The concept is simple. If an opposing player at a Washington Wizards home game misses two consecutive free throws in the 4th quarter, all fans in attendance get a free Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. It’s called the Fowl Shot promotion, and it’s electric. (Here’s the history of how it came to be.) Bottom line, people are invested in it, whether they win free chicken or not.
Being a curious student of basketball and food (and a sucker for in-game promos), I decided to take a deep, delicious dive into the season-long stats around the Fowl Shot promotion. How often do fans get free Chick-fil-A? Which players gifted fans free chicken? How much does this cost Chick-fil-A? Etc.
Given that conducting this analysis would require reading the ESPN 4th quarter play-by-play of every home game and then creating a detailed Excel tracker and then analyzing this data to make sense of it all, I figured no one would would have ever embarked on this greasy endeavor previously, but…wrong!
Adam Rubin of Truth About It, a Wizards site that’s part of the ESPN True Hoop Network, did a similar analysis of the 2014-15 Washington Wizards season. The article is great, and he goes into slightly deeper detail than I do. His stats will be referenced periodically below to provide some interesting context.
(In fairness to me, I wanted to track this for the Bulls after “winning” both the Chick-fil-A Fowl Shot promo and a free Big Mac for the Bulls scoring 100 points at the same game last year, but the Bulls discontinued the promotion.)
But that’s not really important. With the Wizards basketball season now over, let’s get to the chicken stats for the 2017-18 season.
Games Wizards Fans Got Free Chicken: 10
For comparison (using Mr. Rubin’s article) the promotion hit 14 times in in 2014-15, 14 times in 2013-14 and 11 times in 2012-13, so this season was slightly below average, similar to the Wizard’s on-court performance.
Players who Gave Fans Free Chicken:
Here is your 2017-18 All Fowl Shot Free Chicken Team! Ben Simmons, TJ Warren, Boban Marjanovic, Marreese Speights, Jarrett Jack, Khris Middleton, Greg Monroe, Brandon Paul, Treveon Graham and DeAndre’ Bembry all sent the Verizon Center crowd into a frenzy. This may be my favorite image ever posted on Besides the Weather.
Estimated Number of Free Chicken Sandwiches Redeemed: 44,933
Based on Adam’s article in 2014-15, Chick-fil-A said about 25% of fans actually redeem their ticket for a free chicken sandwich. Using the Wizards average home attendance in 2017-18 (17,973), this means they gave away 4,000+ sandwiches a game for 10 games.
If the price paid for each chicken sandwich is normally about $4, this promotion cost Chick-fil- A $179,732 in free sandwiches. Without getting too deep into the marketing mumbo jumbo, as someone who works in the field, trust me when I say this is worth it.
# of Times a Player Missed the First but Made the Second Free Throw: 18
The Raptors were the biggest chick tease, missing the first free throw and making the second three times in their two regular season meetings.
No team missed the first and made the second more than twice in the same game, so chick teasing was kept to a minimum.
Players Who Denied Free Chicken the Most (Cluck Blockers):
Will Barton denied free chicken four times in one 4th quarter!
Jusef Nurkic, Khris Middleton, Steph Curry and Fred Van Vleet denied deliciousness three times.
Most Times Free Chicken Was Denied in One Game: 6
The Bucks, Blazers and Nuggets all denied Wizards fans 6 times in one game!
Were Games Close When an Opposing Player Missed 2?
No. On average, the point spread when a player missed two consecutive free throws was 10.9. There were only games where the game was within 5 points or less, with the opposing team who missed the free throws ultimately winning, proving generosity always pays off.
Did the Raucous Hungry Crowd Affect Free Throw Shooting Percentage?
Yes. But probably not. Opposing players shot 65 percent on their second free throw after missing the first (18/28). The overall opponents shooting percentage against the Wizards at home this year was 76 percent, so that’s a pretty big difference, but the sample size is tiny.
Compare this 11 percent difference to 2014-15 from OG Adam’s article: The 41 players in the regular season who missed their first free throw in the fourth quarter/overtime shot a combined 70.7 percent (29-for-41) on their second free throw. By comparison, the free throw percentage for all opposing players at the Verizon Center in 2014-15 was 75.6 percent (705-for-932). Hmmm.
Other Fun Chicken Nuggets:
Jarrett Jack and Khris Middleton clearly have a conscious and made up for their early season cluck blocking, both denying fans chicken early in the season but missing two free throws later on when they played the Wizards a second time.
The Raptors denied Wizards fans both times they played in the regular season, and after dismantling the Wiz in the first round, clearly were on a mission to haunt D.C. fans all year. Fun fact about the Raptors: They had a free Popeyes promo if the Raptors hit 10 threes in a game that they had to cancel early in the season because Popeyes was losing too much money (H/T Reddit).
So what does all of this mean? If you go to a Wizards game, you have a 1 in 4 chance of getting a free chicken sandwich, a nice consolation prize to watching John Wall and Marcin Gortat bitch at each other for 48 minutes.
Speaking of John, this is what he had to say about the Fowl Shot promo in an WSJ article last year:
“They get more excited for a free chicken sandwich than a win—that’s what it looks like.”
Compare to Marcin Gortat’s excitement in 2014 where he says, “I want Chick-fil-A”.
These two can’t even agree on free chicken.
Relax, John. Let the fans (and Marcin) have a little fun. And if you don’t like fans getting more excited for chicken than wins, maybe:
