Tag: NBA

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.

The Golden State Warriors won their 4th NBA Finals in eight years after taking down the Boston Celtics in a 103-90 game six victory. While the Warriors may have won the finals on the court, how did this year’s NBA Finals contenders match up in the sponsorship / media scene off the court?

The Golden State Warriors have a combined social following of 46.6M to the Boston Celtics 19.6M across all major social media platforms (TW, IG, FB, TT.) Instagram is the top social platform for the Warriors, hosting 50% of the team’s total following. They also saw a 19% YOY increase in total followers, which was one of the highest jumps in the NBA. The Celtics’ top social platform is Facebook, and the team saw a 5% YOY increase in total following. Interestingly enough, both teams lead their markets, as both teams rank #1 in total following across any properties in their respective markets.

The Golden State Warriors come out on top in partnership deals with over 400+ brand partners and 80+ sponsors during the 2021-22 NBA season. 46 of these brands leveraged the team’s social media platforms, and averaged 50+ unique sponsored posts per brand. When ranked by number of assets, the Warriors’ top partners for the season were Chase, Kaiser Permanente, Rakuten, HPE – Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and Oracle. The Boston Celtics still had quite the portfolio, eclipsing 350+ brand partners and 60+ sponsors throughout the 2021-22 NBA season. 38 of Boston’s partners leveraged the team’s social media, with an average of 45+ sponsored posts per brand. Top partners for the Boston Celtics this season were TD Bank, JetBlue, Putnam Investments, New Balance, and Xfinity.