The Hawks have “launched the NBA’s first formalized creator collective,” called the Atlanta Hawks Creator Collective, according to Alexander Lee of DIGIDAY. The collective is a “group of 25 content creators that the NBA team has granted special access to home games and events such as training facility tours.” The team “soft-launched the program” last year. Members of the collective are “paid a fee to create content about the games they attend, in addition to a mixture of other paid and unpaid opportunities.” The past year “represented a beta test of sorts for the program.” Pleased with its performance, Hawks execs “plan to officially announce the collective” today “at Atlanta’s State of Creators of Color summit.” The Hawks “intend for the Creator Collective to eventually act as a source of sponsorship inventory for the team, although it has not yet signed any specific partnerships tied to the collective.” Hawks SVP/Marketing Narcis Alikhani said that the “combined reach” of the collective is “14.9 million followers.” Lee wrote the 25 members are “all mid-sized creators, with followings that range between the thousands and the hundreds of thousands.” Media buyers and agency execs “are excited by the prospect of an official creator collective backed by an NBA team, although some pointed out that the Hawks Creator Collective is simply a more official version of the collaborations that have taken place between NBA teams and prominent influencers for years” (DIGIDAY, 4/9).
Hawks launch first-of-its-kind creator collective
