LA Lakers - Facebook Winners

Wow - my sixteenth blog post, it feels good to say that. Anyways, as you may or may not be able to tell by the title of my post. The Los Angeles Lakers are the first North American sports team to reach 11 million fans on Facebook.

If I would have had to guess, I would have probably not picked the Lakers to lead the category, I probably would have went with either the Dallas Cowboys or the New York Yankees. But according to this article on NBA.com, they are in fourth place worldwide, trailing only FC Barcelona, Real Madrid and Manchester United, who are all European soccer clubs.

Apparently it has only taken the Lakers only three years to reach this status. They created both a Facebook and Twitter accounts during the 2008-2009 season. According to Tim Harris, Lakers CMO/Senior Vice President of Business Operations, “When we created our Facebook page three years ago, we did so with the intention of using the platform as a way to personally connect with our fans not only in America, but all over the world.” It has clearly been working. When I last checked the actually have 11,020,104 viewers, so the number continues to rise.

We know that they have the most, but according to this article, the Charlotte Bobcats have the fewest with only 85,000. That is a huge difference between first and last place.

I am not surprised that the Lakers are tops in the NBA, they are in a huge city and have a storied franchise. It sounds like they use Facebook the right away, by giving their fans a personal look at the team. A chance to hear from the coaches, the Laker Girls and they are even offered merchandise specials.

We have talked all semester long about how important social media is and Facebook is King (at least right now.) If you want to reach millions of people, there is no better way than adding a few pictures/videos and quick blurbs to your Facebook account.  To quote a different sport movie, “If you build it, they will come”, and that is just the case with Facebook, and well I guess the Los Angeles Lakers.

NBA D-League Futurecasts

Even though the NBA season has been put on hold, at least for now, you still have the opportunity to watch professional basketball. The NBA Development League season starts its eleventh season next Friday, November, 25th. The D-league is the only minor league division of the NBA and currently has sixteen teams in the league.

Since we are talking about livestreaming this week, I thought it would be a good blog topic to discuss. One of the ideas behind the D-League is to show off the talent to the world and is available all for free. They have what they call NBA Futurecasts, livestreams of all D-League games available to anyone with a computer and a internet connection.

This is the third year that I have been hired on by NBA Entertainment to be the Team Tricaster Director (TTD) for the Dakota Wizards, the team located in Bismarck, ND and who is now owned by the Golden State Warriors.

A Tricaster is a video switcher/computer/streaming device all-in-one machine that allows us to push the switch and stream these games out to the world. During each broadcast you will see three cameras used, full scoreboard graphics, play-by-play announcing and everything else you expect from a normal television broadcast.

Although we as operators due what normally several people do, it’s a lot of fun and I look forward to tip-off of every game. It doesn’t hurt that I sit at the scorer’s table and get to watch every game up close. Its easy to sometimes forget that you have a game to direct and switch as the quality of play is awesome and some players are actually on NBA teams and have been sent down to get more playing time. In fact, last year’s D-League defensive player of the year was from the Wizards and had to NBA call-ups to the big show.

Anyways, getting back to the NBA Futurecasts, they can be found here. Every game is streamed and no username and password is required. Simply click on the game you want to watch and enjoy. The player that is used detects the strength of your bandwith and will give you the best quality available. The highest being in High Definition. All games are also immediately archived and if you join a game late, no problem, you can simply start at the beginning of the game to make sure you don’t miss any of the highlights.

So if you are a fan of the NBA and feel like you need to get your basketball fix, feel free to log onto the future of the NBA and check out a Futurecast.