Social media has dominated the world, and the increased popularity has punctured its way into the NBA. Most NBA fans and players are on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The NBA uses those sites to promote the sport worldwide. Now, they have embraced a new basketball which promotes the NBA’s social media handle.
Many of the star players attending the Team USA training camp were showing off the new ball on Thursday afternoon. A lot of the players were excited about the new ball, which they should be because if it works, then their sport will gain more popularity.
However, the question is will it work? Is it a good idea? Will the fans even care or will they ignore it?
For this new way of advertising the sport to work, the first step is for the fans to care. As discussed above, many fans are on social media sites, which should make people care. Also, if these balls are distributed overseas, surely plenty of fans would purchase them and will see “@NBA” inscribed on the ball, leading them to the internet to discover the NBA’s social media handles. From there, fans will see the importance of following @NBA because they will find many more insights to the games. Fans overseas do not have much access to look live games. Therefore, they would be interested to follow their favorite teams and players through the internet.
Fans would definitely care, especially ones who do not know if an NBA social media handle exists. If fans are caring, then this will be an excellent idea for the league. They could attract more fans to check out their social media accounts, which will lead to more fame for the sport all over the globe.
This plan could certainly work. The NBA is extremely famous already, and they could easily promote their social media to others using their new basketballs. One thing for sure is that NBA fans would eat up anything the league enforces on them. Therefore, a ball with @NBA engraved on it could go a long way.
“The game is why we have 660 million followers, and our fans know @NBA is a must-follow for unprecedented access to our game, more insight into our teams, and unique behind-the-scenes content with our players throughout the entire year,” NBA Senior Vice President of Digital Media, Melissa Rosenthal Brenner said. “The ball is the instantly recognizable symbol of our game, and now our fans have a place there too, where they belong.”