NBA YouTube
The 6th Annual Awards
- YouTube Presence
ABOUT THIS ENTRY
The NBA’s official YouTube channel has distinguished itself as a consistent and reliable source for the league’s more than 21.4 million subscribers. The league develops real-time content on the platform to engage fans, headlined by full highlights from every NBA game. Each night, NBA YouTube posts full game highlights, top performances and fantastic finishes from the daily slate of matchups. NBA YouTube has prioritized “ultra-long form” content that ranges from one to four hours long. This submission focuses on our learnings from the platform and how we optimized content to maximize engagement with the NBA’s audience on YouTube.
How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?
The NBA took a look at how content consumption is changing platform-by-platform. After evaluating the metrics and industry research on YouTube, the league identified an opportunity to cater to fans in a new way by providing them the longer-form content they were searching for. Now, NBA fans on YouTube can consume highly-custom “ultra long-form” video franchises focused on specific categories. This strategy shift inspires the industry to continue reinventing itself by catering to what fans want on each specific platform.
Objective
Deepening our connection with fans, driving engagement and global reach are at the center of the league’s objectives from social media and digital standpoint. By leveraging YouTube's features, we aimed to provide a wide variety of immersive content that transcended traditional sports coverage, fostering a sense of community and loyalty among fans. In an effort to deliver a best-in-class experience to NBA fans who gravitate towards long-form content, we identified the best way to package content for our YouTube audience based on the research we gathered. According to Nielsen, YouTube is the number one streaming platform in America based on watch time. We also found that more people were not only watching longer videos on YouTube, but spending more time viewing content on the platform from a TV as opposed to their phone or computer. With data indicating increased content consumption on connected devices, we developed our “ultra long-form” video category. This allowed us to provide fans with highly-specific long-form content spotlighting their favorite players and teams that is optimized for consumption across multiple devices.
Strategy & Execution
To cater to modern sports fans, we evaluated how viewers were consuming content and the devices they were primarily using. Our findings inspired us to lean into increasing video length. Additionally, we placed a focus on developing content that translated to all devices, including TVs. Now, fans can stay up-to-date on all league-wide developments through one-hour-plus content highlighting ‘Top Performances’, ‘Wildest Endings’ and other historical archival productions that meet the needs of fans of specific teams and players. For example, you can watch one hour of Nikola Jokic’s best assists, four hours of the wildest game-endings in the NBA and one hour of Stephen Curry’s best NBA Playoffs moments. Additionally, we leverage AI technology to consolidate the highlights and place them together in a long-form package. This shift in our strategy aligned with evolving viewing habits to give fans the type of content they showed us resonated with them. The introduction of Shorts gave us another vehicle to reach fans, allowing us to complement our long-form content with shorter snippets. YouTube also gave us the ability to link Shorts to our “ultra long-form” videos, which directed interested fans into the content.
Organizations
- NBA
Links
Credits
Ashley Atwell
Associate Vice President, Social and Emerging Media Lead
NBA
Bob Carney
Senior Vice President, Social and Digital Content
NBA
Justin D'Apolito
Director, NBA Social Content
NBA
Robert Gardner
Manager, NBA Social Content - YouTube Platform Manager
NBA
Gavin Peppers
Project Employee, NBA Social Content - YouTube
NBA
Billy Murray
Project Employee, NBA Social Content - YouTube
NBA
Adam Fedorko
Vice President, Social and Digital Content Creation
NBA
Leah Berry
Senior Manager, Social and Digital Content Creation Management
NBA
Adam Brody
Manager, Content Command Center
NBA
Kevin Esteves
Vice President, Digital Strategy and Analytics
NBA
John Xu
Manager, Digital Content Analyst
NBA
Peter Richter
Director, Social and Digital Content Design Lead
NBA
Jerry Jones
Manager, Social and Digital Content Design
NBA
Jay Wallace
Senior Manager, Digital Content Design
NBA
Noah Powell
Senior Production Assistant
NBA
Greg Habeeb
Senior Production Assistant
NBA
Aaron Caplan
Senior Production Assistant
NBA
Will Brown
Production Assistant
NBA
Omar Jackson
Production Assistant
NBA
Nathan Stoppelmann
Senior Director, New Media Deal ManagementPrimary DepartmentContent Partnerships
NBA
Celebrate in NYC
Join us for the 6th Annual Hashtag Sports Awards™ on the evening of June 6, 2024 as we celebrate finalists and reveal the winners of this year's awards live during the show.
