At a serious occasion like WNBA All-Star Weekend, an enormous live performance or comedy present usually wraps up the evening or the general festivities.
When the Indiana Fever’s mother or father firm, Pacers Sports activities & Leisure (PS&E), teamed with Kevin Hart’s leisure firm, Hartbeat, for All-Star Weekend’s Fever Fest on July 19, it was only the start of a far larger plan.
PS&E and Hartbeat booked a Fever Fest lineup that has 803Fresh placing boots on the bottom for a line-dancing opener, earlier than turning it over to comedy author, stand-up, and Black-ish star Deon Cole and Fever participant and Syd + TP Present costar Sydney Colson to host premier comedians, together with Cedric the Entertainer, Leslie Jones, and Aida Rodriguez. In the meantime, dwell performances are on deck from The Child LAROI, G-Eazy, and Bia, whereas Boogie Down Productions and Membership Quarantine DJ D-Good end the evening by spinning for a WNBA All-Star Recreation watch celebration.
When Indianapolis hosted NBA All-Star week in 2024, PS&E and Hartbeat entered a five-year settlement for Hartbeat to turn out to be the corporate’s “cultural curator”—mixing basketball, music, and comedy for occasions on the Fever and NBA’s Indiana Pacers’ Gainbridge Fieldhouse and downtown Indianapolis all year long. Although that deal was struck with the potential for stand-up golf equipment downtown, music bookings, halftime exhibits, festivals, merchandising, and scripted digital and social media content material, it’s tipping off by placing collectively an occasion particularly with Fever and WNBA followers in thoughts.
“Fever followers usually journey greater than 200 miles to return to a sport, so what they’re on the lookout for is their All-Star, their second,” mentioned Joey Graziano, evp of technique and new enterprise ventures at PS&E. “It requires the time, vitality, focus, and starvation that you’d give to any one of many different occasions.”
As PS&E is conscious, Fever followers and WNBA followers exist as their very own entity. With assist from reigning Rookie of the 12 months Caitlin Clark, the workforce’s first playoff run since 2016, and its first Commissioner’s Cup win ever, the Fever draw followers from all 50 states and greater than 47 nations to video games. Of Fever followers who usually fill Gainbridge Fieldhouse, fewer than 10% will ever attend a Pacers sport.
And Fever followers are simply one of many rising contingents that helped Indianapolis appeal to greater than 30 million guests final yr. Graziano factors to current expansions to the town’s Indiana Conference Heart and surrounding lodging as a part of the increase, but in addition famous that Indiana and Purdue universities will likely be including 1000’s of recent college students to the town within the coming years.
With Indianapolis simply coming off of an NBA Ultimate, commonly internet hosting the Indianapolis 500, the NFL Mix, the Huge 10 males’s and girls’s basketball tournaments, and the Huge 10 soccer championship, and making ready to welcome three installments of the NCAA basketball males’s (2026 and 2029) and girls’s (2029) Ultimate 4, PS&E sees alternative to construct a greater expertise round all of it with what Hartbeat and its leaders, together with Kevin Hart and Jeff Clanagan, have constructed.
“I feel it’s a well timed challenge and an essential partnership for us,” mentioned Janina Lundy, Hartbeat’s evp and head of selling and model technique. “We’ve performed so much within the sports activities area, and clearly are in comedy and tradition day-after-day, so bringing this all collectively throughout such an thrilling time in ladies’s sports activities particularly, I’m excited to be part of it. That is actually only the start.”
Filling within the gaps
Hartbeat has accomplished quite a lot of work with league and model companions on content material collection in recent times, teaming with ESPN on the NBA Unplugged alt-cast that includes Kevin Hart and quite a few rotating company. As well as, Peacock partnered with Hartbeat on spotlight commentary for the Paris Olympics in 2024 and, extra just lately, wrapped the eleventh season of its ice-bath athlete interview collection, Chilly As Balls.
Whereas content material for Fever Fest will principally be restricted to digital and social media, Pacers Sports activities & Leisure and Hartbeat view it as one of many areas the place the Indianapolis market may catch up. PS&E possession sees much more potential simply past the doorways of Gainbridge Area Home, the Fever and Pacers’ dwelling that noticed greater than 2 million followers attend video games and dwell performances final yr, making it the most-visited venue within the state.
Pacers Sports activities and Leisure
The ability has undergone a three-year renovation costing greater than $360 million and is about to accommodate a coaching heart for the Fever. With each Fever sport bringing in audiences that characteristic 30% or extra guests from out of state, PS&E sees the Hartbeat partnership as a chance to develop its leisure calendar—and that of Downtown Indianapolis—to twelve months a yr.
“We’re seeing all of those individuals flooding into the town and state, and there’s a necessity for us to have the ability to meet the leisure wants of those audiences,” Graziano mentioned. “So we’re recognizing the weekends and weekdays that we consider there’s a chance for us to fill leisure gaps and meet the followers the place they’re…whether or not it’s comedy or music.”
Simply the beginning
Graziano sees Fever Fest not as an All-Star one-off, however an annual occasion that Indianapolis can develop into. Extra importantly, it highlights a piece of Indianapolis that “lays out very well for what the subsequent technology of followers are on the lookout for” by clustering Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts’ dwelling at Lucas Oil Stadium, the conference heart, and myriad accommodations, eating places, parks, and actions collectively inside strolling distance.
He additionally sees it someday opening the door to a possible Hartbeat comedy venue downtown that expands the town’s choices, however retains lots of them indoors and unfazed by shifts within the climate. That could be coming in some unspecified time in the future down the road, however Lundy famous that a lot of PS&E’s communication with Hartbeat has centered on constructing round present strengths.
Lundy favored the thought of beginning Hartbeat’s time in Indianapolis with an enormous occasion like Fever Fest, noting that it supplied a sensible take a look at the Fever’s rising, expansive fanbase and that of the WNBA as a complete. It’s an viewers that’s there for the sport, however doesn’t thoughts beginning with comedians it is aware of, ramping as much as music it loves, then both becoming a member of the gang within the Fieldhouse or in entrance of D-Good’s turntables.
“We’ve put collectively a lineup of artists and athletes with Sydney becoming a member of that touches plenty of completely different audiences and speaks to how broad the viewers for the Fever and for the W are normally, and that is only the start,” Lundy mentioned.
