Already an established innovator of social media in sports, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has upped its game again, taking social media marketing to a new level and inviting NBA fans along for the ride. Noting that there are over 350 NBA players who maintain active sites on twitter, the NBA has created a line of official T-shirts featuring famous players’ social media handles, rather than last names, above their jersey numbers.
According to NBA sources, the role of social media in sports – and especially in basketball – is not something to be underestimated. Sites and shirts are associated with such famous names as Kevin Durant, Dwyane Wade and the phenomenal Jeremy Lin, who tweeted from his hospital bed following successful knee surgery even while this post was being written. A number of other top NBA stars are also featured in the lineup of ‘tweet tees.’
As part of a statement emailed to the news website Mashable, NBA vice president of licensing Lisa Pilken wrote: “...we thought this would be a great way to engage with our fans.” Pilken points out that NBA player sites are visited by some 4.5 million fans around the world. Historically, NBA players have been at the forefront of the social media revolution beginning several years ago, and have maintained a high profile on the Internet since then. As the established leader in the use of social media in sports, one might say that today’s NBA is tops in tweets, so to speak, as far as sports leagues are concerned.
The handle T-shirt concept is not original with the NBA. Some pro lacrosse and soccer teams have already replaced names with handles on official uniforms, which means that initiates to such sports may need a program to tell whose name is tied to which number and handle. (This shouldn’t be too much of a problem, though, as many handles are self explanatory.) The website TweetStarGame also has an online store selling handle T-shirts representing a variety of sports and individual athletes. The NBA, however, is the apparently first and currently the only professional sports league to officially license t-shirts of this type. They are available at the NBA Store website.