The 2026-27 NBA season is here. And while the most important part of that for your author is celebrating the New York Knicks’ championship, others may have different priorities.
After all, the league is at peak popularity right now, especially with younger audiences. And as Digiday recently covered, everyone’s trying to find a way in.
For established sponsors, TV’s the clear path — either locally, nationally or for both. But given the NBA’s long-standing strength when it comes to digital, social platforms like YouTube can also provide another path to engagement and sales outcomes, too.
Which brands can actually resonate while sponsoring the NBA’s or its teams’ videos? Well, interested parties could start by understanding what sort of products those social video viewers are most likely to shop for.
Scoring With NBA Shopping Affinity
Using data from Chartbeat video intelligence, brands can quickly understand where shopping appetites already exist among NBA social viewers.
Over the past six months, NBA viewers were 24.6x more likely to shop on Amazon for basketballs than the norm, 16.7x more likely to shop for lemonade drink mixes and 12.3x more likely to shop for trading card packs and boxes.
While two of those may seem more obvious for the NBA, that affinity still showcases an audience potentially further down the funnel — and more ready to buy.
For lemonade mix, the more surprising result among those top three, it’s an opportunity to get a lot of targeted exposure with an audience already more likely to shop for your product. Plus it’s reach within a group that also features many consumers who could potentially become shoppers, and just haven’t yet.
Shopping affinity data also reveals significant opportunities within other industries as well, including men’s athletic socks (11.6x), men’s tank tops (11.3x), men’s board shorts (10.8x) and ginseng supplements (10.3x).
Understanding these dynamics can help brands reduce the time to purchase, and uncover hidden opportunities to discover customers and expand their market.
ID’ing Spokespeople
Social video data can also be paired with search affinity data to understand which players (or other topics) NBA social video audiences are most interested in. This can not only give advertisers a clear view of their own standing relative to NBA viewers, but also competitors if they’re coming up in the search set instead.
Using the same six-month stretch of NBA video viewing and search history shows (via Chartbeat) that some of the best former and curent NBA spokespeople that could yield incremental returns for brands may include:
- Ron Harper Jr., Boston Celtics (155.8x more likely to search than the norm)
- Mikal Bridges, New York Knicks (130x)
- Carlos Boozer - retired (126.8x)
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City Thunder (124.4x)
- Paolo Banchero, Orlando Magic (120.2x)
- Ryan Nembhard, Denver Nuggets (119.9x)
Just one of those, SGA, is even obvious. The Thunder guard is the two-time defending MVP, and is no doubt on radars for brands interested in the NBA.
But the rest could potentially be unique opportunities to partner with athletes that have larger followings than the surface-level data may reveal.
Brand Shoppers Visiting NBA.com Already
Another way for brands interested in the NBA to determine whether there’s a fit is by cross-referencing NBA.com visitors with the brands they’re already shopping for on Amazon. Some of those include (same six-month stretch, according to Chartbeat):
- MANSPOT (49.1x more likely than the norm)
- Airmoto (45.1x)
- RYSE UP Supplements (44.0x)
- Wilson (39.0x)
- Muscle Milk (38.7x)
- Ensure (35.6x)
Several of those brands are large enough to at least consider NBA advertising, and some in fact, already do.
Another option is for these brands to sponsor NBA videos first, to build brand association and relevance before potentially spending more on pricier TV ads against games.
They could also reference the athlete list above and partner with them on social posts as another way to get in front of NBA audiences — without paying the full price of an NBA ad.
