NBA leans on content creators, AI to power new digital products, drive game viewership

The NBA is introducing a slew of new digital products and initiatives for the 2026-27 season all targeting the same concerted effort of attracting and informing fans about ongoing games

“We are trying to activate this entire ecosystem to help drive live game viewership,” said NBA SVP/Social & Digital Content Bob Carney. “We are singularly focused on that goal.”

To that end, the NBA is broadening its Tap to Watch access points, the functionality of its AI chatbot and its collaborations with content creators and social platforms. The league is also introducing a new app experience called Game Pulse and a new AWS-backed hub curating advanced stats. Here’s a breakdown of each:

*Tap to Watch: Content discovery is and was top of mind for the league, especially last season, the first year of the new media deal. Tap to Watch drove 30 million game views in 2025-26 and drew a 90% favorability rating from NBA app users. Fans can click into games through 100 Tap to Watch access points across the league ecosystem, spanning everything from broadcasters to internet search and social platforms. Every #nba hashtag on TikTok, for example, will create a new entry point. It’ll expand globally this season, and fans can also sync the NBA schedule to their own personal calendars.

“The whole beauty behind Tap to Watch is we really want to take the guesswork out of the fans’ hands,” said NBA Head of Business Initiatives & Operations Dayna Blechman.

*Creators: The NBA is starting its most ambitious creator campaign, beginning with a first-of-its-kind Creator Content Day on the season’s opening night. The league is inviting 50 creators with a collective following north of 500 million to an event in L.A. where they’ll have opportunities to create content with each other, special guests and more. Ripple (formerly Videocites) is a key NBA contributor helping track the distribution and popularity of this content across social media.

Separately, the NBA is partnering with TikTok on an incentive program for 500 creators to win prizes and access to major league events. The creators will be provided with league IP and highlights and receive reward points for posts about the league, inclusion of the Tap to Watch feature and more.

“When we bring creators into our ecosystem, even though we’re working closely with them on key messaging, we don’t want to change their voice,” said Maggie O’Rourke, the NBA’s new media partnerships lead. “We want all of their content to feel authentic.”

*Game Pulse: A new staple of the NBA app is Game Pulse, a feed combining AI highlights from WSC Sports, statistical insights and an AI-generated summary to catch fans up on what they missed up to that point of the game. If fans have League Pass, the livestream will appear as well; if not, a visualization of player movement on the court based on the Hawk-Eye tracking data will fill that space on top of the screen. Fans will be able to customize what content gets shared. The goal is to tell the story of the game in an automated fashion, according to NBA Senior Lead Product Manager Michael Callahan, saying, “The user in a lot of ways can pick their own journey.”

*AskNBA: Launched in beta last year, AskNBA is the league’s AI chatbot — represented by a basketball with a star atop the app interface — that draws on multiple LLMs to share answers about current games, league history, stats and more. AskNBA can handle everything from straightforward questions about where a player went to college to complex analysis such what a team’s most efficient lineup combination is.

*Other NBA app features: Head of NBA App Sara Zuckert noted that the app is not only trying to drive live game viewership but also extend that engagement window with additions such as live-streamed pregame warmups and fashion content from player arrivals. More voices will share commentary on ongoing action, both the aforementioned creators as well as retired players such as Carlos Boozer, Muggsy Bogues, Joakim Noah and Gary Payton.

*AWS Inside the Game: Last season was the beginning of the NBA’s relationship with AWS as its cloud and AI partner. That included its Inside the Game advanced stats, adding new metrics such as leverage, expected field goal percentage and gravity, a measure of how much attention an offensive player attracts from the defense. The new addition this year is Blueprint, a hub of the stats and insights that’ll be available on the app and league website. It’ll also include an AI-generated summary that’ll lean toward a data-heavy perspective. Also being added is a team’s top sets.

“We have built a technology that identifies all the patterns of movement for every NBA play so that we can quickly match and say, well, how many times did a team run this set or this play or this pattern?” said NBA VP/Stats Technology Product Development Charlie Rohlf, who called it “an incredible data science achievement under the hood” to power it.