The Experience Economy of Sports Marketing with Steve Koonin

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Host: Welcome to adspeak Adweek's podcast about the business of marketing, media and creativity. In this episode, we're sharing a conversation recorded live at Brand Week featuring leaders from across the industry discussing the ideas shaping brands. Right now. Let's get into it.

Host: Great to see everyone here. Steve, welcome to Brand Week 2025. Thrilled to have you here. So, as we mentioned, Steve is the CEO of the Atlanta Hawks and the State Farm Arena. Related to the arena, uh, been an interesting couple days. You've had this up and coming music artist playing at the arena. I'm going to look up his name here. Paul McCartney.

Steve Koonin: We think he might make it.

Host: Yeah. What was that? What a thrill. What was that like?

Steve Koonin: Uh, I mean, it's amazing. It's the first time he's been back in more than a decade and we had two sold out nights in a row and able to host people about half who did not live in Atlanta who come in which creates revenue for hotels and restaurants and, um, continues. And you guys got to go and see Sir Paul.

Host: Thank you for that. That was awesome. So Steve is a proud lifelong Atlantan. I'll make sure I have this right. So you were born here, raised here, went to college here, University of Georgia, and your whole professional life has been here. Do I have that right?

Steve Koonin: You have that right. We don't breed well in captivity, so I'm one of very few.

Host: So before we get started in more in depth, I have a land a trivia question for you. Oh, okay. So in Atlanta, it's a multiple choice. There are more than blank streets with the name Peachtree in it. Is it 50 to 1? Hundred, 100, 150 or 150 plus?

Steve Koonin: I think it's 50 to 100. I think there's 89.

Host: You are correct. Congratulations, sir. I feel like you should win, like the most Atlanta person in the world.

Steve Koonin: Like if, Well, I could qualify, except I went down a one way Peach street the wrong way on the way here tonight. So we've got work to do.

Host: We won't mention it. Want to just set the stage a little about Steve's incredible career. Storied career, really, in the intersection of entertainment, sports and culture. You spent over a decade at Coca Cola Co. Running worldwide marketing and advertising operations. You spent almost 15 years at Turner, ultimately as president there. And then you joined the Hawks in 2014 as CEO, as we mentioned, and the arena. And then Tony Ressler purchased the Hawks in the arena in 2015. So about a year later, talk a little bit about when you all arrived. Paint, uh, the picture of what you saw at the organization and where you wanted to take it, where you thought there was an opportunity and how you kind of went about it.

Steve Koonin: Well, the Atlanta Hawks have had a unique past. They were bought in 1974 by Ted Turner as inexpensive programming. So there was no connection to the city. There was no fan building or any kind of activities that normally become part of the fabric of the community. And then in 2003, when the failed Time Warner and AOL merger happened to satisfy Wall street, there was a mandate to sell all the sports teams in the TV networks, which ironically, today are worth more than all the TV networks. And so, again, that group had no connection. When we took over the team, there was $15,000 in the foundation treasury. And so we wanted to make this what we call true to Atlanta. We wanted it to represent our city. We wanted the team. And we also saw where society was going, that sports might be the only campfire that we can all get around and agree. And so we thought we would build a platform around community and really, really, really doing things that not write grants and checks. And that's fantastic. That's not who we are. We put our back and our muscle and our dollars behind connecting and doing things for the community. For example, in 2020, when Covid hit, we were the first sports venue who opened for voting and became the largest voting precinct in American history. 55,000 people. Yesterday we did a project called Vision to Learn. Imagine you're in third grade and you've never had an eye exam and you can't see the board in class. You're going to be disruptive. You're not going to be able to follow and grow and build your future. So we give vision tests to every student in Atlanta public schools, and if they need glasses, we provide the glasses for free. Now they have a choice of three frames. We're a little pushy thing. And all of what we do, we also do with corporations in Atlanta. This is the third biggest home of Fortune 500 companies. And so we partner with our partners to bring them these opportunities and to be able to collectively do good for the community.

