The NBA and Turner Sports announced Wednesday that NBA.com, the league's official website, managed this season by Turner for the first time, has served more than a billion streaming videos since the 2009 draft. That's just an incredible number, and shows you both how popular the game has become globally and how effectively the league has used new media as a marketing tool and component of its offering to fans.
The announcement came as a part of Turner's roll-out of extensive playoff activity, with the centerpiece a slate of games on TNT and NBA TV. TNT, which will host the Western Conference Finals, among other series, grew its playoff ratings 19 percent in 2009, and grew its total audience 24 percent, and hopes to exceed these numbers in 2010.
The other note of interest from Turner's announcement is that every single post-game press conference from this year's postseason will be streamed live on NBA.com. It's impossible for more than snippets of these press conference to be shown on T.V., but to be honest plenty of fans would rather hear directly from Alvin Gentry or Mike Brown than, um, Stu Scott and Jamal Mashburn. This will give those fans the opportunity to lose the filter, which is always good.
Amazing. I doubt any other league comes close. Speaks to the global reach of the game and the NBA's excellent policies on this kind of stuff. Other leagues have stupidly banned videos from YouTube and elsewhere while the NBA sees it as free exposure. The NBA Twitter feed is also the most popular of any league, even the NFL.