{"id":144777,"date":"2025-09-15T11:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T11:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/144777\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T11:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T11:07:08","slug":"julie-morris-national-basketball-association","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/144777\/","title":{"rendered":"Julie Morris, National Basketball Association"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the NBA commercializing overseas and international companies reciprocating, the expertise of Julie Morris can\u2019t be understated. As senior vice president and head of commercial development and media \u2014 focusing heavily on the league\u2019s global business development \u2014 Morris led the league\u2019s burgeoning partnership with Emirates<\/a> and is crafting the potential sponsorship and advertising ecosystem for the impending NBA Europe<\/a>. Domestically, she also helped negotiate the league\u2019s 11-year, $77 billion media rights deal <\/a>with ESPN, NBC and Amazon, spearheading the complex sponsorship and media sales terms.<\/p>\n

During her nearly two decades at the league office \u2014 interrupted by a brief stint at the U.S. Olympic Committee \u2014 Morris was also an integral part of the sales team that made YouTube TV the first presenting partner of the NBA Finals in 2018, and similarly helped make AT&T the league\u2019s telecom partner. <\/p>\n

Along with her department, Morris identified Emirates as a potential international partner at a time the Dubai-based airline was looking to expand its U.S. footprint. She led conversations that had Emirates become presenting partner of the NBA Cup and, secondarily, the league\u2019s referee jersey patch partner \u2014 a deal Emirates was interested in and an asset the NBA had never sold before. But Morris pivoted and helped facilitate the deal.<\/p>\n

She said the league\u2019s international goals are \u201cpart of the NBA\u2019s ethos,\u201d making the proposed NBA Europe an intriguing phase of her job. \u201cMy role right now is \u2026 sort of the commercial strategy in terms of how we will take that to market,\u201d Morris said. \u201cWhat are the categories of focus we want to bring new partners in for? How are those partners going to live alongside NBA partners? Or will they be the same as NBA partners? How are we going to balance those partners with maybe incumbent partners from new teams that we\u2019ll be working with? So it\u2019s really designing the optimal commercial strategy for the completely new entity, which is really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julie MorrisSenior Vice President and Head of Commercial Development and MediaNational Basketball Association<\/p>\n

Why she\u2019s a Game Changer:<\/p>\n

As the NBA focuses on international and global dealmaking, Morris led the milestone deal with Emirates, a premier international-first brand, and introduced new assets, such as the referee patch and naming rights to the in-season tournament.<\/p>\n

Born: Stanford, Calif.<\/p>\n

Education: University of Kansas, School of Journalism, B.S., strategic communications; Fordham Business School, MBA<\/p>\n

Family: Spouse, Andy; children, Lucy (12) and Evie (10)<\/p>\n

New place I want to travel to next: Top of my bucket list is to stay in a bungalow over the water, so any place with that.<\/p>\n

Attribute I look for when hiring: Proactivity. <\/p>\n

Sports business story I\u2019m excited to follow in the next year: The NBA\u2019s potential in Europe.<\/p>\n

How I stay current with industry trends: I talk to friends and colleagues (former or current); it\u2019s a small industry, so it\u2019s a great way to learn what others are working on.<\/p>\n

Return to main page and full list of Game Changers 2025 honorees<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the NBA commercializing overseas and international companies reciprocating, the expertise of Julie Morris can\u2019t be understated. As…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,77346,10490,590,48702,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-144777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-game-changers","12":"tag-in-depth","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-print","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}