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In case you weren’t aware, it is autumn—the internet’s favorite season! That means the return of many wonderful things that I’ve already covered in this blog series: PSLs (covered in our Starbucks edition), UGGs (a notable feature of my post about UGG), leaves changing colors (okay, I haven’t mentioned that one yet, but better late than never).
While I have a deep appreciation for the many classic bounties of fall, there’s one in particular that I enjoy a good bit more than apple cider: sports!
I know, I know—who could have predicted such a thing? I’m not exactly doing a ton to subvert gender norms by choosing “sports” as my favorite thing about autumn, and I do have to admit that the leaves are very pretty. Still, there’s something undeniably exciting about this juncture on the sports calendar: the NFL and college football in full swing; the NBA and NHL seasons kicking off; the World Series commanding about as much of my attention as I ever pay to baseball. (Sorry, baseball.)
What’s even more exciting is that the gap between my life as a sports fan and my life as a chronicler of all things creator marketing is constantly shrinking. More and more sports leagues are putting creators front and center in their marketing efforts, while athletes themselves are taking an increasingly active role in content creation. Today, sports and creator marketing form a symbiotic, self-enforcing ecosystem—and there’s more room to grow from here.
In this week’s blog post, I’m going to look at how the NBA, NFL, and MLB are faring across our key metrics. (Sorry to the NHL: we’re parsing a historical data issue related to a few teams, but should get that patched up soon. Also, I’m out of my depth talking about hockey anyway. I understand you folks don’t even use a ball? Is that right?)
I’ll profile the top teams from each league, and the initiatives that professional sports leagues are launching to leverage the power of creators. Once this blog post touches down in your inbox, it’ll strike you how creators and sports are a hole in one, slam dunk, home run kind of pairing, so make sure that reading it is your top goal.
Okay, enough of that. Bring on the charts!
First things first, let’s level-set. How are the Big Four Sports Leagues doing by EMV over the last several years? Is there broader momentum for sports content on social media?
Yes, there is—particularly for the NBA and the NFL. Again, apologies to baseball and hockey. This growth has been especially dramatic over the last year or so, when each league kickstarted several partnership initiatives with creators. The NBA and the NFL have taken the most initiative in partnering with creators, and seen more pronounced results for these efforts.
The 2024-2025 NBA season will bring more than just the first Knicks championship in fifty years (bet the house on it—there’s no possible way that the New York Knicks could disappoint me). It will also usher in a slate of programming where creators will play a larger role than ever before. That’s not just me saying it—that’s the official word from the NBA itself.
Take it from Bob Carney, the NBA’s Senior Vice President of Social and Digital Content, and a man who clearly understands the industry-changing power of creator marketing: “Creators are a key part of the NBA’s content ecosystem, helping us connect with new audiences in innovative ways. We have experienced remarkable growth with our creator program since it launched in 2016, and we can’t wait to see what this season brings.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself, Bob. Which is why I quoted you.
As part of this expanded creator program, the NBA activated top creators Kai Cenat and Drew Afualo to document their experiences at season-opening games. This behind-the-scenes courtside content will kick off another round of the NBA Creator Correspondent Program, which debuted last season and features a range of creators offering live coverage of various NBA events. All this creator coverage will culminate in the Creator Cup, another program that debuted last year and is being supersized this season. Creators will compete in a range of activities during the In-Season Tournament, All-Star Weekend, and the NBA Summer League, documenting these challenges for millions of fans.
Alright, so clearly the NBA is putting its money where creators’ mouths are. (That sounded better in my head. Moving on.) But which teams are benefitting from all this creator attention?
Looking into the data, I found a trend that held true across the major sports leagues: in each of the NBA, NFL, and MLB, two teams separated themselves from the pack over the last five years. Usually these teams are historic franchises, sometimes with a mixed track record in recent years, but typically providing plenty of playoff appearances and superstar storylines to fans, if not always championships.
In the NBA, that amounted to a pair of California rivals led by two of the greatest players in the history of the sport:
Another trend to notice: if everyone who’s not an actual fan is absolutely sick of a team, then that team is probably leading the league in EMV.
