X Announces Expanded Content Partnership With the NBA

As it continues to develop its slate of original content, X has announced a renewal of its partnership with the NBA, which will see the NBA continue to share exclusive content to the platform.

As per X:

“X serves as a vibrant community for NBA fans, where live game commentary becomes a shared experience. Fans worldwide interact, react, and engage with each play, creating a collective experience that goes beyond watching, fostering unity and deepening their connection to basketball.”

X says that its new, multi-year partnership with the NBA will introduce “new, innovative experiences in 2025 and beyond,” with more info on these updates coming soon.

That could see X add an NBA portal, similar to its NFL portal activation, which makes it easier to track matches in real time, and get the latest standings and stats info in-stream.

The deal will help to ensure that X remains a key platform for discussing NBA news, which remains a key source of engagement for the app.

Indeed, back in September, X reported that “Sports” is the most popular topic segment in the app, notably beating out “Politics” by a significant margin.  

This is where X continues to lead potential challengers, in that it’s the place to be for the latest, up-to-the-minute discussions on real-time events, with sports fans, in particular, developing habitual engagement behaviors and strong communities aligned to the app.

And that’s going to be difficult for any potential challenger app to beat. While X and Bluesky have emerged as potential alternatives, X remains the main focus for many topical discussions, and these communities have thus far proven very difficult to shift from the app.

As noted, the expansion of X’s NBA deal is the latest in its evolving slate of exclusive content, which it’s building over time, though it has seemingly gone slower than expected.

Earlier this year, X CEO Linda Yaccarino made a big show of announcing that X was now a “video first” platform, which seemed to indicate that it would be making a bigger push on video content this year. And while it has had some success with exclusive programming from Tucker Carlson and Jim Rome, among others, it also announced, then scrapped a deal with former CNN presenter Don Lemon (after a tense interview with X owner Elon Musk), while it also announced an exclusive content deal with Paris Hilton, which is yet to yield any programming,

But it has now confirmed that Khloe Karadashian’s new video podcast is coming, after announcing a deal with the star back in June.  

So maybe these things just take time, though it does seem odd to announce that your platform is now “video first,” then make no significant changes to its format or approach.

Maybe 2025 is the year of video for the platform, and maybe this expanded deal with the NBA is just the beginning of a new push to get more people spending more time with the platform’s video content.