The perennially popular NBA Playoffs kick off this Saturday, with 16 teams vying for the chance to ultimately take home an NBA championship ring. As basketball fans nationwide gear up for the 8 action-packed showdowns, here’s a snapshot of the league sponsorship landscape during the 2022-2023 regular season.

More than 2.7K brands bought sponsorships or media within the NBA, while each team averaged 76 sponsorship deals. Venue products/services, television, interior signage, and digital content led the list of most frequently bought assets.

The top 5 most active categories within the league this year were:

1. Alcohol
2. Financial
3. Technology
4. Auto
5. Non-Alcoholic Beverages

Michelob Ultra, Budweiser, and Hennessy–the top 3 brands within the Alcohol category–have multi-year deals with both the league and multiple teams. Meanwhile, newer names including Bud Light Seltzer, Sire Spirits, and Cutwater Spirits emerged as the top 3 fastest growing brands within the category in terms of activations.

With 7 sponsorships each, Kenda Tires and Nexen Tires grew their footprints more than any other brands within the NBA this year–tying with Starry Soda–which became a league sponsor this season. Both tire companies leveraged courtside apron ads and basket stanchion digital ads the most within these deals.

The NBA engaged 86M users across all social media platforms this season with 35K total posts. The most engaging–a co-branded Instagram post by the Golden State Warriors with Japanese fintech company Rakuten, of Steph Curry showing off his team’s new NBA City Edition uniform–garnered engagement of nearly 1.1M. The Warriors launched the uniform as a part of the team’s #Empowered campaign, a celebration of women at the intersection of court, community and culture in the Bay Area. Through the campaign, the Warriors and Rakuten donated over $25K to the Women’s Sports Foundation.

‍