Guest Post: Aaron Jaffery (@aaronjaffery) is Managing Director of Digital Sport Consultancy NineteenEightyFour.

The NBA fan base reaches far and wide from its spiritual home in North America. International expansion is a key strategic pillar in the NBA’s growth strategy.  Worldwide revenue streams are the fastest growing strand of the NBA’s overall revenue, and over half NBA.com’s 9.6bn page views and 5.6bn video streams come from outside the USA .

Added to this is the indomitable strength of the NBA’s social media following. Both the organisation and the franchises dwarf the reach following from their national competing sports – including the NFL. Indeed, social media dominance was cited as the main reason that the NBA will be more profitable than the NFL by Forbes.

So, following on from our review of NBA’s Manchester outing NineteenEightyFour have taken a look at the NBA’s digital strategy in the run up to the most recent Global Games outing, where the Atlanta Hawks took on the Brooklyn Nets at the O2 in London.

Focus on Facebook Engagement

With the official NBA UK page on Facebook seeing an increase of 42.5% in the monthly period leading up to, and shortly surpassing, the game, NBA UK will be very happy with their growing reach.

In the month running up to January 23^rd 2014 NBA UK’s following jumped from 91,500 to 130,415. This can largely be attributed to the promotional activity on Facebook preceding the event. In the run up to the game, NBA UK’s Facebook page heavily featured content from the two teams competing in London, the Hawks and the Nets. This gave UK fans the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the players, staff, standings and playing styles of both the Nets and the Hawks before they appeared at the O2.

Going even further, the NBA UK Facebook page was subject to a ‘Hawks Takeover’ during Day Four of their daily countdown to the game in London. This saw Atlanta include their UK fans in their weekly trivia challenge established on their own Facebook channel, and a special UK edition of their ‘Six Word Sunday’ engagement campaign: which encouraged their British supporters to comment on a designated photo to explain how they became interested in the NBA from across the pond in only six words.

Whilst the fan response was limited; (290 of the NBA UK’s 130,000 fan base liked the trivia challenge which elicited only 13 comments, and the ‘Six Word Sunday’ achieved only a marginally better reaction with 304 likes and 51 comments), the NBA recognised the importance of providing franchises the platform to engage with a new audience to build a connection.

NBA UK persevered in their attempts to familiarise the audience with players in both teams: particularly through their ‘Get To Know…’ video series which featured star players Paul Pierce, Jason Terry, Joe Johnson, and Elton Brand. These videos – also accessible on Youtube – consistently evoked a response of over 200 likes, with Paul Pierce’s interview attracting 407 likes, 24 comments and 24 shares. Providing an insight into player personalities is clearly still essential for boosting online engagement in new territories.

Cross-media integration

The most impactful activity of NBA UK’s strategy was the launch of their official #HUNTFORNBA (http://topsy.com/s?q=%23HUNTFORNBA) competition across both Facebook and Twitter. This encouraged fans to participate in a scavenger hunt between Oxford Circus and Bond Street on the 15^Th January, the day before the match between the Nets and the Hawks, in a bid to win free tickets to the game and copies of NBA 2k14 for all consoles.

The digital twist to this treasure hunt was that the clues to the location of these prizes were only posted on both Facebook and Twitter, thereby making it necessary for entrants to register their participation online through either of these two channels before being eligible for entry. From first advertising this campaign on both Facebook and Twitter on 13^th January 2014, the amount of online support for both social media sites increased significantly: with the number of Facebook fans rising from just under 100,000 to 115,000 in three days; the increase in Twitter followers from 15,300 on January 13^th to 16,800 by January 17^th was equally impressive.

Leveraging Local Sport

Continuing the theme from the Manchester game, NBA UK partnered with UK-based sports personalities to help drive the message to a wider audience. Just as in Manchester, the competing teams tapped into local fans by visiting Chelsea, Arsenal and Fulham FC. And during half-time of the game, the social channels carried a live basketball-oriented Q&A session with Chelsea FC players André Schürrle and Ryan Bertrand.

Buzzer Beater

NBA UK looked to maximise the opportunity to connect with fans by a promoting ‘Just in case you missed it…’ video series available on the official NBA YouTube channel. The content contained footage of the game itself along with access to the ‘Dance Cam’, ‘Kiss Cam’ and video recordings of interviews with celebrity supporters: all of which would be interesting to someone who actually attended the match and wanted to revisit some of the night’s action. And after the game, NBA UK continued their online engagement campaign by encouraging fans to submit their best photos from the game at the O2 to the official NBA website, in a bid to be featured on the official Facebook cover photo.

This ongoing engagement past the fixture has contributed to a continuation in growth in all social channels. The NBA UK Twitter account now boasts 16,918 followers – a 14% increase in online support from exactly a month ago – and, significantly, saw the sharpest increase throughout this monthly period occurring in just one day; their Twitter following rose by 800 between the 16^th and the 17^th January, the day after the game.

NBA UK: A Recipe for Success

The NBA UK’s London leg of its Global Games series was undoubtedly a success, helping the NBA to grow its reach into the UK market and engage with fans more deeply. We’ve distilled this success into 4 core themes:

• Capitalise on player personality
• Leverage the connection with local sport
• Combine digital and traditional channels to maximise impact
• Use content and engagement to extend the conversation

Players are, by their profile and sporting ability, role-models and aspirational figures to all. But beneath it all, they are just normal people. By portraying the personality of the players on the court, NBA UK broke down the barriers that separate fans from their idols, making the game more accessible to a new audience.

Arranging and documenting the social liaisons between the Nets and the Hawks with Chelsea, Arsenal and Fulham FC through re-tweets and media shares on both Facebook and Twitter, the NBA UK were also able to tap into an excessive UK sporting fan base that is digitally attached to these football clubs: thereby boosting their own online support at the same time.

By combining traditional experiential media with digital channels in the form of a competition gave the NBA access to an audience beyond those with a high-interest in the sport, and engage with fans that were not committed to buying tickets themselves.

Lastly, by utilising owned-content and sourcing user-generated content, NBA UK were able to extend the conversation beyond the buzzer, enabling them to capitalise on the activity and continue to grow in the weeks that follow.

In each case, the sense of online reciprocity between the fans and the NBA UK is impressive; the Global Games, as a tournament, responded to interest in the NBA from other countries, and the online reaction to the London 2014 fixture shows that this interest just continues to grow.