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For the third consecutive year, the Golden State Warriors are battling the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals for the right to hoist up the Larry O’Brien trophy. The Warriors have rolled through the 2017 NBA playoffs without losing a single game—going a perfect 12-0 on the way to the NBA’s biggest stage. The on-court performance has been so dominating that the team is starting to creep into the NBA’s greatest team conversation. The success has been an overall team effort but much of the credit goes to the starting-5: Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green and Zaza Pachulia. The starters’ results on the court are leading to results off it—by increasing their value to sponsors.
By using sponsorship analytics platform Hookit, we can identify the performance of the Warrior’s biggest stars (and Zaza Pachulia) on social media during the playoffs.
Hookit is a platform that quantifies and tracks social and digital media to increase the value of sponsorships. The platform helps athletes track their progression, build their personal brand and earn recognition and deals.
Using data collected on every athlete in sports, Hookit produces a top-100 list (Hookit Engagement 100) that ranks athletes on social media based on total number of interactions (likes, comments, shares and views).
With the Hookit Engagement 100, we can identify the athletes with the most engagement in digital media for a given month. By applying filters to the Hookit Engagement 100, we can go even deeper. When filtering the list for ‘basketball’, during the month of May, we can identify the athletes with the most engagement from the beginning of the second round of the playoffs until the beginning of the NBA Finals.
During this stretch every starter on the Warriors made the Hookit Engagement 100– demonstrating the impact on-court performance has on athletes’ brands on social media.
The ‘pro athlete page’ is a profile that displays key metrics that Hookit measures to determine the sponsorship value of sports brands. A few of the publicly available stats tracked by Hookit are: New Followers, Audience Growth Last 30 Days, Social Interactions Last 30 Days and Number of Posts.
By looking at the ‘pro athlete page’ we can see how each Warriors starter fared in the month of May:
New Followers: 183,162
Audience Growth Last 30 Days: +38.5k
Social Interactions Last 30 Days: 137.2k
Number of Posts: 21
New Followers: 1,407,489
Audience Growth Last 30 Days: +111K
Social Interactions Last 30 Days: 173.3K
Number of Posts: 11
New Followers: 8,733,062
Audience Growth Last 30 Days: +279.3K
Social Interactions Last 30 Days: 253.6K
Number of Posts: 22
New Followers: 2,662,557
Audience Growth Last 30 Days: +122.7K
Social Interactions Last 30 Days: 375.5K
Number of Posts: 11
New Followers: 10,705,201
Audience Growth Last 30 Days: +566.2K
Social Interactions Last 30 Days: 1.4M
Number of Posts: 8
The data shows us the positive effect the Warrior’s dominating playoff run is having on the starters’ social and digital media influence.
Other than increasing their overall marketability, the playoff run should pay-off in a couple ways:
First, it will increase the value of the players’ current sponsorship and endorsement deals.
Second, it will make them more attractive for future sponsorship and endorsement deals.
Major companies are vying for the attention of consumers--and capturing it is becoming increasingly difficult. Therefore, companies are willing to go to great lengths (and pay large sums of money) to get their brand associated with the players that have the biggest, and most engaged audience. The more visible and recognizable players are, the more attractive they become to potential sponsors—and a successful playoff run like the one the Warriors are putting together helps achieve this.
The 2017 NBA Playoffs have been good to the Warriors, and even more so for the starters. The team is on the brink of picking up its second championship in three years. For Curry, Draymond and Klay this would be their second championship win, while it would be the first for newcomers Durant and Pachulia.
New rings won’t be the only thing the starters get for their efforts—they are sure to get more dollars as well.
The playoff run has increased their influence which has led to increased sponsorship value which will lead to a measurable impact on their income.
As it relates to basketball, they will have increased negotiating power, contract extension opportunities and offers from other teams. As it relates to business, their increased sponsorship value will increase their negotiating power and endorsement and sponsorship opportunities.
The Warriors are one win away from winning the championship and heading into the off-season. However, money has no off-season . Expect to see Curry, Durant and the rest of the starting-5 cashing out on the sponsorship opportunities that their dominating playoff run has afforded them.
