Examining the NBA's massive social-media growth over the last year

In 2022, the NBA was once again the most-viewed and most-engagedpro sports league on social media, generating 29.4 billion videoviews across all platforms.

As we've covered in the past, the NBA hasbecome something of a social-media juggernaut.

The NBA has more followers than the other major U.S. pro sportsleagues combined, and the league continues to experience massivegrowth year-over-year.

Last year, the NBA added more than 25 million followers acrossits social-media accounts, including more than 11 million followerson Instagram alone.

The NBA recently surpassed 75 million followers on Instagram,making it the eighth-most followed brand on the platform (andeasily the most-followed U.S. pro sports league). As of March 8,the NBA has 77.1 million followers on IG.

The NBA also surpassed 20 million subscribers on YouTube in2022.

This season, fans have watched the NBA’s YouTube content formore than 87 million hours. To put this number in context, that’s a17% increase over this same span last season and a whopping 329%increase over the same stretch of the 2018-19 season.

In 2022, the NBA also experienced its biggest social week inleague history, generating 1.1 billion video views across allplatforms and the NBA app from Dec. 25 through Dec. 31.

“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,” Kevin Esteves,the NBA’s associate vice president of digital strategy andanalytics, toldBasketball News last year. “That’s sort of been key inour recipe for success.”