It looks like the Los Angeles Clippers are in the dating game, thanks to a new deal with dating app Bumble.
According to ESPN’s Darrell Rovell, the Clippers signed a patch deal with Bumble, a popular dating app focused on friendship and business convos, allowing women to control the dialogue by allowing them to message first in order to initial conversation.
The Clippers will debut the patch on Tuesday night against the New Orleans Pelicans and are calling the Bumble path an “empowerment badge,” pledging to invest in promoting gender equality.
“We wanted to do something where we could really stand out and do something meaningful,” Clippers owner Steve Ballmer said. “The way it is positioned it becomes part of the game, so it’s an opportunity to have more meaning for everybody.”
“We’ve had tremendous respect for the team that Steve built,” said Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of Bumble. “The amount of women he has in leadership positions is not something you typically see in sports.”
Ballmer stated that they will work together to expanding their programming towards furthering women in the work place and building a strong mentoring network.
“If all you are doing is selling ad space, that’s not a bad thing,” Ballmer said. “But if we are going a step further and building joint experiences with our sponsors that allow us to bring alive what we do and they do, you can’t do better than that.”
Ballmer used their promotion with Chick fil-A as an example.
“We can sell signage to Chick fil-A in the arena, but if we do it the way we do it, it’s much more impactful,” Ballmer said. “We feel the same way about what we are going to do with Bumble.”