Host: Talk a little bit about the fandom, the fan experience. When you arrived. How have you built that, and what were the steps that you did to build that and sort of really invigorate the culture and create more relevancy for the team in the Atlanta community with the so. And also one thing I also know, you've used technology very smartly, so talk a little bit about that.

Steve Koonin: The plan, the blueprint for sports is either you're selling hope that you've got a great draft pick and you're going to be great, you're going to rebuild, or you're selling sustained success. We were talking before you're a Celtics fan. 18 banners is a lot of sustained success. We think we created a third leg of the school that was game experience. Every time you go to a Hawks game, it's like watching, uh, play a production. We mix culture and competition. We broke little nas x at our game. We have a lot of music, we have tremendous amount of entertainment, and we've been voted number one in game experience for the last seven years. And so the one thing nobody can take away from us is Southern hospitality. Hopefully, all of you have had a fantastic time in Atlanta, and thank you so much for bringing the conference here. It's fantastic for our city. And so when you go to a Hawks game, it's a very different experience than going to a sporting event. It's a cultural event. Uh, it's hard to explore, explain in words, but I hope all of you get a chance to sample it. And it's worked. We've become a top 10 team in attendance, even though our performance isn't where we'd like it to be. But nobody goes to Hawks game and has a bad time.

Host: What were the tools you used to bring the actual Atlanta community to the games, the diverse community that Atlanta is? Well, because it wasn't that way when you came in.

Steve Koonin: I come from television, which the single most thing to understand in television is your audience. And in Atlanta, we're very fortunate. Here we have the most diverse city in America. And we embrace who we are and who our audience is. And then we do programs and project and talk to our audience. And the problem is Atlanta is a transplant city. We call it a regional marketing graveyard. Every Fortune 500 company has a regional office here. So when you get sent from Iowa to Atlanta and they call you up one day and say, great news, you're coming back to headquarters in Iowa, everybody goes, I'll stay here, I'm good. And so the generation of fans who moved here, I can't have you move to Atlanta and convert you to Hawks fan. I'm going to cut you, you're going to bleed Celtic green. But your kids, your kids who grew up here. So we have the youngest fan base in the league. We have one of the youngest fan bases in all of sports because we talk to next generation Atlantans and diverse audiences.

Host: Great. So when you think about that younger audience in general, there's increasing competition for their time and attention. Right. They're gaming, they're on YouTube, short form content and the like. So how does your business model and your strategy have to evolve going forward? Because there is potentially a chance where being a fan no longer means actually going to the game or actually watching the full broadcast.

Steve Koonin: 100%, uh, I can deal with that. So we've set goals. We want to be a top five team on TikTok and YouTube. And I'll give you one quick example. Every sports league now, when they launch and announce their schedule, do a thematic video. There's some very creative things. We did it a bit differently. We had Davis Dawes and I hope I got his name right, who is a big influencer. He lived in the arena for 24 hours. Our partner rooms to go, built a bedroom for him. He brought his friends. 2 chain came in and they were laying down beats at 3 o' clock in the morning. I was invited to go hand him the keys to the arena. And candidly, I thought our people were a little nutty doing this. And we broadcast on Twitch for 24 hours. We had well over a million views. And when the NBA's monthly social report came out, we were number one. Because we took those 24 hours, we cut them into 145 different spots, we put them all over with Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and we created something that was differentiated, that was all about the Hawks experience. Uh, and it had nothing really to do with player score or gain.

Host: You're one of the few sports leaders, executives, uh, presidents, CEOs, who actually comes from marketing, from a marketing background. How do you think that's perhaps changed your approach? I know you're known for someone to be an innovator, a risk taker. Talk about that balance. And what do you think you've infused into your purview vis a vis coming from the marketing wheel?

Steve Koonin: Well, again, how do you build a brand? How do you build a business? How do you build long term and generational? Fan building is a key piece and the way you do it is you talk to them in a voice that resonates. So we've done some unusual things. How many of you and I can't see because of the lights. How many of you are familiar with the in season tournament of the NBA? Okay, six. So two, uh, years ago, the NBA desperately said to teams we need you to help market. Nobody knows what the in season tournament is. So the challenge to our marketing team was to come up with something that would really break through. And we came up with the idea of only fans. How many of you know what onlyfans is?

