FanSection Blog

As we prepare to jump into the second half of the NBA season, I thought it was a good time to take a look back at how things have gone so far.  As the league showed with it’s embrace of the TNT/Facebook integration during All Star Weekend, it appears to be much more evolved in terms of using social media to further its brand objectives than other professional sports leagues.

The TNT/Facebook promotion has been well covered throughout the blogosphere so I won’t re-hash it here.  If you’re interested in reading more about it, you can do it at any of the following blogs  Mashable, InsideFacebook, AllFacebook, Take a Peck, and Vator.tv.

From a FanSection perspective, the first half of the NBA season has been a great foundation builder to help us put into motion all of the great things we learned during the football season for how to drive traffic and engagement within our apps.  While a lot of that has to wait for the playoffs to really get going, the FanSection NBA apps have shown good growth so far - 113K new users (10% growth) for a total of 1.3 million.

The top 10 NBA teams are:

1. Boston Celtics - 200K
2. Los Angeles Lakers - 190K
3. Detroit Pistons - 111K
4. Cleveland Cavaliers - 92K
5. Toronto Raptors - 89K
6. San Antonio Spurs - 70K
7. Phoenix Suns - 61K
8. Dallas Mavericks - 61K
9. Golden State Warriors - 48K
10. Chicago Bulls - 46K

The top 10 growth communities are basically the same with exception of Portland, Miami, and Philadelphia replacing Toronto, Dallas, and Golden State.

When it comes to fan engagement, Lakers fans have talked more smack this year with over 3000 - a 3:1 advantage over second place Boston.  Other teams are also picking up the pace with Cleveland, Portland, and  Orlando turning in double digit percentage growth.  When it comes to talking about their teams performance, surprisingly Toronto Raptors fans are tops by a 2.5:1 margin over the Lakers.  I’m not entirely sure what Raptors fans are talking about, but they’re talking about it early and often.

And while we’re on the subject of the NBA, we’re excited to announce a ticket sells and promotion partnership with the Los Angeles Clippers.  We’ll be promoting Clippers games through a variety of LA team apps for the remainder of the season beginning with the Clippers vs Suns game on Wed, 2/18.  Most of the promotions will be the ability to get $10 tickets if you buy them through the FanSection community.  I’ll provide an update on those programs throughout the rest of the season.