Digital Slam Dunk: NBA's Fan Engagement Masterclass

The year was 2000 - Facebook was not yet born and Google was yet to celebrate its second anniversary. Adam Silver, the erstwhile COO and now Commissioner of the NBA, emphatically stated in an interview, "The NBA is an internet company and any company that isn't at least partially an internet company probably won't be around five years from now!" With such clarity of thought at the top of the ladder so early in the Internet era, it isn't then a surprise that we have seen the league be at the advancing frontier of digital technology over the last couple of decades. Silver and the erstwhile legendary NBA commissioner David Stern shared a sharp focus on keeping the fan at the centre of the NBA universe and with the advent followed by the proliferation of smartphones, going mobile-first was almost an obvious extension along that path. Let us jointly take a look at the NBA's technological journey in fan engagement - their Digital Slam Dunk.

1995: Launch of NBA.com

There could not have been a better time for a new digital experience to be introduced to the fans than right in the middle of the 1990s which saw the magical run of the Bulls spearheaded by Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest superstar of the sport. Jumping onto the '.com bandwagon', the first website was launched. Here's a sneak peak into what it looked like:

Unsurprisingly the offerings were quite basic: latest news and updates, match scores, team previews and coach interviews. If you notice the image carefully, one thing that really stands out is how an 'interview with audio' has been highlighted specifically. It might truly seem unbelievably alien to us in today's age of 4K live streaming over mobile screens, but it's a refreshing reminder of where it all began. Another interesting observation is the presence of 'Fan Fare' and 'NBA Store' sections right since the beginning, clearly indicative of the intention to leverage digital assets for active commercialisation.

2005: NBA League Pass webcast

While the League Pass existed as a TV subscription right since 1999, it was in 2006 that the NBA offered a Broadband program wherein fans could watch over 40 live games as online webcasts. This was truly revolutionary in that it became one of the many firsts for the league in terms of innovation in fan experience. Fast forward to today and digital streaming is now well on its path to disrupting its conventional linear counterpart which is quite evident in the enormity of the deals being inked: for eg. JioCinema for the IPL rights at $600mn/year or Amazon Prime for the NFL Thursday Night rights at about $1bn/year.

2009: NBA goes Social

Whether or not we like and choose to accept it, it is safe to say that Social Media is now almost an indispensable component of societal interaction across multiple levels of engagement. Recognising its potential to directly reach out to the fans, effectively by-passing the media ads curtain, the NBA made an active foray over Facebook and Twitter roughly through 2009. Today 14 years later, they have a cross platform Social followership of over 180 million fans globally.

A very common over-simplification that we see happening on social media is a 'one size fits all' approach to the content being posted across multiple channels. The NBA rightly understood the need for a platform specific strategy, such that each of their handles is utilised optimally. Twitter was predominantly put to use to showcase the most exciting clips from ongoing games with the #NBARapidReplay hashtag, while Facebook was utilised to encourage fan-player interactions: earlier through comments and recently through FB Live streams. Over the following few years, Instagram has been actively used to publish player generated content (especially focusing on global audiences through foreign nationals competing in the league) and an exclusive partnership has been signed with YouTube for original content IPs.

2016: Launch of the NBA App

Through the first half of the 2010s, the movement of fans (or in fact people in general) to the smaller screen was quite evident. With an increasing number of fans choosing to engage with the NBA website over mobile, a user experience that suited the modality had to be created. While at first the website was modified to adjust seamlessly to the vertical screen, a dedicated App was certainly the need of the hour: The NBA App thus went live on the store in 2016.

With initial learnings from this original version, a new revamped App was then introduced in 2022 & has since been touted as being the Ultimate Gamification Engagement tool in the sports world. Designed to potentially become a one stop solution covering the entire NBA universe, the experience it provides is incredibly personalised. A separate 'For You' section nudges fans with tailored content and shop offerings relevant to their preferences and past behaviour. As is visible in the infographic shared above, the App itself contributed to over 1 bn video views - a concrete testament to its usability and virality, which further enhanced as a result of the introduction of the vertical video format that the fans are used to seeing.

2017: Launch of NBA 2K League

While the NBA App and Social Media put together focused on the fan base that wanted to actively engage with actual matches and players, the league realised that there was a huge untapped segment that could potentially get absorbed into the mix. The rapidly expanding gaming community is always on the lookout for novel alternatives that offer an engaging playing experience. Partnering with Take-Two Interactive, an e-sports league was launched in 2017 which now includes a combination of 22 franchise owned teams along with a few independent ones.

The NBA 2K League has now completed 6 editions awarding a whooping sum of $2.5mn as the cumulative cash prize in 2023. In an interesting collaboration, NBA signed a multi-year live streaming rights deal with Twitch in the inaugural edition which later extended to YouTube & ESPN2.

2020: Launch of NBA Top Shot

Remember the joy of collecting & playing Trump cards with school friends back in the 1990s? Well the GenZ folks now have their own Web3 version of collectibles in the form of block-chain based sports NFTs. Imagining the idea of exclusively 'owning your favourite moment' forever certainly doesn't seem too bad & hence the NBA recognising this launched their NFT trading platform Top Shot in 2020.

A highly coveted clip of a LeBron James highlight packaged as a collectible was traded for over $71k on the platform demonstrating the incredible level of fan interest in the product category. The conventional trading cards business is worth over $5-6bn annually, thus the new digital collectibles segment is projected to soon enter the billion dollar bracket. As was the case with all previous innovations, the NBA has been the first major league to make a foray into an emerging product to advance the charter of fan engagement.

It will be interesting to see what the future holds along this path, especially with more number of leagues & organisations upping the ante in their own domains. The thing that really stands out for me is the relentless focus on innovation & the urge to stay ahead of the curve. Maybe not every new product shall appeal to fans & not every idea shall click, but what is certain is the attachment of the loyal fan who would acknowledge these efforts that go the extra mile. While other sporting leagues in India are still some distance away, we can now certainly expect similar endeavours from the IPL ecosystem & with a billion fans in the equation, the size of the opportunity is simply astounding.