Sports Teams Are Playing a New Role: Matchmaker

Decades before leading his family to an $845 million purchase of the Chicago Cubs in 2009, Tom Ricketts met his wife, Cecelia, in the Wrigley Field bleachers. They are one of “thousands and thousands of couples” who first crossed paths in the raucous general-admission seating area, says Jennifer Martindale, EVP of marketing and communications for the Cubs.

When her team noticed lots of new young women following the Cubs on TikTok earlier this year, they worked with the platform to better understand the influx—and quickly realized they were sitting on storytelling gold.

“We were seeing a bunch of crossover among our [new female TikTok followers] with subcommunities like BookTok, RomanceTok, and RelationshipTok,” she tells Front Office Sports. “That led us to thinking about the right type of storytelling for this audience, and we thought, ‘What would happen if the Cubs made a romance story?’ We know they’re interested in baseball. We know they’re interested in romance novels. Why can’t we bring these things together for them?”

On Sept. 4, the club released “Nine Innings to Love,” a scripted TikTok series following a twenty-something aspiring romance writer’s day out in the bleachers at a Cubs game. (Unsurprisingly, she falls for her random seatmate.) The project cast local actors and was produced “almost entirely” by internal Cubs staff. Filmed over several days at Wrigley Field in early June—when its famous ivy-covered outfield was at peak—the series’ 17 videos have accumulated nearly 1 million views and plenty of swooning fans. 

While few pro teams have the benefit of working from, as Martindale puts it, “one of the most romantic venues in sports,” several are putting together their own romance-focused programming. The approaches vary, but each effort shares a common thesis: Though young people are ditching mainstream dating apps en masse, they haven’t lost their appetite for connection—and sports offer a natural setting to find it.

Singles Spotting

“I’m 28, I’m single, and I hate going to singles events. They’re always awkward and uncomfortable,” says Noa Barazani, founder of Hooked, a dating app that works only when users are attending the same in-person event. The purpose of the platform is to help singles connect while “at something that [they] were going to go to anyway, like a football game,” she tells FOS.  

Less than six months old with roughly 15,000 downloads, Hooked is still in start-up mode. But it scored with a viral Instagram video in May, which caught the attention of an Arizona Cardinals staffer. The football team reached out about a potential event. 

Sept. 20 is the Cardinals’ home opener against the Seahawks—but it’s also “Hooked Day” at the stadium. Twenty-four hours before kickoff, fans who purchase a ticket through Hooked’s special-event link will be prompted to download the app and set up a profile through which they can peruse and match with other single game-goers. Once there, they’ll be able to meet and mingle in a dedicated space, too. All app activity disappears once an event ends.

Barazani says close to 200 tickets have been sold so far, but even those who don’t purchase through the event link will have a chance to participate: The Cardinals are letting her place QR codes around the stadium that encourage fans to install Hooked and find out who is single nearby. (The Cardinals did not reply to requests for comment on the event.)

“The fact that we’re going to be in a stadium of one of the world’s biggest leagues as such a young company is super validating,” Barazani says. “People bond over things like sports fandom really naturally, and it’s great to know that that’s something major teams are thinking about and wanting to get involved with.” 

Take Me Out to the Ball Game 

The Mets had romance on the brain when they proactively reached out to Liv Schreiber, founder of New York–based events company Hot & Social, in early August. After a furious few days of planning, she and the Mets’ marketing and ticketing teams set a date for the baseball club’s first “Singles Night Out.”

An initial batch of four hundred tickets for the Aug. 27 event—which included access to a private pregame party, custom cocktails, and multiple mixers around Citi Field—sold out almost immediately. The team released two additional sections of tickets in the following weeks, and Coors Light signed on as an official sponsor. (“They whipped up a photo booth where hundreds of people were taking cute pictures with a new friend or a new crush,” Schreiber says of Coors’s involvement.)

Even though thunderstorms rolled through that night, roughly 1,300 people still attended the game via the Singles Night Out ticket offering. That’s the biggest event Hot & Social has led in its five-year existence. 

Schreiber says attendees ranged from twenty-something to fifty-something but skewed younger, with a relatively equal gender split. One explained her attendance to a local Fox affiliate: “I love baseball, I love the Mets, and it’s hard to find a special person out there. This is the perfect combination of fun and meeting new people.” Another said he is single and loves baseball, so he wanted to “kill two birds with one stone.”

Mets VP of ticketing Janaki Cash tells FOS the club was “thrilled with the positive response,” and suggests the matchmaking initiative may not be a one-off. Major League Baseball also touted the event; last week, the league shared interviews with Singles Night Out attendees in a video on its Instagram account, which now has more than 2 million views. 

“Step Up to the Plate” 

Teams and leagues are also turning up the heat in ways that require slightly less production.

Last month, the NFL told FOS that it’s aiming to reach women and younger fans, in part, by spotlighting players’ romantic partners. The NBA’s Hawks just announced they’ll host a “Single AF Night” at a game this January. And across almost all pro leagues, “romantasy” novels—a hybrid genre combining romance and fantasy—are getting woven into promo schedules; by year’s end, roughly two dozen teams will have put on themed nights around Fourth Wing, a blockbuster romantasy title. 

Still, more is certain to come. Martindale says the Cubs have “heard from a lot of league peers” wanting to learn more about their scripted rom-com effort. Schreiber, too, reports that “tons of teams” have reached out with singles event inquiries since the Mets activation, including franchises in the NHL and NFL.

“Adult life can be so serious and so heavy, but I think people—and brands and organizations like sports teams—are learning that it doesn’t have to be that way,” she says. “Everyone wants to get out of their comfort zones and make connections, but most people just have to be invited to do it. So someone has to, for lack of a better term, step up to the plate. We’re ready to take it on the road to different stadiums around the country.” 

Barazani’s ambitions with Hooked this weekend are a little smaller: She just wants a Cardinals and Seahawks fan to fall in love. “That would be the ultimate success story.”