Blake Murphy Sports Writing

Title: The NBA and the Internet
Date: April 17, 2008
Original Source: Hoops Addict
Synopsis: This Hoops Addict article took a look at how the NBA’s use of the internet was superior to other sports in terms of leveraging the brand and reaching new fans. MLB has since caught up with their online content, but the NBA is still 1A. Like all of my HA articles, the links have been lost due to a server transfer, but the text was backed up.

The NBA does a fantastic job marketing itself on the internet. Seriously, they blow other sports away. Seem obvious coming from a basketball website? Sure, but the breadth of this internet dominance had not really hit me until I saw a startling stat the other day.

Embarrassingly enough, the statistic came via Facebook, when I stumbled upon the NBA Fan Page application. It turns out that over 125,000 people are fans of the NBA on Facebook. This seems low, but consider that not everyone has Facebook, some don’t use it a great deal, and some don’t bother with applications. Obviously, too, the Fan Pages may not have reached everyone yet. Admittedly though, the number seems low.

However, a quick search returned Fan Pages for the NFL and MLB. The NFL Fan Page has just 1200 members, while the MLB is struggling with 700. I think these results make the picture seem more extreme than it actually is, but it piqued my interest enough to delve into the topic a little further.

Next, I hit Ball Hype. Most sports sites and blog sites recognize Ball Hype as somewhat of an authority, or at least a hub, for sports on the internet. I checked their rankings, and the results supported what I had hypothesized – the NBA has a very strong internet presence, though not to the degree apparent on Facebook. Instead, I found that of the Top 50 sites, 7 are basketball, and of the Top 100, 22 are basketball.

The percentage may seem average or low, but only baseball has a larger presence with 14 of the Top 50 and 28 of the Top 100. Of the Top 100, a shocking 40 of them self-identify as being ‘all sports,’ meaning that the NBA holds 22 of the 60 sport-specific spots in the Top 100, a terrific rate. Additionally, a good number of the ‘all sports’ sites feature strong amounts of basketball content, though this evidence is anecdotal at best. Furthermore, basketball faces the disadvantage of being a lacklustre fantasy sport, an area (and billion dollar industry) where baseball and football derive a good deal of their online content from.

For further reassurance of the NBA’s presence on the internet, I did some Googling and scoured blog hubs to find some more interesting information. Hoops Hype lists 217 basketball sites on their hub. 217. Two hundred and seventeen. Let that sink in, and then consider that there are just 30 NBA teams, and not every site could possibly be listed on there.

I realize, at this point, that you could say the NBA has nothing to do with this, that it is all luck and circumstance on their behalf, and that we, the internet community, are responsible. And that would be fair, until you looked at what the NBA does proactively on the internet.

The clearest advantage the NBA has over other organizations is on YouTube. Just ask Odenized, the God of NBA YouTube. A search of ‘NBA’ on YouTube returned 234,000 videos, compared to 14,300 for ‘MLB’ and 59,100 for ‘NFL.’ The NBA’s YouTube page alone dominated what a general search can find for the other major sports leagues, showing that the NBA as a video provider has over 48,000 subscribers, nearly 1,000 videos, and a total of just shy of three million (3,000,000!) video views.

NBA players have gotten involved, as well. Most of us know about Gilbert Arenas’ popular blog, but other players like Chris Bosh, Ben Gordon, Chris Kaman, Jerry Stackhouse, and more have blogs on NBA.com or elsewhere on the internet. The NBA has also aggressively encouraged players to do one-off blogs, as evidenced by the frequent posting of rookie blogs in years past. Even D-Leaguers like Rod Benson and Morris Almond blog. Over at MLB.com, player blogs are infrequent and of less depth, with Curt Schilling being the obvious exception. NFL.com has minimal blog content.

A final area to look at is the availability of actual online content, since that’s what most of us are looking for. The NBA offers a Daily Top 10, a plethora of videos, and NBA League Pass. The NFL posts highlights, but doesn’t have streaming coverage available, yet. MLB possibly surpasses the NBA in this one area, as MLB TV has grown in popularity and is relatively inexpensive. The same goes for League Pass, but the key difference is that the NBA requires you to have its cable package in order to get League Pass, whereas the MLB treats Extra Innings and MLB TV as separate. There are flaws with both, since I can’t technically get the online content of either as a student eight months of the year (the NBA because I don’t have cable, and MLB because I’m only here one month of the season). This is the area where every league could improve, and it would be nice to see the NBA and MLB move to making their cable and online game offerings the same and, possibly, a package for the person like me who requires content on TV and online but cannot afford both.

On most grounds, the NBA makes fantastic use of the internet. Their video content, Facebook authority, and overall blog presence is overwhelming. But why is this important? It’s simple, really – the internet is becoming the largest marketing tool in the world, and it is wildly inexpensive to use as in your marketing mix, especially if people are coming to you for your content and not the other way around.