Best Game Promotion: Awful Night (Altoona Curve)

What single game night promotion was most effective and creative. An example would be "President's Night" where a team builds an game day promotion around a them like "President's Night", perhaps handing out US flags and having namesakes like "George Washington, Richard Nixon, and George Bush" dropping the puck for a game held on President's Day. Consider creativity, entertainment value, media exposure, drawing power, and execution of the operations.

Awful Night (Altoona Curve)
The Pirates Double A franchise Altoona Curve put on a real tour-de-force promotion on July 14th, called Awful Night. Their goal....be simply Awful. The only failure: In their drive to be the worst, they have landed on top, with our Gameops.com Best Game Promotion Award.

The team sought (and found) every possible way to be bad, including music, video, premiums, entertainment, and pyrotechnics. The lowlights included:

• Clips from the movie Toxic Avenger
• Music from William Shatner and Milli Vanilli
• A gate giveaway of a 12 inch square piece of bubble-wrap
• A special presentation to awful teams like the 76 Buccaneers, 1962 Mets, and the 1990's Bengals
• Player batting averages were listed as "failed averages"....so a .300 hitter would have a .700 average of failing.
• Bad contests, like "Dunking for Onions" and "Bald Guy Races for a Toupee"
• An awful pre-game fireworks display
• In contests, the winners get nothing.
• Pre-game autographs with non-celebrities

The event got national attention, including a mention on the "Best Damn Sports Show Period". The evening was a classic example of a team reaching every conceivable method to connect with fans on a promotion. While it was simply awful.....it was simply extraordinary. Creative, complete, funny, media-friendly, well executed.....and a winner all around.

Honorable Mention:

• $1 SARS Night in Toronto - When the SARS outbreak hit Toronto it nearly shut down the city and caused serious damage to Toronto's tourism the Toronto Blue Jays flexed its civic role by encouraging a massive turnout to a game. To send the message that the city was a safe, vibrant and healthy city it offered tickets for $1 Canadian (about $.69 US) and sold over 48,000 tickets, which was the largest crowd since opening night.
  
  The team used the game and surrounding publicity to help educate people on the SARS virus. While the team cited a nearly half a million dollar loss (from the potential revenue lost from selling $1 tickets), the $48,000 gate was really only about $160,000 less than the revenue for an average game. The loss on paper is insignifacant to the goodwill earned and the message that the team sent to fans, locals, and potenial tourists.

• Throwback Nights - (Seattle Sonics, among many other teams) Many teams took the standard "Turn-Back-the-Clock" nights beyond wearing old uniforms in the last year. Many, like the Seattle Sonic, integrated the theme through out their game presentation and marketing. Seattle turned back to 1979 and handed out replica Championship rings, throw-back jerseys, dicounted food and beer specials and special ticket purchase packages in their year-long "Throw Back Tuesday Promotions".