The NBA is talking with sponsors about inserting game links in the partners’ digital assets to give fans more entry points and reminders about game broadcasts, a source familiar with the initiative said.
Bill Koenig, the National Basketball Association’s President of Global Content and Media Distribution, hinted at the relatively new effort in Congressional testimony earlier this month at a hearing on the future of sports media. In his remarks about placing streaming links in untraditional spots, he mentioned replicating the game links on the NBA and WNBA apps elsewhere. These links would direct the fan to the local streaming app that offers the game, or if it is a national contest, to the league’s broadcasters.
“And we’re going to even do that beyond just the NBA and WNBA apps,” he told the committee. “We’re going to do that through a number of other partner and team relationships. You might be able to order food, watch a game, you’ll have an opportunity to click from that food delivery app directly to a game telecast. We’re working all this out to make it because one of the issues that this committee rightfully focused on in calling this hearing is fragmentation, and we think there are a lot of ways to deal with that, particularly through digital distribution.”
The league began earlier this month offering game links in the NBA portal on X, formerly Twitter; and also on Threads. Koenig has begun discussions with sponsors that make sense, the source said. Some of the NBA’s sponsors that would seem like good fits include DoorDash, Gatorade, Nike, Anheuser-Busch, PepsiCo, DraftKings, FanDuel, and Coca-Cola.
“And so the initiative is to work with partners to help drive viewership of games and drive people to (NBA) games, because anyone who has a digital platform can theoretically create a pathway to (the) games,” the source said. “Because all of (the) games will be available on a digital platform, it can just provide that pathway.” Nearly every NBA team now has an over the top option for viewing games.
The initiative makes sense, but it remains to be seen whether it can make a big dent in the confusion media fragmentation has wrought in fans scrambling to find what platform a game is on. ESPN has a feature that informs where every game can be viewed, though it doesn’t offer links.
Media fragmentation came up a lot in the future of sports media committee hearing titled “Field of Streams: The New Channel Guide for Sports Fans,” with the by now familiar tales of someone’s loved one frustrated at not being able to find a game.
“Catching your favorite team on TV shouldn’t feel like solving a puzzle,” committee chairman Ted Cruz said in a statement released the day of the hearing. “Games that used to be free or easy to find are now scattered across pricey apps and exclusive deals.”
Like most leagues, the NBA has its games widely spread out. Each team has their own provider, and the league has multiple partners for national games. Next season those are NBC/Peacock, ESPN/ABC and Amazon Prime.
“This is an opportunity to work together with partners to drive awareness of games, to drive awareness of where they are, and to provide a seamless pathway for fans, and for many partners, there’ll be mutual interest,” the source said. “It’s an initiative that’s in its early days. And, starting with the places that are most obvious, like the NBA app, social feeds, social partners, and then figure out where to go from there.”