SBJ Media: WBD scores ad sales win in final NBA All-Star weekend

The Super Bowl is over. We can all take a breath now, right? No way.

My favorite ad of the night had to be Nike. Returning to the Big Game for the first time in 27 years, the company opted for a 60-second spot highlighting women in sports. It left me feeling like I could run through a brick wall.

My partner’s mom (a former D-I swimmer) texted us last night: “I wish I saw stuff like that when I was kid.” Shout out to Nike (and the NFL and Dove and many other brands) for championing women and girls -- it would have meant a lot to little me, too.

The NFL season is over (minus the Super Bowl audience breakdown from my podcast co-host Austin Karp).

So let’s shift gears to one of this weekend’s marquee sporting events: NBA All-Star Weekend.

For its final time with the event before a new media rights deal begins next season, Warner Bros. Discovery sold out its advertising inventory for the entire weekend (not just the game) earlier than ever, according to WBD EVP of ad sales Jon Diament, who noted that achievement happened a few weeks ago.

“We’re drafting behind the Super Bowl,” said Diament, noting that a lot of advertisers have extensive brand campaigns that they want to continue to run, with multiple brands buying into both events.

Diament said while the Super Bowl brings a wide swatch of demos, advertisers are interested specifically in the young demos that the NBA produces.

Strong categories include auto, telco, tech, movies and social, including Meta and Google (both of which advertised in the Super Bowl). Several long-form spots are also coming in, including movie trailers and drug manufacturers.

All previous All-Star sponsors and marketing partners of the NBA have returned, including Kia, American Express and CarMax “spending money in a big way,” Diament said.

Castrol joined as a first-time advertiser, sponsoring Friday night’s Rising Stars event.

“This sport is very young and very urban, and you have these categories like sneakers and soda companies that don’t buy a lot of media,” said Diament.

WBD declined to disclose pricing around advertising, but it’s certainly under the $8M a 30-second Super Bowl spot commanded on Fox on Sunday.

Diament added that WBD sold more inventory earlier in the calendar this year, mostly due to clients that are not official NBA sponsors wanting to lock in inventory.

“If you’re just a scatter or an upfront advertiser, you have to come in early if you want any kind of package with good positioning and good added value,” said Diament. “If you just buy things last minute, you’re going to get a remnant.”

This is also the first year of a new All-Star Game format, including a mini-tournament, following lackluster fan response to the 2024 debacle and disapproval from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.

“Regardless of ratings, advertisers gravitate toward this event,” said Diament. “It’s nice to engage and say that the ratings are up and down; it’s going to sell out because there’s just so much interest in buying this inventory. While the ratings are important, it’s the social media and the noise that advertisers look at beyond just traditional Nielsen ratings to decide if they want to be part of the weekend.”

Road to the finals

Diament also referenced the upcoming Feb. 25 matchup between the Mavericks and Lakers -- the first time the teams will face off since the Luka Dončić-Anthony Davis blockbuster trade.

“As soon as the All-Star Game ends, we ride toward the playoffs, and we’re super-excited about that [Mavs-Lakers] game,” said Diament. “Then the next thing you know, we’ll be teasing the playoffs. We’re really excited about the momentum from the All-Star Game carrying through our playoff package.”

All-Star Weekend also serves as a lead-in to March Madness, with brands making buys across both properties (WBD carries and sells that event alongside CBS). WBD declined to give an update on how those sales are pacing, opting to wait for joint conversations with CBS.

End of an era

WBD will still have a relationship with the NBA when the next media deal begins, albeit in more of a licensing role (with “Inside the NBA” headed to ESPN). It also maintains NBA connective tissue through a digital rights pact with Bleacher Report for the entirety of the next rights deal.

Diament’s favorite All-Star memory comes from 2011, when Blake Griffin alley-ooped over a Kia in the dunk contest.

With Sprite as the event official sponsor (and Kia an overall sponsor), the marketing dilemma came in how to get folks talking about Sprite and not the auto brand. The solution? Plastering a Sprite logo over the Kia branding.

“It was all done hours before the event -- not months,” said Diament. “Everybody walked away feeling really good about it.”

The “All The Smoke” boys are back and better than ever.

Co-founders and unofficial executives Matt Barnes and Brian Dailey now have formal titles in the production company as CEO and president and COO, respectively.

“To be able to tell authentic stories, we don’t take for granted being a trusted voice in this space,” said Barnes who won an NBA championship as part of the Warriors in 2017. “We were one of the first kind of sports pods that was able to find a niche, capitalize off that and turn it into an entire company.”

The duo formed All The Smoke Productions in 2024 after the closure of Showtime Sports, which had been the home of “All The Smoke with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson” since 2019.

With a year under their belts, Barnes and Dailey are now focused on expanding the company and widening the content slate.

“[We’re] continuing what we started in Showtime -- building out a network, platform and a production agency that continues what we were doing,” said Dailey, previously a Showtime Sports programming executive. “Taking the formula that worked so well for us there and applying that to other things. This idea that we’re a full-fledged, 20-plus employee production company right now is wild. We worked damn hard to get here.”

