Take a look at your social media accounts and scroll through. Odds are you will find a short clip, meme, or interview of an NBA athlete. Whether it’s Steph Curry showing off his range by hitting a deep three, or Hassan Whiteside with a monster block, there will likely be some sort of engaging NBA content.
At the beginning of the 2015-2016 season the National Basketball Association announced a partnership with Verizon to develop a mobile app that would stream games. The driving force behind this was the desire of fans to cut and edit clips of games and post them to their own social media accounts.
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Earlier today the NBA took another step in making the league and its content even more digitally friendly.
The NBA and BroadbandTV have teamed up and co-launched NBA Playmaker, a multi-platform network targeted towards the millennial generation and video creators and content.
The NBA, perhaps even more so than other American sports leagues such as Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Hockey League (NHL), has embraced social media and the potential global exposure it brings.
As a result, MLB and the NHL have come under criticism from fans because of the difficulty of being able to follow and view out of market teams.
The NBA’s social media strategy has paid dividends as its YouTube channel has reached over 3.4 billion views, the highest of all American professional sports, since 2007.
One of the main reasons that the NBA is expanding its fan interaction and the free flow of content is because it is one of the hottest commodities in professional sports.
The league recently signed a massive television rights deal with ESPN and TNT, which will give the league $24 billion over a 9-year period. Currently, NBA games can be viewed on national television at least three times a week during the regular season.
It makes sense that the league would continue to expand the content it divulges to the public not only to generate interest but also for potential new revenue streams.
The purpose behind the launch of NBA Playmakers is to continue to give content creators the ability to access game footage, interviews and various NBA content through a variety of platforms.
The partnership with BroadbandTV, the self-proclaimed largest multi-platform network in the world, is a perfect fit for the NBA based on the direction they have been going with content distribution. With BroadbandTV claiming over 15.1 billion impressions a month it is a safe bet that the NBA’s digital presence could benefit heavily from this deal.