NBA surpasses 75 million Instagram followers, 8th-most among brands

The NBA recently surpassed 75 million followers on Instagram,making it the eighth-most followed brand on the platform.

The NBA has significantly more Instagram followers than theother U.S. pro sports leagues; the NFL has just 26.3 millionfollowers, while the MLB has 9.3 million and the NHL has 5.8million.

“What’s really been our guiding philosophy throughout is we’vetried to be a first-mover on all of these platforms, and in manycases, we were the first sports-league account on the platform,”Kevin Esteves, the NBA’s associate vice president of digitalstrategy and analytics, told Basketball News last year.“Then, it’s about optimizing content for the platform that we’re on— not just spraying the same piece of content across all of ourplatforms, but really optimizing for each platform, nurturing thatfan base and giving them exactly what they want. That’s sort ofbeen key in our recipe for success.”

The NBA's Instagram account has gained more than 5 millionfollowers since August.

Also, it's worth noting that nearly 70% of the NBA's followersare based outside of the United States, which is a testament to theleague's global reach.

“I think a lot of brands can be hesitant around new platforms asthey’re emerging because they aren’t sure if the ROI is there, orthey’re not sure exactly how it ladders up to their overall companyobjective,” Esteves said. “When you think about social media whenit first started, a lot of brands were in the business of drivingpeople back to their website or other offerings, whereas I thinkwe’ve always had the directive from our executives to optimize forthe platform we’re on and nurture engagement there.

“At first, it was a very big marketing platform for us, but now,social drives just about every business objective that we have. ButI don’t think we could have achieved that if we were thinking thatour first post on each platform had to drive 10 of our businessobjectives. We had to nurture engagement on those platforms to thenbe able to capitalize in the long-term. I think we benefited fromthat approach. Globally, I think you’re starting to see more andmore sports leagues embrace a similar approach, being on multipleplatforms and [creating specific] content that they make availableon those platforms to engage fans and ultimately increase the reachof the sport.”

To learn more about the NBA's social-media strategy, check out this article from lastyear.