No professional sports league embraces the entertainment aspect of sport quite like the NBA. As the NFL increases fines for celebrations and Major League Baseball gripes about bat flips, the NBA takes a different approach.
On and off the court, the individualism of players is celebrated. From unique hairstyles to post-game attire to shoes worn during games to pregame dance routines, NBA players are given a platform to be themselves and entertain. The on-court product of the NBA reflects that.
However, NBA franchises know that in the current market, the in-arena experience has to be even greater than just the product on the court to get people in the building consistently. With every game televised, the experience of being in the arena must offer something more to fans, especially on teams that don’t feature a LeBron James or Steph Curry (or Kevin Durant or Klay Thompson or … teams who aren’t the Warriors is what I’m saying).
NBA executives are aware of this, and it’s why we’ve seen teams embrace unique forms of in-arena entertainment.
“Anybody who thinks sports is sports [is wrong],” Atlanta Hawks CEO Steve Koonin told CBS Sports in 2015. “Sports is entertainment. You can’t pull the two apart, it’s like two sides of an oyster shell. They are together. The game is great, but this has to be a relevant part of your lifestyle. You can be the biggest NBA fan in the world and never come to a Hawks game. You can consume us through TV and video games, so to come here we have to be extraordinary and do things that constantly make us relevant.”
The Hawks, like a number of other teams, employ an in-arena DJ, who spins live during the game to offer a unique musical experience that is different from a playlist of arena rock, pop and some hip-hop. Big Tigger is in his third year as the DJ for the Hawks after spending five years with the Wizards in Washington, D.C., and is one of the veterans of the NBA DJ fraternity.
As Tigger explains it, music is a part of everyone’s life all the time, so the job of the arena DJ is to tap into the energy of the building and enhance the experience of the fans.
“It’s a careful balance of not going too far one way or too far that way,” Big Tigger told UPROXX. “Playing equally familiar records across all genres. You’ve got the pop music the dance music was crazy crazy, there was a bunch of those songs. It’s about keeping everybody kinda happy and playing slightly familiar records and then I’ll drop a record and they’ll go ‘oh how you do that?’ I’ll try to intertwine mashups too, which’ll put an old rock record with a hip-hop beat or stuff like that. It’s just trying to keep it fresh and entertaining.”
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The first full-time in-arena DJ in any professional sport was DJ Irie, who is in his 17th year with the Miami Heat after coming on before the 1999-2000 season, when the Heat moved into American Airlines Arena.
In advance of opening a new arena, the Heat wanted to bring something unique to the game experience. No team knows the importance of entertainment as being part of the attraction better than the Heat, which must compete with South Beach nightlife to get fans in the building. As they saw it, bringing a DJ into the arena was an opportunity to bring the party off of South Beach and into the arena.
“At the time I was doing a lot of the hottest clubs and I had the hottest mix show on the radio,” DJ Irie told UPROXX, “but all of those were the same genres. I was doing the hip hop spots. That was the year the new arena, American Airlines Arena, opened and they left the old Miami Arena. While that was in process, the marketing team was banging their heads trying to think of what they could do entertainment wise and support wise to bring a new experience to match the new experience of the new facility.”
“That’s where the idea of having a DJ came about,” Irie added. “Mainly because we were in Miami and nightlife is so prevalent and DJ culture.”
To get Irie, the Heat had to find him first, being before the age of DJ’s having websites and booking information available online. The team eventually got hold of him after he worked a team staffer’s birthday party, but Irie at first passed on the idea following the first meeting.
“I sat down with them for the first meeting and spoke about a bunch of stuff,” Irie says. “Didn’t even talk about compensation or anything like that. I asked them about their audience and the style they’d be looking for and we started talking about their season ticket holders, and it hit me. These are the folks that are coming to my clubs. These aren’t the folks that are coming to my radio show. I’m going to have to go into left field to even try to accommodate them and that’s not what I do. So like, ‘I’m not going to be playing Wu Tang? What are you talking about?’ So I literally cut it short and said I wasn’t their guy.”
The Heat continued to reach out to him for a second meeting to convince him to take the gig, so he agreed to another meeting, where he realized the unique opportunity he had in front of him.
