Tomorrow night, LeBron James and the Miami Heat will take on Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs in Game 1 of the 2013 NBA Finals. James’ story continues to evolve—just like his ads, too—and unfold right before one’s very eyes. The NBA’s brightest star on the NBA’s biggest stage won’t be short of excitement. If anything, the permutations of storylines revolving around him will take a life of their own in today’s global technological state.
Melissa Brenner, the league’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, quantified the game’s reach at the 2013 Sports Social TV Summit last week: “The NBA’s 400 million combined social media volume would make it the third-largest country in the world.”
Concurrently, NBA Digital is primed to take advantage of the heightened fan interest and their insatiable interactive needs. They’ve already proven themselves through earning the Webby Awards’ Best in Sports Mobile Apps and Handhelds recently, which won out over the likes of BBC Olympics App and their own widely successful NCAA March Madness Live. Additionally, in a week from today the second annual NBA Social Media Awards will air to the delight of fans worldwide and their perpetual engagement on these social platforms. Whether it’s online, mobile, or social, the league has prepared to have presence across these various touchpoints during The Finals.
On NBA.com, to start off, The Finals hub will house all the essentials any basketball junkie expects, like highlights, series statistics, and an array of articles. This feature has become commonplace in the sports industry for various major events; the reason being is that it’s a centralized content destination and branded to fit the overarching theme. The hub’s accessibility ranges from online, the league’s mobile site, and on the official app, NBA Game Time. Overall, the six major digital components will be available on mobile and the league’s app, as well as online.
A second feature is Finals Pulse that serves as a social media app news tracker; trending topics will redirect users to the most popular players. This meter showcases how many Twitter and Facebook mentions a particular player has in a given hour and their joint total between these two mediums. One can expect these projections to soar above their baseline numbers due to the competitiveness and fast-paced tempo this series should be—not to mention the aforementioned stat by Brenner, and growing…
Social Spotlight remains a staple to spark fans social discussions via Twitter and Instagram to be prominently displayed within this page. The contextual layout is akin to what RebelMouse offers to its clients such as the Sacramento Kings. The technology arranges these feeds in a pleasing and organized way, which would be best consumed via a tablet or mobile in order to allow users to touch and almost feel these graphics.
ESPN’s J.A. Adande coined the #PodiumGame hashtag in last year’s playoffs for any player who has a great performance. And now one can watch livestream post-game news conferences. Unlike previous seasons, these Finals will mark the first time this video will be readily available on the league’s mobile site and app. Considering that HBO Sports and boxing missed an opportunity to livestream, the NBA is ensuring that fans continue their conversations after the game accompanied by what the athletes have to say.
A favorite among many hoop fans is the Micro-Movies presented by Kia. These five-minute, all-access clips recapitulate what transpires through high quality production by NBA Entertainment. The multiple angles, slow motion scenes, and build-up provide a dramatic sense to everything, which makes it worthwhile to watch the action again via this lens. Here’s Week 6 of the NBA Playoffs on YouTube. While the league’s lack of video embedding negates true viral potential, it’s interesting that these videos have been made available on their YouTube channel beyond NBA.com.
And lastly, the newest featured being introduced to the public is Finals BIG Talk. This interactive module hopes to aggregate the entire collection of Twitter activity. “BIG”, in this case, explicitly aligns with the league’s overarching marketing slogan as an additive experience. However, it is this kind of digital vehicle that implicitly supports the big data movement throughout business sectors. The social stream of dialogue will be pervasive on Twitter through the #NBAFinals hashtag and following the @NBATV and @NBA accounts.
King James has become an engaging early adopter on Instagram. What’s crystal clear more so than his pictures on that medium or his lone championship ring is Brenner’s stance on these digital tools: “We are not using technology for technology sake. Above all else, the NBA is about the fans. The technology is there to give fans a platform to interact with the league.”
And that’s why the NBA is the virtual unquestioned king in sports digital media. The NBA Finals is just the zenith of their empowering universe.