The NBA embraces social media and it looks to build on their success from last year’s All-Star Weekend. During the 2012 All-Star Weekend, the NBA reached a pulse of 2,949 Twitter and Facebook mentions per hour. This was because the NBA allowed fans backstage access to the festivities via the “NBA.com Social Spotlight.” It featured some of the best content of the weekend, and allowed fans, for the first time, to vote via social media for the winner and MVP of the Dunk Contest, Rising Star Game, and All-Star game.
This year, the NBA is increasing the ways that fans can be involved during the weekend by adding digital elements, and making events more competitive. Some of the new features include:
– A new East vs. West point system for Saturday’s events that count towards a NBA All-Star Night Champion, and charitable donations for that conference.
– A new free NBA All-Star App that allows fans to stay on top of top content for the weekend and vote for MVP’s and the Dunk Contest winner.
– State Farm’s NBA Challenge predictive game that lets fans engage and compete with one another by answering event-related predictive questions.
– Continued access to behind the scenes action from the weekend including the Social Spotlight, All-Star Pulse, and a new NBA Style Blog.
– Voting on the starting lineups for the BBVA Rising Stars Challenge.
One of the biggest draws of the weekend is the Dunk Contest. In the past, it drew big names like Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, Kobe Bryant, and Vince Carter, for all to watch their amazing athletic ability. More recently, the NBA has less big names, and the competition and has turned more gimmicky. Additions of a spin the wheel with dunking categories, props, removing judges, and letting the fans vote have taken away some of the essence of the dunk contest.
Even with allowing the fans to vote on the Dunk Contest Winner last year, it still wasn’t as exciting as it could be. In fact, the 2012 Dunk contest was one of the more disappointing contests the public has seen according to NBA HangTime Blog. The draw the contest once had is non-existent. This is mainly because the marquee names in the NBA chose not to compete in the contest. However, there are ways to improve the overall quality of the event besides trying to add Lebron James.
Here are 4 suggestions of ways social media can be used to improve the Dunk Contest. These are all opinion-based improvements and are meant to serve as fun representations of fan engagement for the contest.
1. Allow fans to vote one player into the dunk contest via social media from a pool of selected candidates.
The pool of players would be a collection of young dunkers in the NBA and not savvy veterans, who opt not to participate. Fans can also vote in a wildcard dunker from YouTube, chosen by the players as an eligible participant for the Dunk Contest. This way the fans will get at least one person in the dunk contest that they voted to see. If the voted Wildcard dunker is not chosen by the fans to participate, he still gets a free trip to watch the Dunk Contest as a consolation prize for being voted by the NBA players. There should be a rule in place that allows fans to vote that participant in only one time. That way, the same person doesn’t get voted in every year (unless he keeps winning).
2. Only allow fans to vote on creativity points for the Dunk Contest via social media.
Rather than giving the fans full control of the outcome of the dunk contest by voting in the winner, keep the judges of some of the best dunkers in the past, get rid of props, and generate a creativity scale for fans to vote on via Twitter and Facebook. For dunks that aren’t original, they won’t get voted as high as others. These points can be added to the total score for each dunk and could give someone the edge if there is a tie. It also makes the participants try to be more creative in their dunks to win.
3. Have a promotional contest that awards one lucky fan a trip to All-Star Weekend and a chance to judge the Dunk Contest.
A fan is chosen out from entries of people who used the #ALLSTARFAN to promote All-Star Weekend. That fan is not only chosen to be a judge of the Dunk Contest, but is also allowed back stage access to all All-Star activities and reports the experience using the @NBAAllStar Twitter Handle. That way, the fans can see what goes into the weekend from another fan’s perspective. It also gives the fans something to look forward to for upcoming seasons, looking for a chance to be the next fan chosen to enjoy the All-Star Festivities.
4. Create the Fan Round.
In the second round, the fans should decide what type of dunk each participant should do. The player engages his fans leading up to the Fan Round to figure out his next dunk. Fans then select from a choice of three dunks that the players suggest to his fans via Twitter. However, the dunk chosen by the fans will not be revealed until after the dunk is done. That way fans can engage with the player in real time during the contest but still have some suspense as to which dunk was voted by others.
These suggestions give fans some, but not all the influence on who wins and participates in the Dunk Contest. This also helps generate a creative and fun experience for the fans and the players. It may not be the solution for the missing big name stars in the contest being that this is a league for super-stars, but it creates an entertaining environment.
This year’s Dunk Contest should be a lot better than 2012 simply because of the group of dunkers are all dynamic dunkers. Gerald Green and James White highlight the group as former Slam Dunk Champions in College, the D-League, overseas and the NBA. The rest of the group has their share of highlight dunks themselves including Eric Bledsoe, Kenneth Faried, Terrence Ross, and defending champion Jeremy Evans. In fact these young players know the lack a prestige the Dunk Contest has had as of late and are engaging with their fans on twitter with the mindset of turning it around.
Who knows what the future holds for the Dunk Contest, but as social media continues to evolve, so should the NBA’s use of it to enhance the event.
(photo courtesy of Mashable and NBA.com)