“So I came back down to their office one more time and I started asking them about how other teams were approaching this,” Irie says. “How does the DJ in New York do it? The DJ in LA? And they said they don’t have a DJ.”
The team assured Irie that they’d done their research and their homework, and in doing so they found that there wasn’t yet a professional franchise with an official DJ.
“And I’m like, are you serious?” Irie says. “This was across NFL and MLB and everything, so it kind of hit me then I was like, would I have to really change my approach and style? Yes. But there’s an opportunity to really create a new lane and create something from the ground up. I’m not the kind of person to fall back from a challenge, so you know that was what really made it attractive to me.”
Irie agreed to join the Heat and was given a courtside DJ booth and free reign over the music selection — so long as it was clean — to give Miami’s arena a unique experience.
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That unique, local experience is something that having a live DJ in the arena is able to do that is hard to create otherwise. That local flavor is something that more teams are going for, and having a DJ that knows the local music and can mix that into the arena rock ballads and current chart toppers that are going to be prevalent in any arena (whether a team goes with a DJ, organist, or a simple playlist) is a way to make the experience feel authentic.
In Miami, that means mixing in Latino music with local hip-hop and trying to replicate the South Beach party scene. In Portland, it means bringing in alternative music for spotlight segments that highlight local music that otherwise might not fit into an arena mix. In Atlanta, it means using the fertile hip-hop ground around them to put on in-arena concerts — like they’ll do on Nov. 22 with Gucci Mane — and leaning on those hip-hop roots with what gets played over the PA.
While making the experience feel authentic and unique to the city, the biggest challenge for the in-arena DJ is keeping an audience from a wide range of demographics happy.
Portland as a city has one of the most unique attitudes in the country and a diverse populace. For DJ OG One, who spins for the Blazers at the Moda Center, each night is a unique experience and has a different energy.
“The biggest thing is finding that balance and knowing your demographic,” OG One says. “It’s about being able to find the balance between satisfying the listening needs of the players who are warming up to the wide range of demographic of your audience in terms of the females that are coming into the arena versus the guys and then you’re talking about anywhere from a 16 to 70 age demographic. It’s like walking a fine line on any given night of playing that wide of a range.
One of the things OG One feels is important is for DJs to stay connected to people. He’ll walk out on the court during pregame and sit as if he was one of the fans entering the arena. By trying to match his energy with their energy, he can get a feel for what he wants to play – and more importantly, what the crowd wants to hear.
Every arena is going to feature a wide range of young, old, men, women and fans of all genres of music. To please all of them all the time isn’t necessarily possible, but the in-arena DJs embrace the challenge of trying to mix genres together.
“It’s crazy, but I love it because it keeps my mixes challenging,” DJ OG One says. “You never really get dull. Like in radio, if you’re mixing the same songs on the mix show, you get used to that and you kind of know what you’re going to play. When I’m in the arena, I can have a range of what I want to play but once you get in that arena and you start feeling the vibe of the people, then that can change at the spur of the moment.”
For DJs from the hip-hop community, arena mixes keep things fresh and can help break up the monotony of playing on the radio or doing club sets and also keeps their ears open to finding different music to play.
“I have a lot of fun,” Big Tigger says. “It’s challenging to play to such a diverse audience. You know I’ll drop some David Bowie next to some Drake. That’s fun. It’s challenging for me and equally fun. It’s about keeping everybody kinda happy and playing slightly familiar records and then I’ll drop a record and they’ll go “oh how you do that?” I’ll try to intertwine mashups too, which’ll put an old rock record with a hip-hop beat or stuff like that. It’s just trying to keep it fresh and entertaining.”
From his booth in the middle of the 6th Man section in Philips Arena, Big Tigger pauses mid-conversation to set up the next track, a rock remix of Rack City. As he fades it in, his eyes light up.
“I heard this one on a commercial and said ‘what is that!’ It’s ‘Rack City’ but it’s rock ‘n’ roll and I had to get it. It’s stuff like this that I get to play here that’s different.”
That excitement about finding new music and dealing with different genres and eras of music reminds DJ Irie of one of his first gigs as a DJ — spinning at a roller skating rink.
Irie spent the first five or six years of his career playing there, and he found that the demographics would vary all across the board. There wasn’t a way to please everyone with every track, but his goal would be to make sure there was something for everyone.
