Every sports league in the United States has been working to bring more pomp and circumstance to their big games – like any other sport, the NBA gets more and more exciting as the season goes on and there is a big, epic finale in sight – so the NBA decided to hold the finale of this all-new tournament in a town known for its drama and excitement, Las Vegas. They tasked us with making the tournament feel like a must-watch, premium NBA experience.

The NBA revamped the 2023-24 season with its inaugural In-Season Tournament to elevate early-season competition and enhance viewership/engagement. Las Vegas, chosen for its neutral ground and marketing appeal, created a vibrant setting for us to garner global attention with a strategic, digital takeover of the city, featuring four CGI videos posted across multiple accounts, creating widespread intrigue and buzz for this groundbreaking tournament.

To maintain a feeling of authenticity and to optimize maximum engagement, the first pieces of content needed to come from an individual, not a brand. We focused on people who would naturally be on the ground in Las Vegas for the games, utilizing NBA Legends Shaquille O’Neal and Richard Jefferson, sports media giant Stephen A. Smith and basketball influencer Tristan Jass.

Building the inaugural NBA In-Season Tournament into a meaningful new tentpole for core & casual fans in the first year was going to be a challenge as we were introducing an entirely new format to the season structure. There was a goal to drive overall awareness with Casual fans who needed to understand the basics of the In-Season Tournament and its impact, while, while for our devoted core fans, needed to understand the enhanced stakes that would make this new tentpole relevant in Year 1.

Enter The Heist, a creative solution designed to convert skeptics of the In-Season Tournament into believers. By orchestrating a high-impact 360-degree campaign anchored by innovative, fun and attention-grabbing creative, we promoted the In-Season Tournament throughout the NBA community and beyond, ensuring its resonance across culture at large.

All four videos were executed by mixing real world footage with 3D assets. A 2-person production team visited Las Vegas with nothing but an iPhone to capture all the on-the-ground footage and sound necessary to mimic the organic look-and-feel of an individual passing by and capturing the scene on their phone. Then, our team of 3D artists used a mix of software (Cinema4D, Houdini, PFtrack, 3DsMax and Octane) to add the more magical elements of an NBA Las Vegas takeover.

Our four CGI scenes transformed some of Las Vegas’s most iconic features into basketball-inspired visuals promoting the first-ever NBA In-Season Tournament:

- An In-Season Tournament inflatable basketball on top of the Paris Balloon

- An In-Season Tournament basketball spinning on the finger of New York, New York’s Lady Liberty

- An enormous basketball hoop on top of The Strat Tower

- A “wide load” In-Season Tournament trophy arriving on The Strip

The NBA In-Season Tournament was a huge success. The Heist film reached more than 71 million people with over 50k mentions, yielding 86% positive sentiment. A diverse channel mix, longer campaign flight and enhanced OOH presence increased reach, delivering ~92% reach which in turn captivated audiences and resulted in lifts across brand metrics - Tournament Awareness (+16pp) and Tune-in Intent (+17pp). The marketing campaign also strengthened the league itself as Top-of-Mind Awareness (+7pp) and NBA Favorability rose (+5.3pp).

Tournament games viewership was up +18% versus the average games during the same time period last year. The Championship game (Pacers/Lakers) averaged 4.58M viewers on ABC/ESPN2, making it the most-viewed pre-Christmas game in the Regular Season footprint (excl. Opening Night) since 12/2/2010 (MIA/CLE on TNT). Across social and digital, the In-Season Tournament generated 2.2B video views, including 256M video views for the Championship Game alone.