On February 26, 2026, the Atlanta Hawks National Basketball Association (NBA) team announced a one-night collaboration to celebrate and promote Magic City, a strip club in Atlanta. The announcement sparked major backlash among NBA fans and players, including Luke Kornet, a center for the San Antonio Spurs, who urged the public to join him in petitioning for the event’s cancellation in a blog posted on March 2, 2026. On March 9, 2026, the NBA announced the cancellation of the promotional event in response to concerns from “many across the league.”
In a statement regarding the NBA’s decision to cancel the event, NBA commissioner, Adam Silver asserted, “while we appreciate the team’s perspective and their desire to move forward, we have heard significant concerns from a broad array of league stakeholders, including fans, partners and employees.”
This isn’t the first time the Atlanta Hawks have promoted the commercial sex industry. In 2023, the Atlanta Hawks posted an advertisement themed around OnlyFans. Despite pushback from Atlanta Hawks players, the ad remains public on the NBA’s website.
The Atlanta Hawks have significant ties to Magic City. Lou Williams, a former Atlanta Hawks player, frequented Magic City so often that the strip club named a flavor of wings “Louwill Lemon Pepper BBQ” after him. And last year, the Hawks’ principal owner, Jami Gertz, co-produced a five-part docuseries, “Magic City: An American Fantasy,” to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Magic City strip club. Gertz called Magic City an “iconic Atlanta institution” that has made an “incredible impact” on the city and its culture.
Indeed, the promotional materials for the event failed to mention that Magic City is a strip club, instead simply referring to it as an “iconic cultural institution.” Michael Barney, Magic City’s owner, echoed this characterization of the strip club, describing it as “more than a strip” and “more of an iconic place where anybody who’s a CEO, NBA player, politician, actresses, actors, they all come and they’re all normal when they come here.” According to Barney, Magic City is “more about the culture, the hip hop, the music, the food, the fun vibes.”
On March 27, 2025, Courtney Hale, previously a dancer for Magic City, filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the strip club. In the complaint, Hale alleges that she was regularly required to pay a portion of her earnings to the Magic City’s DJ, security, and a third-party promoter. She recalled that the third-party promoter wanted $500 from each girl. She further alleges that she was sexually harassed by a female manager and Magic City took no action when she reported the harassment.
In his March 2, 2026, blog post, Luke Kornet wrote: “The NBA should desire to protect and esteem women… Allowing this night to go forward without protest would reflect poorly on us as an NBA community, specifically in being complicit in the potential objectification and mistreatment of women in our society. Regardless of how a woman finds her way into the adult entertainment industry, many in this space experience abuse, harassment, and violence to which they should never be subjected.”
Strip clubs are normalized in Atlanta as being associated with the city’s culture. However, the Atlanta Hawks’ characterization of Magic City as a “iconic cultural institution” downplays the role that strip clubs play in perpetuating gender-based violence. Strip clubs are businesses built on the notion that men can buy access to women’s bodies, making these environments ripe for violence and exploitation. Women working in strip clubs report physical, sexual, and verbal abuse by clients, club owners, DJs, security, and booking agents. A study revealed that 16.2% of dancers who had been working at a strip club for six months or less had experienced some form of violence or threats of violence from a client. While Michael Barney asserts Magic City is an “iconic place” centered around culture, music, food, and fun, Courtney Hale’s allegations tell a very different story that mirrors the experiences of women working in strip clubs everywhere.
The culture of strip clubs not only perpetuates violence, but also facilitates commercial sexual exploitation. According to a national survey, strip clubs are among the most common venues sex buyers utilize for commercial sex. Traffickers often recruit victims to work in strip clubs under the legal façade they offer, then coerce these victims into providing commercial sex to patrons. These tactics are common practice in Atlanta. Nonetheless, NBA players perpetuate this exploitation by unabashedly frequenting strip clubs when visiting Atlanta. The CSE Institute commends Luke Kornet for fighting this narrative and using his platform to highlight the reality of working in strip clubs for many women: harassment, violence and exploitation.
The fight to eradicate the commercial sex industry requires strong male allies like Kornet, and the CSE Institute encourages other NBA players to utilize their positions of power to condemn the objectification and mistreatment of women, as Kornet did. The CSE Institute approves the NBA’s decision to cancel the Magic City promotional event. However, the delay in the NBA’s response and the fact that the Atlanta Hawks’ OnlyFans-themed advertisement remains public on the NBA’s website calls into question the true motivation for the event’s cancellation. While public outcry was effective in preventing the promotion of a strip club at an NBA game, the NBA should have zero tolerance for events that commercialize and normalize the buying of sex.
All views expressed herein are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law or of Villanova University.