Yes, predictably enough, it’s the Lakers and Warriors on top here. To be fair, at least each team has won a championship during this time period. Note that it takes the Warriors winning a championship to barely beat out the Lakers, and that was only in 2022. Still, if 2023 is any indication, team drama sparks more buzz on social than actually winning anything, which is great news for both ball clubs heading into this season. Enjoy Bronny, Lakers Nation!
If you Google “NFL creator strategy” for some reason—like, say, you’re writing a blog post on the topic—you’ll find many articles about the league’s ambitious plans for the current season and beyond. Get used to the “to reach new audiences, [industry X] is expanding its creator strategy” headlines, folks. You’re going to see a lot of them in the coming years.
When it comes to football specifically, the league is making a big bet on its NFL Creator of the Week program, which launched last year as a means of helping professional football make inroads amongst female and Gen Z audiences. (I’m guessing the whole Taylor Swift thing helped a bit, too.) As part of its international slate of games, the NFL is partnering throughout the season with Brazilian, British, and German creators, which sounds like the setup to a pretty good joke.
Ian Trombetta, the NFL’s Senior Vice President of Social, Influencer, and Content Marketing has committed to making creators a “core part” of its marketing strategy moving forward, and stated that the league will “have activations going on with creators” every week at every game. I wonder whether he ever hangs out with Bob Carney? Seems like they would have a lot to talk about.
While much of the NFL’s creator strategy thus far has been devoted to YouTube, Trombetta also voiced the league’s interest in “extending its creator collaborations across additional social media and streaming platforms throughout the 2024 season.” Get ready for touchdowns coming at you across TikTok, Twitch, Discord, and more! I even heard that Kirk Cousins signed an exclusive deal with Snapchat, since he’s such an expert at disappearing in key moments.
(You can now cross ‘random shot at Kirk Cousins’ off your HBBIP bingo card.)
I bet you can guess which two teams have separated themselves from the pack when it comes to digital coverage. Hint: not the Cowboys.
That’s right, it’s everyone’s favorite extremely one-sided rivalry—the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. While these teams have had an intertwined trajectory over the years, the Chiefs pulled far ahead in 2023, mainly due to that whole Taylor Swift thing I mentioned earlier. The fact that they would go on to beat the 49ers in the Super Bowl (again) in 2024 is just adding insult to injury, of which the 49ers already had plenty.
(To any non-sports fans who are for some reason still reading this blog post, trust me, these jokes are funny.)
Picture this: the World Series is coming up—the pinnacle of baseball—and you need a surefire way to power enthusiasm. Now admittedly, as I said before I’m a bit less of a baseball fan than the other sports I’ve profiled, so I can see where the MLB is coming from. How can it possibly attract the attention of distracted, device-addled youngish people like me?
If you’re the MLB’s Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer Karin Timpone, the answer is simple: work with creators! After all, your friends Bob and Ian are doing it, so why not you? (Also, how cool must it be to be MLBEVPCMO? That’s a fun business card.)
Debuting in last year’s World Series, the MLB’s Creator Class program activated 12 creators from various verticals, including gaming, lifestyle, and tech, who shared their MLB fandom across a series of initiatives. The program served as a launching pad for an expanded Creator Class during this season, leading right up to the current World Series.
As Timpone said at the time, “the program is tailored to establish collaborative partnerships with various influencers, and designed to empower these influencers to share their unique stories and fandom experiences with their existing fan base.”
And who are the two teams that have risen to the top of the MLB social media heatmap over the last half-decade? Why, it’s the two participants in this year’s World Series, aka the Meteor Bowl!
Love them or hate them or truly despise them, the Dodgers and the Yankees are the cream of the crop. But who will claim the ultimate bragging rights this year? As goes the Series, so goes EMV?
Whether or not you’re a sports fan, a clear pattern is playing out across league after league. Recognizing that creators are a gateway to exactly the sort of audiences that they’re trying to reach—young, diverse, and highly engaged—sports leagues are giving more power to creators, enshrining them in a special place within their marketing strategies. As sports leagues deepen their ties to creators, we at CreatorIQ can’t wait to see how these programs continue to grow. It’s all part of a creator economy that’s broader and more dynamic than ever before.
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