{"id":941625,"date":"2026-10-22T04:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T04:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/941625\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T04:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T04:10:09","slug":"media-buyers-chart-path-for-brands-through-high-nba-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/941625\/","title":{"rendered":"Media buyers chart path for brands through high NBA demand"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the 2026-27 season opens, advertisers are throwing ad dollars toward the NBA\u2019s crowd of younger viewers<\/a>, accelerating investment on sponsorships, streaming ads and sports-adjacent creator activity.<\/p>\n

The new season is set to invite high spending on linear and streaming coverage, as well as paid social and creator activity for brands that find themselves locked out, according to five media buyers who spoke with Digiday.<\/p>\n

\u201cDemand is very high for the NBA across the board,\u201d said Adam Schwartz, svp and director of national broadcast, sports media at Horizon Media.<\/p>\n

NBA sponsorship investments have been rising steadily in recent years. Sponsorships now account for 15% of NBA revenues<\/a>, which stand at at least $1.9 billion a year, a collective investment driven by companies like\u00a0blockchain and digital security firm Ledger, which struck a deal with the San Antonio Spurs last year.<\/p>\n

Ledger\u2019s logo on Spurs jerseys, and its status as the team\u2019s official digital asset partner is a key part of the company\u2019s bid to drive awareness among consumers adjacent to Texas\u2019 booming tech sector.<\/p>\n

Ariel Wengroff, evp of communications and marketing at Ledger, said the brand was attempting to reach \u201cthe type of customer who is excited and engaged through being a Spurs fan, [who\u2019s] crypto- and digital asset-curious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Per a study conducted by Wakefield Research Partners, it\u2019s had an impact already: Spurs fans are 4.8 times as likely to say Ledger is a market-leading firm in its category than regular consumers, and twice as likely to prefer Ledger over competitors.<\/p>\n

Non-sponsors have a different menu available. Running spots against live coverage of the games themselves, is inevitably atop many marketers\u2019 lists.<\/p>\n

Last season \u2014 the first year of the NBA\u2019s refreshed rights deal with NBC, Amazon and others<\/a> \u2014 streaming ad spend rose to $874 million<\/a>. Even as linear\u2019s share of NBA ad spend falls, there\u2019s limited linear inventory remaining, while some broadcasters are gating NBA spots behind combination buys with other inventory, a practice they typically employ for moments like the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmazon\u2019s completely sold out. They\u2019re trying to get people to go into their NBA League Pass product in order to clear some room,\u201d Schwartz said. While the viewership figures are still much lower than linear coverage (NBC\u2019s regular season games drew an average of 2.8 million viewers last season<\/a>, versus Amazon Prime Video\u2019s average of 1 million), streaming inventory is hardly a consolation prize these days for brands.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NBA has a younger, more digitally inclined viewer\u2026 streaming has to be considered,\u201d said Jeff Gagne, svp of sports marketing at Havas.<\/p>\n

But following a robust linear and streaming market last year, media buyers told Digiday that demand was high enough that Peacock, Amazon and Disney inventory is all but sold out already.<\/p>\n

\u201cSellout was the name of the game last year,\u201d said one holdco media buyer, who exchanged anonymity for candor. \u201cIt\u2019s a very strong, healthy market again, with high sellout in certain games, and if you were to try to get inventory, it would be extremely tight right now to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Demand is especially tight now, with the season opening amid the traditional Q4 holiday push. PMG\u2019s head of brand media Natalee Cecil said some of the agency\u2019s clients were looking to use the NBA\u2019s large audiences to deliver Thanksgiving or Black Friday messaging, before dipping in advance of the season\u2019s mid-point.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a long season, and so having a consistent present presence throughout the season is something that we\u2019re not seeing too much demand for,\u201d said Cecil.<\/p>\n

Sponsors sometimes contribute to that demand, but often let their logo placements or partnerships do the work, rather than invest more dollars in TV. Wengroff told Digiday that Ledger had focused its \u201climited\u2019 sponsorship-adjacent paid media on TikTok and X, but planned to increase the volume of its activity this year and next.<\/p>\n

Access to NBA superstars like French player Victor Wembanyama has also boosted demand for partnership deals.<\/p>\n

As well as social content (Ledger sponsored the restoration of a basketball court in Wembanyama\u2019s French hometown of Nanterre), having players show up at corporate or sales events and outside the U.S. has proven useful. \u201cIt\u2019s been really great for us in retail and our experiential strategy,\u201d said Wengroff.<\/p>\n

But while NBA sponsors often get first pick on working with big NBA names through their partnership agreements, there\u2019s little stopping advertisers working with off-the-court creators, streamers and influencers.<\/p>\n

Paid social buys targeted to find NBA audiences distracted by a second screen around game times, or well-timed creator activity, could be the go-to option for marketers locked out of the pricey TV and CTV market.<\/p>\n

Iniabasi Ikpot, director of comms strategy and planning at Media by Mother, said that while brands could use what inventory is available on the scatter market to \u201cbe present throughout the ebbs and flows of the season,\u201d they might find more success in choosing their moments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s more peaks than ever. You have the NBA Cup, the playoff tournaments, Christmas Day\u2026 that\u2019s when we tend to go more direct, more creator-led, and try to land a deeper story,\u201d said Ikpot.<\/p>\n

That could include court side perspectives from creators at the game,\u00a0or activity deploying NIL creators or college basketball players.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I was the sponsor who couldn\u2019t get into the game, and I really wanted to connect with the NBA culture\u2026 I\u2019d pivot to a strategy of connecting with athletes as creators and fall back on other things that are interesting within the NBA community,\u201d said the holdco buyer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the 2026-27 season opens, advertisers are throwing ad dollars toward the NBA\u2019s crowd of younger viewers, accelerating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[303397,49,48,459,82,273558],"class_list":["post-941625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-business-of-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-the-sports-marketing-playbook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}