All over the world, COVID-19 brought everything to a halt, and this would go on for months; businesses closed, and people quarantined at home.
For the Spokane Hoopfest, the largest grassroots 3-on-3 tournament in the US, the global pandemic forced them to cancel their big annual event. Originally scheduled for July, the circumstances left the non-profit organization with no choice but to succumb to the new normal, which meant 24,000 athletes would not play.
Hoopfest is a staple of the Northwest and has a festival type of feel for those that attend and participate. There are tons of sponsorship activations and other activities that were big draws as well.
“This tournament has become a tradition here because so many people love basketball.”
With such a strong and dedicated community, those in charge of the Hoopfest tournament knew that there was no way they could sit back and do nothing, as Hoopfest Executive Director Matt Santangelo explained, their motto of “if you want to play, we’ll find a spot” was put to the test.
Enter HomeCourt, a mobile, AI-powered basketball solution that could hopefully save Hoopfest. The flexibility of the HomeCourt app and its accessibility to connect players virtually made it a natural choice to help Hoopfest propose an alternative to their usual in-person event.
“For basketball, it’s a little harder to recreate a virtual basketball event because of the competition, and what content can you provide someone in their driveway that allows them to play basketball? That’s exactly what HomeCourt does for us.”
The Hoopfest team kicked the tires with HomeCourt’s free trial offering in April and May, which Santangelo himself said he participated in. He immediately saw the benefits of HomeCourt as he and his family became early adopters; Santangelo said, “I love going out and doing the shooting drills and ball handling drills with HomeCourt on my iPhone, and trying to feed my records to beat my times and things like that. I really really enjoyed it.”
Though a virtual, AI-powered basketball event had never been pulled off before, after using the app himself, Santangelo envisioned that Hoopfest could use HomeCourt for its benefit.
Using their partnership with the Spokane Public Schools and local Native American Communities, Hoopfest put together a series of socially-distanced, in-person demonstrations that registered hundreds of new users and gave hundreds of basketballs to children and families.
They also used current and former Hoopfest players — everyday people who love basketball — to spread the message about HomeCourt via social media. Men, women, children, seniors, Special Olympic and paralympic athletes are all part of the Hoopfest community and were all part of their marketing push.
All along, the goal was to bring the experience and competition of Hoopfest to the users’ homes. Each participant received an official Hoopfest t-shirt, which is considered gold amongst those within the community.
With HomeCourt part of this year’s event, the built-in leaderboards, drills, and other offerings within the mobile app were a big help in maintaining the competitiveness that has become a staple of every Hoopfest event of the past 30 years.
“Our goal was to bring the magic of Hoopfest to people’s driveways…keep the magic alive….We could’nt have done this on our own.”
Hoofest goes live on HomeCourt
On August 21st, the Spokane Hoopfest went live on HomeCourt.
They divided the competition equally, “people competed against or participated with people of their kind of age, their background, their relationship with the game” said Santangelo.
There were Senior, Youth, High School, Adult, and Special Olympics divisions. Each of these divisions had its own community group on the HomeCourt app. The challenges differed among each group to make sure things were fair and equal.
Overall, everyone got similar rewards, Santangelo said, “if you complete those four challenges over those four days you will receive an ever-elusive championship t-shirt.” He went on to explain that being a champion extended beyond the court, “This year everyone can be a champion. You’re going to be a Hoopfest at home champion, and you’re going to champion our cause.”
“It’s about everyday people, so we like to feature people we like to feature our Hoopfest athletes.”
Being able to offer something that allowed the community to feel connected was significant because Hoopfest is still a small business. Santangelo said that they rely a lot on sponsored content and that “being able to film athletes that participate in and share their HomeCourt video” was a big reason they were attracted to partnering with HomeCourt.
Santangelo mentioned that the content HomeCourt allowed them to create paid huge dividends, “We added sponsored content to it as well which is really valuable for us to be able to kind of provide that value back to sponsor to get them to stand by us this year.”
HomeCourt also allowed for the competition component to remain strong, the leaderboards, “you count the number of dribbles in a day, or the number of hours on the app, not to mention a specific drill that we can push out” Santangelo said.
Over four days, Spokane Hoopfest totaled “1.3 million total dribbles, 75,000 total shots, and 255 total hours [spent on the HomeCourt app]” Santangelo said.
Santangelo spoke explicitly about the benefit of being able to provide athletes of every age and ability an event they can take part in “for one of our primary beneficiaries, Special Olympics of state of Washington, HomeCourt is a great tool for those athletes that aren’t able to gather and compete this year [because] their summer games have been canceled.”
You can see the winners across all the different age groups and divisions on the Hoopfest website here: https://www.spokanehoopfest.net/hoopfest-on-homecourt-final-leaderboards/
“All these people are loving the sport of basketball, loving the sense of community connection.”
In the end, the event was a rousing success for the Spokane Hoopfest, as Santangelo said, “it was a blast.”
Yet, participation didn’t stop once Hoopfest was over, Santangelo said, “I mean people really got behind it. Then we saw even after the challenges were done the Monday and Tuesday’s towards the end of the month, people were still going back in and really utilizing HomeCourt.”
Keeping the game going
Because of the great experience, feedback, and the strong desire to keep playing, Hoopfest has announced an extended collaboration with HomeCourt this month called “Hoopfest Open Court”, where anyone can join and get access to premium HomeCourt features for the entire month of September.
Players anywhere, even players across the US can now download the HomeCourt app and register for free to participate in the open community.
In the future, even though the hope is that the Hoopfest can be back up and running like normal come next year, Hoopfest will look to use their partnership with HomeCourt to impact other areas of their business.
Aside from putting on the 3-on-3 tournament every year, they also have an AAU league and other youth programs that they run each year; Santangelo said, “we already have talked about certain things tied to our youth programs or Spokane AAU programs.”
When their backs were against the wall, HomeCourt delivered. Their ability to continuously meet — and exceed — the needs of the Hoopfest helped to set them apart from other partnerships. “the innovation positivity and creativity of the people inside the NEX team were great for our organization,” Santangelo said.
Together, both parties hope that they can continue to meet the needs of basketball players all over the globe.
You can see more great performances on the Hoopfest Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/spokanehoopfest/
