Marketing 12th Edition by Charles Lamb,Charles Lamb,Joe Hair

Exercise 12

LAP DANCE AT BOSTON BLAZERS LACROSSE GAME: PROMOTIONAL MISTAKE OR CREATIVE GENIUS?
The Boston Blazers is a professional indoor lacrosse team based in Boston, Massachusetts, that began play in 2009. It is one of ten teams in the National Lacrosse League (NLL). Other teams are: Buffalo Bandits, Calgary Roughnecks, Colorado Mammoth, Edmonton Rush, Minnesota Swarm, Philadelphia Wings, Rochester Nighthawks, Toronto Rock, and Washington Stealth. The Boston Blazers lacrosse team also faces pretty stiff competition in the professional sports arena with teams such as the Boston Celtics (basketball), the Boston Red Sox (baseball), the Boston Bruins (hockey), the New England Patriots (football), and the New England Revolution (soccer).

Professional indoor lacrosse is in its infancy when compared to other professional sporting events and professional sports players. Event-wise, the average number of fans at a NLL game is 10,000 while game attendance at other professional sporting events averages anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 for basketball, hockey, and baseball to 70,000 for football. Another huge differential is in terms of pricing. For example, in 2011, the Boston Blazers offered four tickets with food and drink (hamburger, fries, soft drink) for US$99.00. That compares to around US$500 for four tickets with food and drink at Fenway Park when attending a Boston Red Sox game. Player-wise, a professional indoor lacrosse player usually holds a "real" job and plays part-time for the NLL, receiving an average salary of $1,000 per game. In contrast, the average 2009 salary of a Major League Baseball player was $3 million.
Nationwide Media Attention
Professional sporting events have long focused on halftime entertainment as a critical aspect of overall fan experience. Probably one of the more memorable halftime shows occurred at the Super Bowl XXXVIII in February of 2004 with the oft referenced "wardrobe malfunction" in which Janet Jackson's breast was exposed by Justin Timberlake for about a half a second. On January 15, 2011, however, the Boston Blazers rivaled the Super Bowl incident when the team captured the attention of news outlets across America for its controversial halftime show.
Billed as a promotional event during halftime of the game against the Edmonton Rush, Scorch, the Blazer's mascot, soon became the central figure in what became a YouTube sensation. According to fans, with the rap song "Low" blaring in on the sound system, a red carpet was put down with a chair for Scorch to sit in. Scantily clad dancers then competed to see which one of them could give Scorch the best lap dance. The lap dance event was broadcast on the Jumbotron video display during the performance.
Numerous fans videotaped the performance on their cell phones and posted it to You- Tube. However, these videos were soon removed from YouTube citing a copyright claim by the National Lacrosse League. Before their removal from the YouTube site, fans can be heard saying "Oh my God" and young children can be seen sitting in their seats watching the halftime performance. A portion of the performance was captured and aired by a local news channel, with the video remaining on the news Web site. Criticism of the halftime performance used vocabulary such as "raunchy," "scandalous," and "extremely off ensive."
The Apology
The day after the game, the president and general manager of the Boston Blazers, Doug Reffue, posted an apology on the team's Facebook page. He said, in part:
The Boston Blazers halftime act for Saturday's game was clearly not executed according to plan. We are extremely disappointed with elements of the halftime show. We had intended to provide an entertaining and fun halftime environment for our fans and that is not what transpired.
In addition to the posted apology, Reffue offered 2,000 free tickets to the team's next home game. Reffue's apology, however, did not stem the media fl are over the halftime performance. While it seemed that Reffue was attributing the performance to an unplanned and unexpected mistake, the detail and clarity of the performance made it obvious to fans that the performance was well-choreographed.
The Outcome
While some might have seen the performance as a mistake that would have an effect on fan patronage, this was not the case. Attendance at the game the night of the lap dance performance was 8,536. Attendance the week after the highly publicized lap dance was 10,422. Plus, the story was the biggest news coverage to ever hit the NLL. While the NLL commissioner noted that the lap dance performance was an error in judgment, he noted the bright side of the story by saying that it was a good thing in the long run if it helped people find out about the NLL and the Blazers.
How did viral marketing affect the Boston Blazers?