If you’ve never visited the site Sactown Royalty, you are doing yourself a disservice as an NBA fan. While I was perusing the site the other day I noticed a link to an official Sacramento Kings Team Announcement. Why did it catch my eye? Because the title mentioned the Kings would be virtually giving away beer by selling it for $1 a glass at their December 16th, 2009 nationally televised home game against the Washington Wizards.
What? $1 Beers? Could this be true?
Sure enough here is what the team said in their official announcement:
All Kings fans who attend the game and help showcase Sacramento’s great home-court advantage to a national TV audience will be treated to $1 beer (or soda or water) at ARCO Arena concession stands. The dollar beer promotion will run through the end of halftime, while soda and water will be just $1 throughout the entire game.
Well two days later, we are finding out that the $1 Beer experiment was both a success and a failure. The team did win the game in front of a raucous home town crowd, which was the second largest crowd this season for the Kings. But it has been reported on Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie that the Kings announced crowd was at 16,579 fans. The official capacity at Arco Arena is 17,373. Not only did the promise of $1 beers not bring enough people to fill the stadium, but the ones that did come looked a little more prepared for full on liver anhilating intoxication (see photo at right) a baseball game than they did for cheering on their local basketball team. But with all that said, i’d certainly call the event a huge success, and definitely buzz worthy.
The Kings Owners, the Casino Hotel owning brothers the Maloofs, are becoming the mad geniuses of marketing in the NBA. The may not be the most apt in the basketball decision department, but they certainly love the game of basketball and sure can market the hell out of anything. Although the Kings haven’t had much to get too excited about the past few years in the ways of a contending team, it seems like they have finally planted the seeds through a mix of young and upcoming talent and veteran leaders to once again get back on the right path.
Rookie Tyreke Evans alone is enough to get excited about if you are a Sacramento Kings fan. The guy is the leading contender thus far to be named the rookie of the year, and is showing tremendous abilities to score, pass, and rebound, among the likes of some of the better guards in the NBA. With a marketable player like ‘Reke in the picture it looks like the Kings won’t have a need for the $1 Beer Nights much longer. In the meantime Kings fans….drink up!
