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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Baseline!

Each week, I break down the blueprint of basketball culture, with a particular focus this week on NBA All-Star Weekend.

Let’s jump right into it…

MARKETING BLUEPRINT

NBA All-Star Weekend has always been the biggest moment of the year where basketball culture collides with sports fandom.

There will always be debates about the actual on-court product at ASW, but the event has grown bigger than that, extending far beyond the host city's arena.

It's a unique opportunity that has evolved from fans connecting with their favorite athletes to now immersing themselves in the entire ecosystem of the basketball world.

Here are the recurring trends and strategies from throughout the weekend:

💰 ROI - A brand's objective often ties back to ROI, making high product volume and retail energy crucial, especially for sneaker retailers like Foot Locker, Shoe Palace, and sneaker brand pop-ups.

👥 Existing Audiences - When planning events, you always need to strategize on how to attract attendees and one of the easiest approaches is to show up where existing audiences already are, such as ANTALAND at Santa Monica Pier and AT&T Dunk District at Venice Beach.

🏦 Marketplaces - From NBA Crossover to Complex Market to Foot Locker’s Takeover, these marketplaces allow multiple brands, partners, and vendors to provide consumers with various touch-points, mini-events, and curated programming, all within the same vicinity.

🤳 Creators - Every brand is now fully integrating a creator strategy, but the successful ones have developed an approach where it isn’t just pay-for-play. The NBA led the way by doubling down on their league creator strategy by integrating over 200 creators, including Jesser, Druski, and Lethal Shooter, into nearly every NBA brand moment throughout ASW.

🎥 Streamers - Even with Kai Cenat on a streaming break, the streaming era is stronger than ever as Rayasianboy, PlaqueBoyMax, Kyrie Irving, Jaylen Brown, and others streamed nearly their entire weekends, giving viewers an authentic first-person view into their ASW experiences.

✅ Athlete World Building - Athletes are continuing to build their own worlds as we saw Lil Luka’s Heartbreak Factory, AntLAnd and NBPA’s PLYRHOUSE create entire universes around the athlete’s IP.

🤝 Networking - For corporate executives and industry professionals, moments like these provide a perfect backdrop for networking, panels, and brunches with like-minded brands such as Boardroom, Playmaker, and others leading the way.

🏀 Culture - From artists to designers to 1v1 platforms, there are so many sub-niches of basketball culture that expand the passion of sport beyond just the performance aspect of the game.

📲 Content - Throughout everything at ASW, content was the key distributor because if people didn't see it on social media, did it really happen? From creators, athletes and traditional media partners like SLAM or Ball Is Life to fan pages like Legion Hoops and LeagueAlerts, every brand had their distribution strategy beyond their own platforms.

What trends did you see this past ASW? Let me know what I missed!

And stay tuned for this Friday’s newsletter where I link out everything ASW in our weekly recap.

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POST-GAME

Thanks for reading—I’ll see you back here later this week!

And if you enjoyed reading today’s newsletter, please share it with one friend.

- Jeff Chen | 🏀💡👨🏻‍💻