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 at a strip club. A few weeks ago, the Atlanta Hawks announced plans for a “theme night” at 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 at a strip club.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab scores an Nvidia investment. After a period of tumult for the startup, it’s signed a multiyear partnership with Nvidia to deploy at least one gigawatt of chops to train and serve its frontier AI models. The two companies will collaborate to design AI training and serving systems.
Five players defected from Iran’s women’s soccer team. The operation took place after Iran’s final match of the Asian Women’s Cup against the Philippines in Australia. Australian government representatives informed players of their options earlier in the week. The women had been called “wartime traitors” on Iran state TV and seemingly threatened with repercussions on their return to the country after failing to sing the national anthem in their opening Asian Cup match, The Athletic reports.
The Alexander brothers are found guilty. Oren, Alon, and Tal Alexander—known before this as successful luxury real estate brokers—were convicted of sex trafficking after a five-week trial in Manhattan. Eleven women testified that they were sexually assaulted by one or more of the brothers. Their lawyers say they plan to appeal.
Kalshi’s Luana Lopes Lara covers Inc.‘s female founders issue. Lopes Lara was recently crowned the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire after building the prediction market. I met with her recently at Kalshi’s NYC offices, so stay tuned for more.
A European AI startup closed a record deal—and brought on Sheryl Sandberg. The former Meta exec joined the board of Nscale, which just raised $2 billion, a record deal of its kind for Europe. Sandberg’s former Facebook colleague Nick Clegg, also ex-U.K. deputy prime minister, is joining the board alongside her. Nscale is an AI cloud provider backed by Nvidia.
ON MY RADAR
The surprising way breast cancer screenings could reveal heart disease Washington Post
Life after acquisition with Dr. Barbara Sturm Vogue Business
Nina Park, the woman on many celebrities’ lips NYT
PARTING WORDS
“It has been such a gift and got me through so many things. I’m just better busy.”
— Michelle Pfieffer on her return to acting. She’s in two TV series this spring, her first major TV roles since the 1970s.