain the energy in the building. If our fan base got up and they are excited, we put the script down, and we play hot music, we roll entertainment on the floor and we throw T-shirts, whatever we can do to keep it going and then we back that in with a hype video at the end that reminds (fans) we are back on defense. Get up. Defense. We want (the players) to come back to play (and fans) all standing. We have to maintain that energy through that two-and-a-half-minute timeout.
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