The NBA is in the midst of one of their biggest scandals in years. Last month, it was reported that Clippers star Kawhi Leonard potentially received $48 million under the table, violating the league’s salary cap rules. This threatens the competitive integrity of the league, and has the potential to undermine the league’s reputation among its fans.
When I heard about this scandal, I remembered the research I did on the NBA’s brand image and viewership a few years ago. It didn’t look at the impact of incidents like this one. But with this scandal fresh on people’s minds and the start of the NBA season right around the corner, I still thought this research would be particularly relevant to share today.
My research looked at how does a team’s success – or lack thereof – affects the NBA’s brand image and the fan engagement in its local market. While it is well known that winning tends to boost a team’s attendance numbers, I wanted to examine how winning impacts our key business metrics across U.S. metro areas.
Luckily, I was able to use QuestBrand to measure brand image. QuestBrand is an ongoing tracker that asks respondents about a large pool of brands, and it is very useful for seeing how your brand’s quality, familiarity, and momentum rank relative to your competitors. In my case, I used it to see how well the NBA scores at these metrics across the different metro areas in the US, and to see whether these metrics fluctuate as the local team performs better or worse.
In addition, we at Harris had access to passive TV, computer, and smartphone behavioral data from third party data providers (Samba TV and Luth). This allowed us to see how fans’ engagement level with the NBA (eg. games watched, YouTube views, searches) changed over time.
Let’s take a look at some of our key findings:
League Brand Image Not Harmed By Poor Local Teams
Overall NBA reputation is resistant tocurrent performance of localteam.When we plot the NBA’s brand momentum throughout the 2021-22 season, there is no noticeable difference between the reputation in metro areas with a playoff team and metro areas without a playoff team. The same holds true when we plot the NBA’s purchase likelihood throughout that season. This discovery shows us that – contrary topopular belief – having a bad (or “tanking”) teamdoesn’t harm the NBA’s overall brand image in that market.
Viewership
Gap Between Playoff and Non-Playoff Areas Similar to the Gap Between Non-Playoff and No-Team Areas
As one would expect, NBA playoff viewership increases in metro areas that host a playoff team.Here we plotted the viewership of NBA playoff games across three different subgroups: Metro areas with a playoff team, metro areas with a non-playoff team, and metro areas with no NBA team at all.The areas with playoff teams havethe most viewership throughout the playoffs.This makes sense, as people who are invested in the local team are more interested than those without a horse in the race.But –playoff and non-playoff team areasbothget more viewership than areas with no NBA team. This shows that the NBA has room to increase its viewershipif it expands into large metro areas that currentlydon’t have their own team (such as Seattle and Las Vegas).
Regular Season Viewership Gap is Even More Pronounced Between Playoff and Non-Playoff Teams
Playoff teams (the better teams) also have more regular-season viewers than non-playoff teams.There isactually a really staggering difference. In this graph, we are looking at total number of games watched (rather than the % of people who watched a game). So not only do more people watchthe good teams,those people also watch them morefrequently. This isa big difference that can take a toll on a team’s viewership if they are consistently bad fora long period of time.
Sprints Are Good, But The NBA Season is a Marathon
When an NBA team is good for an extended period of time, fans have an increased level of engagement. They watch a lot more games, shows (such as NBA today), and YouTube videos of the NBA. But the NBA’s brand image metrics (purchase consideration, promoters, reputation, and % willing to pay a premium) remain unchanged. This shows that while team performance has a big impact on local viewership, that impact doesn’t translate into any meaningful downturn in brand reputation.
However, short term success (e.g., a team being good for just one month) doesn’t move the needle much. Only sustained performance throughout the season shows a strong correlation with engagement.
Ultimately, we learned that being a better team makes a big impact on viewership in a metro area. But the NBA’s overall reputation and image is surprisingly resilient, even in markets with underperforming teams. We also saw the league has room to gain more viewership if it expands to metro areas without a team. And we challenged the narrative that tanking damages the league’s image.
So next time a talking head goes on about how tanking is ruining the league … well, you now have the data to prove them wrong. If anything, scandals like we are seeing today are a much bigger threat to the league than tanking is.
Methodology
This study was run using NBA results, QuestBrand data, and third party data from 2021 to 2022. Note that the study was only done in US metro markets, and it excluded Los Angeles and New York (since those markets are home to multiple NBA teams).
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