“It is a challenge and it’s one of the most wonderful challenges any DJ that’s serious about their craft will encounter,” DJ Irie says. “Young people like to put wheels on their feet and roll around, old people, black people, hispanics, everybody likes to put wheels on their feet and roll around. So it was my job to entertain all of them. So I made it a point that of all these people here I should play at least one song where every single person in here can say ‘oh that’s my jam.’ I think that’s what’s great about it.”
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In-arena DJs aren’t the only forms of musical entertainment at NBA games. Only a third of the NBA employs an in-house DJ. Most still have the old PA system playlist, one that pumps out the Jock Jams style playlist of arena rock anthems while occasionally mixing in recent hits and sometimes leans on an organist.
In Atlanta, the Hawks bring a unique mix with Big Tigger as DJ and Sir Foster bringing his added flavor on the organ.
Next time there’s a nationally televised home Hawks game, do a quick Twitter search for “Hawks organist.” You’ll see tons of tweets asking who is on the keys in Philips Arena or “did the Hawks organist just play ‘Black Beatles?’”
The answer to those questions is Sir Foster, and yes, he did just play Rae Sremmurd on the organ.
Sir Foster takes the arena organ experience to the extreme, rolling through a deep library of songs and playing from his wraparound keyboard — designed by Lady Gaga’s keyboardist — setup next to the crowd in the lower bowl
“Everything that we did was new,” Sir Foster says. “Most times when you see in-arena music, the organ player is way high up above the stadium, and I wanted to be among the fans and they let me do that. So everything with me has been an experiment. At first we learned as we went — what’s the best place for me, how can we get fans to interact — and I think now we’ve figured out and learned exactly what we are.”
What he learned was that he is the league’s most popular organ player because of his commitment to learning and playing new music. When a new song hits the top of the charts, Foster learns it. When an Atlanta artist drops a new single, Foster learns it. If fans request a song enough, Foster learns it.
That deep archive makes Foster something of a human jukebox — not to be confused with the Southern marching band. Sir Foster has long taken requests from fans on Twitter, but this year the Hawks have created a sponsored Twitter request line called “#MyATLJam” to capitalize on his expansive library of keyboard knowledge.
Now three years in, the Hawks have also begun giving their unique combination of Big Tigger and Sir Foster more freedom to come up with collaborations. The two will do battles at times and this year they’ll put on their first ever halftime show, with help from the Hawks’ 3D court projection.
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“I remember when I first came on, I had first seen DJ Irie with the Miami Heat,” DJ OG One says. “At first I didn’t think the NBA had anyone outside of pushing a button on some music that they would even consider a DJ. So when I saw Irie, I was like, ‘oh man they got a DJ in the arena.’ I made a beeline for the Blazers.”
That inspiration has led to an increase in in-arena DJs, but it has to be the right fit, both in culture and talent. Places like Atlanta, Miami and Portland have a music culture and the talent in the city to make it work. Others may not, but as DJ Irie notes when the fit is right, a DJ can make enhance and make for an authentic, local experience.
Some teams have tried it out and had to abandon it. Others went with it, and it’s become as much a part of the NBA experience as the t-shirt cannon or Red Panda flipping bowls onto her head. .
The key is to match a city’s flavor with the aesthetic of the team. For a team like the Cleveland Cavaliers, that meant getting LeBron’s personal DJ, Steph Floss, spinning right on the concourse in front of everyone. For Brooklyn, that meant considering lighting as part of the experience. For the Hawks, that was finding Big Tigger and Sir Foster to accurately represent what Atlanta is like.
While the NBA continues to try and serve its audience in the best way possible, trial and error will be a part of it, but the important thing is that the NBA isn’t afraid of taking chances or trying something new.
“The NBA is always quick to say it’s entertainment,” Tigger says. “Music is an integral part of everyone’s existence from after game, not at the game, when you wake up, when you go to bed. So having the ability to help affect the energy in the building with the music is equally as amazing a challenge as it is gratifying. You play the right song at the right time and they go ‘Ahhhhh,’ and that’s all a part of DJing.”
Robby Kalland is a writer for CBS Sports where he can be found picking SEC games, making 2 Chainz references, and searching for the next great picture of Western Kentucky mascot Big Red.
