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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Baseline!

Each and every Wednesday morning at 9:36AM EST, you get weekly marketing and creator insights for basketball culture delivered directly to your inbox.

Let’s jump right into it…

MARKETING BLUEPRINT

Brands should move beyond outdated event recap videos.

Instead, focus on social-native storytelling that narrates the activation: highlighting the problem, the strategy, and how your execution was the solution.

This is how GameChanger, a Dick’s Sporting Goods company, identified the streaming opportunity in grassroots basketball and how their activation at Balling on the Beach helped generate 15M+ organic views and drove thousands of new users to the platform:

This convention center ballroom just became the most viral basketball court in the world.

For youth sports fans, top creators and elite high school hoopers are now the main attraction but most streaming platforms still make it way too difficult to actually watch them live.

That’s why GameChanger did something game changing at Balling on The Beach.

They built the first ever GameChanger Court featuring creator led AAU teams like Cam Wilder’s RWE, DriftysColdhearts and Gremlin University.

This format led to high intensity matchups, insane highlights, and non-stop competition battling it out for buckets and views.

These games resulted in over 15M+ viral views and engagement from creators, hoopers, parents, Ballislife, Overtime, Sportscenter Next and many other top outlets.

The best part, every game on this court was live streamed for free on the GameChanger app so fans at home could watch every moment without missing the action.

Because in youth sports, no one wants to miss that one play everyone will be talking about and that’s why GameChanger was built—to be the platform for hoopers, parents and fans who never want to miss a moment in grassroots basketball.

FREE THROWS

Sharing the tools and resources that I’m using this week:

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FAST BREAK

Here’s what you missed this week:

💰 After the WNBA All-Stars warmed up in their "Pay Us What You Owe Us" t-shirts, the officially licensed shirts became available for purchase, with all proceeds going to the players.

✨ Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman aka StudBudz, became the biggest story of WNBA All-Star Weekend by hosting a legendary 72-hour live stream. They provided fans with all-access coverage of the parties, events, celebrities and business meetings at WNBA All-Star Weekend.

👟 Angel Reese brought her energy straight to the fans in the streets of Indianapolis and also revealed the colorway for the Angel Reese 1 "Mebounds."

🏆 Naphessa Collier won WNBA All-Star MVP and Jordan Brand had the All Phee Does Is Win Trucks on standby to light the city up.

🎶 Jordan Brand launched their Air Jordan 40 campaign with a “Too Easy” basketball musical starring their athletes Bam Adebayo, Trae Young, Chris Paul, Paolo Banchero, Jayson Tatum, Luka Doncic, Napheesa Collier, Dominique Malonga, Gabby Williams, Jared McCain, and Kiki Rice.

🤳 Ja Morant kicked off his Make Them Watch Tour as he popped into the Nike Basketball and Foot Locker EYBL Pop-Up to surprise drop an EYBL exclusive colorway of his Ja 3s.

🍗 Paige Bueckers announced a partnership with Wingstop as she became the second basketball rookie (after Dylan Harper, with one more to be announced) to sign with the brand. In case you forgot, she ordered $540 worth of 400 boneless wings after UConn won the National Championship.

🐎 Klay Thompson is in his trainer creator era, as he added a voiceover to his girlfriend’s Megan Thee Stallion’s newest workout TikTok.

👑 Tyler, The Creator dropped his new album “Don’t Tap The Glass” and a music video for “Stop Playing With Me” featuring cameos from LeBron James and Mav Carter.

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- Jeff Chen | 🏀💡👨🏻‍💻