As if the NBA lacks ingenuity in the digital space, they continue to push the envelope on unique content and accessibility fronts for their annual marquee event, NBA All-Star Weekend.
“The biggest All-Star Weekend yet—at least until next year,” Melissa Rosenthal Brenner, NBA’s Vice President of Marketing, told Mashable a season ago.
A year later, this statement holds true through the league’s latest efforts in mobile. The “NBA Game Time” app’s popularity and expansion earlier this season certainly propelled and incentivized towards further app development. The 2.5 million downloads of two seasons ago and another 149 percent unique user bump last year proved its immediate viability. Currently, it is listed in the sports category among the App Store’s “10 Essentials,” both iPhone and iPad, and third overall within Google Play’s version, which demonstrates its insatiability. Such growth has enabled this medium to become a preferred fan destination to consume content.
Hence, NBA Digital debuts their first ever event-based app, “NBA All-Star 2013,” to serve as a centralized hub for all the happenings in Houston. This free app is available now in both the App Store and Google Play platforms. The main features include: top stories, event and ticketing information, complete video highlights, photo galleries, voting capabilities, predictive gaming, and maps.
Compared to last year’s digital offerings in Orlando, this venture is leaps and bounds better. And this app couldn’t come at a more opportune time; computer users are shifting their habits to smartphones and tablets at a 37 percent clip, per The Next Web. Plus, the top three activities of online browsing, Facebook, and gaming along with photo capacity headlining this switch are all addressed inside the NBA All-Star 2013 app. For their respective case, of course, Twitter would be the social network promoted over Facebook due to the league’s interrelationship with it and the platform’s seamless use via mobile devices.
For one, the aforementioned NBA Game Time app functioned as the sole mobile-dedicated medium during last season’s all-star festivities. Even though it is the league’s official app and provided more than 90 hours of video then, it wouldn’t be practical to cosmetically redesign and oversaturate it with relevant content. Now, instead, this property is a supplementary piece that will provide live audio of the two full court games, the BBVA Rising Stars Challenge and the all-star game itself, updates on the varied events of the State Farm All-Star Saturday Night, and other exclusive content, according to the league’s press release.
Secondly, virtually all the desired content fans would want to search online about NBA All-Star Weekend can be found in this app. The “Top Stories” feature highlights a lot of noteworthy and pertinent information surrounding the events. Of note, there’s an original running segment called “10 to Know” that offers an angled countdown of factoids leading up to the game. Also, the aggregated video and photo content lens context to the events at hand dating back to last year’s.
Thirdly, they decided not to reenlist Shaker, a Facebook app that’s a “layer of places,” to curate a social environment for its fans. Apparently, over 7,000 people agreed to participate in this public forum last year. In its place, their newest predictive gaming element of “NBA Challenge presented by State Farm” supplants the previous service to encourage fans to compete against each other through answering all-star-related questions, which will be awarded by a point system based on correct responses. This feature launched at the start of this season and fans have accessed it logging in to NBA.com as well as the iPad iteration of NBA Game Time.
Accordingly, Christina Miller’s, Senior Vice President and General Manager of NBA Digital, vision of a truly immersive experience are clear: “NBA Digital continues to demonstrate a commitment to original programming and other forms of compelling content, which drives seamless consumption across all screens.”
This NBA All-Star 2013 app presents the initial promising signs to a fruitful NBA All-Star Weekend. As an event-based app, this property crushes the attempts made by other major sporting events, like the 2013 Discover BCS National Championship Game and the SB XLVII Guide. The NBA fulfills the expectations and standards its fans seek in a second-screen experience. The startling information architecture, ease of use, and substantial content crosses over well to the audience as an ideal media consumption vehicle, which is only fitting for this widely-anticipated showcase.