Host: Much more than quadruple the hands.

Host: Yeah.

Steve Koonin: So because only real NBA fans would know at the end season tournament. But the way we executed the creative is Harry the Hawk was writhing on a bed talking about full 515 action.

Narrator: Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard but not the pipeline? That's bullspin. And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.

Steve Koonin: My boss asked for results.

Host: So I open my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had.

Steve Koonin: Impressions.

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Steve Koonin: 40 million views later they know. I don't think somebody who grew up in ticket sales probably would take that risk.

Host: I think you're probably right.

Steve Koonin: Or um, one of the other ideas we had, and there's a theme to our perversion is we wanted people to be able to swap their jersey to cheat on their team. I want to convince you to cheat on the Celtics. So this was right around the time of the Ashley Madison data leak. So we found three people in Atlanta named Ashley Madison and shot spots with them, encouraging people to cheat on their team. Um, and again, the NBA called me at 9:30 in the morning and go, what the hell are you doing? And then they called back at 4 o' clock after we had over 50 million views in the day. Could you do that again?

Narrator: Yeah.

Host: Ah.

Steve Koonin: So taking a marketing approach to build something, we're not selling a product. We're building a lifelong relationship. And then we want to be able to transfer that relationship to our partners and to our city. And so you've got to take a different approach.

Host: I mean, something like those two examples. Was there actual pushback inside your company or you built such a culture where everyone embraced it, or were you sort of like having to convince people to do this, or were you first against it or.

Steve Koonin: I wasn't against it.

Host: I had that sense.

Steve Koonin: No, in fact, Ashley was my idea. Yeah.

Host: Um, but is that part of it? Because you're coming from the top, you feel like you get buy in.

Steve Koonin: Yeah. And our marketing team feels supported.

Host: Yeah.

Steve Koonin: They feel any idea that they bring can be executed rather than edited.

Host: Yeah.

Steve Koonin: And there's plenty we haven't done, but we've got some more to do.

Host: That's great. So let's talk about recent events. You know, last week there was obviously this quite big sports betting scandal that erupted in the league. One of the players, one of the coaches in the league were vested and indicted. You know, this is a super, uh, important issue for the league. It's a very brand conscious league. I understand that sports betting is not legal in Atlanta, but even despite that, what were your initial thoughts when you heard about it? And if you were going to talk to commissioner Adam Silver and advise him, what would you tell him to do?

Steve Koonin: Right now I'm actually convinced that because sports betting is legal, we found these things. If somebody's naive enough to believe this stuff wasn't happening 10 years ago, I feel sorry for you. And what sports betting has been able to do is build companies that build the controls to see irregular betting habits. There was a UFC fight Saturday night that had the same thing. And so I think we're better off with the controls. Now, I do think there needs to be some adjustments. It's difficult to look at the 9th, 10th, 11th player having bettable stats.

Host: Right. Like these prop bets.

Steve Koonin: And, um, I'm much More worried about college, where College basketball. There's 365 Division 1 teams. Those are more vulnerable in my opinion. But I do believe that sports betting is the best hygiene for this from a brand perspective. Hopefully you build enough equity with the NBA. Adam Silver wrote an op ed in the New York Times team 10 years ago advocating sports betting. It's a position that we've proudly taken. And I think that with anything new like this, there's going to be people who abuse it.

Host: As a lifelong marketer, again I mentioned you worked at Coca Cola, maybe the Goat. The history of marketing. What are some of the key marketing tenants you've built up in your life over the years? And I guess have they shifted or changed at all? But what are some of the fundamental marketing tenants that you ascribe to and maybe you'd want to share with this audience?

