The battle between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors in the 2015 NBA Finals reached an intensity that has been unmatched in past finals.
Redemption, pride, and MVP Claims were all on the line. In fact, the 2015 NBA Finals became the most-watched and highest-rated NBA Finals since Michael Jordan’s last series with the Chicago Bulls, averaging 19.94 million viewers on ABC!
To understand the marketing behind the buzz, we used the TrackMaven platform to see how the outcomes of the games affected the Warriors’ and the Cavaliers’ engagement on Facebook and Twitter.
To account for differences in the teams’ audience size and content output, we based our analysis on a control of the average interactions per post per 1,000 followers (AIPP).
So, does winning really make a sports marketer’s life easier?
The NBA Finals On Facebook
The first distribution channel we took a look at was Facebook. While both teams have a similar number of Likes on their Facebook pages (roughly 4 million fans), the Warriors clearly dominated on June 4th, generating 13.53 AIPP compared to the Cavalier’s 8.47 AIPP with the post below.
Coincidentally, the Warriors also won that game! The next two games, however, did not go in the Warriors’ favor, and their AIPP dropped accordingly to 8.7 on June 7 (after Game 2) and 4.9 on June 9 (Game 3).
Reveling in their victory, the Cavaliers’ AIPP began to rise and reached their pinnacle of 11.3 on the day after the Cavs won their second straight game. Unsurprisingly, the top post of the Cavs also featured a mention of their victory.
More shocking was what happened on June 11 when the Cavs lost at home, tying up the series.
In the graph below, we can see the massive impact the outcome of Game 4 had on each team’s engagement. After the their loss, the Cav’s 7.1 drop in AIPP was overshadowed by the Warriors’ rise by 7.7.
In fact, the Cav’s AIPP tied or exceeded the Warrior’s AIPP only when they won! Otherwise, the Warriors’ AIPP was by far the more superior of the two, reaching 20.19 on June 14th after taking the lead in the series.
Based off Facebook alone, we could clearly identify that there was a correlation between who won and the AIPP that marketers were able to generate on that particular day. Next, we observed Twitter to see if a similar pattern existed.
The NBA Finals On Twitter
Much like on Facebook, both teams have a similar number of fans on Twitter (roughly 850,000). Similarly, the pattern of AIPP between the two teams on Twitter looks almost identical to that on Facebook’s.
Based off the graph above, we can see the spikes in AIPP on June 11th and June 14th when the Warriors took game 4 and 5 of the series. Even with LeBron James’ awe inspiring performances in these two games, the Cavs’ AIPP never recovered to levels of their game 3 victory.
Below are some of these Tweets that garnered the highest AIPP from the teams across the series:
From our analysis, we can clearly see that for sports marketers, winning makes driving brand engagement so much easier. But on the other hand, what can marketers do when their team is defeated? Below are some of the most engaging posts from each team after a loss!
The Warriors’ Most Successful Post-Loss Posts
The Cavaliers’ Most Successful Post-Loss Posts
Quotes of player’s hope to improve, awe inspiring statistics, and optimistic sentiments seem to generate the highest AIPP after a loss. Negativity of any kind was completely absent and only seen in posts with the lowest levels of engagement.
So what’s the lesson? Accentuate the positive — in victory AND defeat.