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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Baseline!

Let’s jump right into your weekly blueprint for basketball culture…

As usual, we’re breaking down the blueprint for basketball culture: brand insights, marketing strategy, creator tools, and business resources.

Let’s jump right into it:

MARKETING BLUEPRINT

The Basketball Capital of the World

I bet you didn’t know that Connecticut is the Basketball Capital of the World.

Dick Vitale coined that term in 1995, and since then, UConn has built a digital marketing blueprint around this brand identity.

They’ve embraced this bold claim, even trademarking it to support their 17 national championships between their men's and women’s basketball teams.

Here’s how the state school in Storrs, CT took this tagline and secured every digital touchpoint for this term:

💻 A simple “Basketball Capital of The World” web search will flood you with UConn-related results like news articles and Wikipedia entries.

📍 They even created a custom Instagram location tag that points back to Gampel Pavilion.

🛣️ They also turned physical real estate into brand real estate as Connecticut’s governor placed highway signs at the New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts state borders declaring UConn’s claim.

🥩 Ironically, this started a Twitter beef with the Massachusetts governor, and that drama and news coverage only helped UConn’s SEO.

On top of all this, UConn monetizes their tagline with officially licensed merchandise, turning their bold statement into a revenue driver.

While New York, LA, Chicago, and other cities all have legitimate claims to the title, UConn built a blueprint on how to make a huge statement and turn it into a cultural identity and financial revenue stream.

FREE THROWS

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

🤖 4o Image Generation - The best marketers and creatives in the future will leverage AI tools for increased speed and efficiency. I've already created a new video thumbnail template using ChatGPT’s latest feature to enhance the creative of my Blueprint Video Thumbnails.

📧 Beyond The Game: This newsletter from the team at Greenwood Ave provides creative strategies and real-world examples for building profitable athlete partnerships in today’s social era.

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FAST BREAK

Here’s what you missed this week:

🍔 Rich Paul and Klutch Sports Group celebrated their McDonald's All-American clients, including top prospects Alijah Arenas and Aaliyah Crump, with surprise billboards throughout NYC—showing them some extra love before their high school careers end.

💰 Trae Young donated $1 million to the University of Oklahoma’s men’s basketball program while also becoming an Assistant GM, following Stephen Curry's recent announcement of a similar role with Davidson College.

✅ Nike and TOGETHXR collaborated on the "Everyone Watches Women’s Sports" collection, following the original tee's success—which generated over $6 million in revenue over the past year.

👑 LeBron announced Season 2 of his "Mind The Game" podcast, this time with Steve Nash as his new co-host, replacing the now Lakers Head Coach, JJ Redick.

🤑 Caitlin Clark set a new record for women's sports cards, as her 2024 Panini Prizm WNBA Signatures Gold Vinyl card, numbered 1-of-1, sold for $366,000 at a recent Goldin Auctions.

🎙️ Blue Wire is adding four NBA-athlete podcasts into their ecosystem as they partner with D’Angelo Russell ("Backyard Podcast"), Penny Hardaway ("Two Cents"), Dwight Howard ("Above The Rim with DH12"), and Victor Oladipo ("Inner Court").

🗽The New York Liberty announced a new practice facility coming to Brooklyn in 2027, with an estimated private funding cost of $80 million.

🇨🇦 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander made an appearance in Drake’s newest video for “NOKIA”, and of course plugged his new Converse SHAI 001 sneakers.

📈 The Golden State Valkyries became the first WNBA team to sell 10,000 season tickets as the WNBA season kicks off next month.

✍️ After Cooper Flagg's 30-point game, Nike Basketball's Twitter/X account took shots at New Balance Basketball but quickly deleted the tweet the next day.

🌏 Dwight Howard announced a new league, The Asian Tournament, and is hosting pro combines across the country to sign players to professional contracts to compete in professional basketball leagues across Asia.

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POST-GAME

Here’s a recent quote from a conversation I had the other day and I hope it inspires you:

As always, thanks for reading—I’ll see you back here next week!

- Jeff Chen | 🏀💡👨🏻‍💻