Steve Koonin: I mean, the biggest one is everything communicates. What you say, what you don't say, what you do, what you don't do, everything you do as a brand communicates who you are. And you will and can make mistakes. It's how you recover. And so to me, making sure that when we communicate, when we do things, we're very conscious in the way that we're being perceived. And the other thing, Coke was very hard because they wanted to be all things to all people. And where we really got traction and success, besides growing horizontally by opening China and Eastern Europe and other countries, is when we got really focused. For example, we made Sprite under the banner of obey your thirst. We tied back to the NBA. I've had many, many years connected with the NBA. And we use the NBA, we use Kobe, br, and in Grant Hill as spokespeople. But in humorous commercials that were about obey your thirst, trust your instincts. And so I think most marketers have a fear of the F word. And the F word is focus. And so you've got to be so diligent on who you're talking to, how you're talking to them. And when you try to be all things to all people, you see what happened recently with Nike became available everywhere. You would drive through suburban neighborhoods and see 60 year old guys cutting the lawn with black socks and Nikes.

Host: Nikes.

Steve Koonin: And you can look and say that's not their audience.

Host: Yeah, speaking of audience, it related to this. You said something earlier today with me which I thought was really interesting. Talk a little bit about this, about you shouldn't or you can't deny your audience. Talk about how that played into your Atlanta Hawks strategy.

Steve Koonin: Wow, easy to be fans. We're the most diverse city in America. 50% of Atlanta is African American and Caucasian. 50, 50. And the old ownership group here, prior to wanted this vision of what they have. And they didn't live in Atlanta, they lived in Boston, New York and Washington. They had this vision that people were going to drive two hours in Atlanta traffic to come to the game. And we called those the Alpharetti unicorns. It's not going to happen on a weekday. And so instead of trying to get who you can't get, invest in who you can get. And then every time they come, surprise, delight, connect. And that's. I think it was kind of simple, candidly.

Host: And I think you have the highest ticket buyer in the black community.

Narrator: Correct.

Steve Koonin: About 42% of our ticket buyers are African American.

Host: That's number one in the league by far.

Steve Koonin: I think Washington's second at seven.

Host: Let's look into the future a little bit. What are some of the key trends in sports and entertainment and specific maybe to marketing that are on your radar, that could create opportunities, could pose threats and challenges? And generally speaking, part two is, uh, like what keeps you up at night?

Steve Koonin: Well, part one is I think place based marketing is an underrated opportunity. What you see happening. And give huge credit to the Atlanta Braves who built the Battery, which is adjacent to their ballpark. We're building a $5 billion live work play 50 acre development right across from our building in Mercedes Benz, where the Falcon is in Atlanta, United Centennial Yards. And It'll have a 5,300 seat Live Nation Theater. It has COSM, which is the sphere of sports. If you haven't seen it, it's pretty amazing. And hundreds of thousands of square feet of food and beverage and a few other attractions we haven't announced yet. And I think marketers need to be where people are play space. I think coming from television, I've seen the degradation of TV advertising and it's pretty severe. And I just think brands need to look at physical places. And I think the interaction, whether it's in a venue like Centennial Yards or a stadium or an arena or even a shopping mall, is a real opportunity to get people where they are and when their mind is open to purchasing.

Host: And what about threats? What keeps you up at night? What is something that you have to be super mindful of? Now again, I mentioned some of the early changing of the younger generations and how they consume entertainment. What are some of the threats that you have to look at?

Steve Koonin: I think the biggest threat to sports is the disruption of media. And I look at streaming as fantastic. And you have a TV background, too. So much of television was done in by lead, in by adjacent programming, by connecting things. And now somebody was complaining to me last night at McCartney, they have 11 streaming apps and they don't know what's on and they don't know how to get there and they can't move from Amazon to Netflix without basically redoing, you know, and it's funny. And I said to him, the cable bundle is looking a little bit better now, isn't it?

Host: That's right, Steve. This was terrific. I really appreciate it. What a treat to have you here.

Steve Koonin: Thank you for coming to it.

Host: That was a conversation recorded live at Brand Week. You can find more coverage, analysis and interviews from across the marketing and media world@adweek.com thanks for listening to Ad Speak. If you like the show, be sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Narrator: Flowing. Ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them. That's bullspend and marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions.

Host: I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow.

Host: Yeah, it it wasn't.

Narrator: Cut The Bull Spend LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title and More. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com campaign terms and conditions apply.

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