WASHINGTON — The National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), the business voice of the LGBT community, has welcomed the National Basketball Association (NBA) to its list of nearly 200 top corporations and government agencies seeking certified LGBT Business Enterprises (LGBTBEs) into their supply chains alongside other diverse communities. This kind of inclusion not only expands the ongoing efforts to welcome the LGBT community into the professional sports world, but also opens potentially billions of dollars in business opportunities that enables LGBT business owners to create jobs and continue fueling the American economy.
“The NBA, like their peers in football, tennis, golf, and baseball, recognizes that including LGBT-owned businesses in their procurement is not only the right thing to do but it’s smart business,” says Justin Nelson, NGLCC Co-Founder and President. “We expect the tremendous success we’ve seen connecting LGBTBEs to the sporting world to drive even greater participation by those not yet at the table, including the entire NFL, NHL, and professional soccer leagues.”
NGLCC’s current partners in the sporting world include the Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Super Bowl’s Business Connect program, U.S. Tennis Association (USTA), and the Professional Golfers Association (PGA). More sporting leagues and individual teams are in discussion with NGLCC and its local affiliate chambers to expand inclusion of LGBT-owned businesses in their contracting and purchasing opportunities nationwide.
The NBA is one of dozens of new partners joining the NGLCC in 2017. For many this is due to recent changes to the HRC Corporate Equality Index—the national benchmark of corporate LGBT inclusion—making contracting/purchasing from LGBT-owned businesses, which are exclusively certified by NGLCC, a standalone scored criteria for a corporation wishing to earn or maintain a top score.
In NGLCC’s groundbreaking America’s LGBT Economy Report, the $1.7 trillion and tens of thousands of jobs created by LGBT-owned businesses are spread across America, with powerful concentrations in the cities where many major sports teams and leagues are headquartered, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Orlando.
“The LGBT business community is now able to be both out in the stands and in the production of everything that makes the NBA season happen—and that is a slam dunk for equality and business opportunity,” said NGLCC Co-Founder and CEO Chance Mitchell.