It now has eight-plus digital series that hit the intersection of sports and culture, with more in development.

Taking a jab at new verticals

The company’s verticals include basketball, NFL and one Barnes is most proud of -- boxing.

“Brian was able to take that IP and wrestle that away and bring that from Showtime to All The Smoke,” said Barnes. “The possibilities in the boxing space are endless.”

All The Smoke signed International Boxing Hall of Fame inductees Andre Ward and Roy Jones Jr. to key roles in the company’s “All The Smoke Fight” content division, with new deals pending with OTT and streaming services.

By the end of the year, Barnes and Dailey hope to jump into golf, with the potential for baseball as well.

“We just want to be able to tell creative, trusted stories in those spaces, and give our brothers and sisters the opportunity to do the same,” said Barnes. “We’re building the plane as we’re flying it. It’s a crash course. It’s been amazing for me in particular, although I’m the talent and the former athlete, I really enjoy and appreciate the business side.”

The company has long-term distribution partnerships with DraftKings and iHeartRadio, as well as with Live Nation, Meadowlark Media and Kevin Durant’s Boardroom brand.

“I’m always pushing back on the word ‘podcast,’” said Dailey. “It’s so much more than that. From day one, we looked at this thing as a content property. [Getting into] other verticals is the most exciting part of our growth. You couple that with other things like unscripted, series and reality ... we have access to incredible people, incredible stories.”

According to Dailey, All The Smoke is in active conversations with Amazon, Netflix and Apple for upcoming projects.

“Content is king, and coming with all these new streaming platforms, they’re going to need content,” said Barnes. “Particularly with the people that just did the new NBA and WNBA deal, building, both male and female and basketball.”

While NBA All-Star weekend and the Daytona 500 are the big-ticket sports telecasts on the docket this weekend, ESPN networks are leaning into a healthy dose of women’s sports.

The docket will see the launch of the Women’s Lacrosse League, the League One Volleyball Classic Tournament, NCAA softball’s Clearwater Invitational and a tripleheader of ranked college basketball games (including this season’s first women’s basketball “College GameDay” show).

“As we wind down on football season, we’re in women’s sports season, baby,” said Susie Piotrkowski, ESPN’s VP/women’s sports programming and espnW.

Piotrkowski, an SBJ Game Changers honoree last year who went on maternity leave just hours after we spoke (congratulations, Susie!!), told me of the planned coverage, “Women’s sports are sports, and we’re ESPN.”

One novel part of the weekend is the debut of a standalone sports telecast for Disney+ subscribers, who as part of their sub now have access to select live telecasts (around 100 per year) through an ESPN+ tile on Disney+.

“The tile is a huge opportunity to reach fans in a new place,” said Piotrowski. “We’re seeing female audience engagement more robust than it has ever been. In a not-too-distant past, it was really tough. There was a high barrier to entry to be a women’s sports fan, and you’re seeing that barrier to entry get lower and lower and lower, and that’s a great opportunity for us.”

Piotrkowski described ESPN’s upcoming streaming service “Flagship” as an additional opportunity for “scale that hasn’t previously existed when we’re talking about women’s sports.”

Check out my full interview with Piotrkowski below

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• Ahead of the Super Bowl, I asked Erin Andrews how she’s seen her role as Fox’s NFL sideline reporter change over the years, and her answer intrigued me, as I admittedly hadn’t spent too much time thinking about what goes on in that role outside of what we see on TV. “When I first started in the industry, all the stories that came out about the athletes, coaches and general managers throughout the week, I felt like that was so important to get them out,” she said. “While some of them are, you learn what you are observing on the field. I am the eyes and the ears for not only Tom [Brady] and Kevin [Burkhardt], but I also am for the truck, for Richie Zyontz, for Rich Russo. ... I get so jacked up and so excited because I kind of feel like I’m a spy or a CIA agent. I just feel like that just helps our broadcast and that helps the boys in the booth so much.”
• How did Tom Brady do in debut effort calling a Super Bowl? SBJ Daily has reaction.
• And what about the new Super Bowl score bug debut? Viewers were less impressed with that.
• My colleague Tom Friend looked at how the Kroenke-owned RSN Altitude and Comcast finally reached the finish line on a carriage deal.
• Fox’s plans for an OTT product adds to growing slate of cord-cutting options.
• In, around and above the field of play at SoFi Center in Florida, 73 camera sources provide footage for ESPN’s broadcast and TGL’s social media and content teams (a standard NFL prime-time broadcast features around 35 cameras), notes SBJ’s Bret McCormick.
• NASCAR has been trying to get all its departments humming in recent years as it arrested declines in key performance indicators, and content has been no different, with more than a dozen projects in the works or slated to come out this year, reports SBJ’s Adam Stern. Meanwhile, with new NASCAR media deals starting this season, Stern also reports that all three of the new partners -- Amazon, the CW and TNT Sports -- are developing their own proprietary graphics and production for broadcasts.