Christine Cassis

(u/thunderemoji)

With more than 773M average monthly impressions, Sports is 2nd most popular category on Reddit. The basketball audience alone drives more than 229M+ monthly views and an average of 5.1M unique visitors, so it’s no surprise that each NBA team has a home on Reddit. But the conversation goes beyond basketball communities, appearing in everything from r/pics to r/dataisbeautiful:

But r/NBA is where the big news breaks happen, like this post, which at peak had 5.6K views and 3.1K upvotes per minute:

Peaks in engagement

NBA fans on Reddit rally during opening week, with an 88% increase on r/NBA subreddit alone.

That said, excitement persists throughout the season, with some of the biggest days for r/NBA being trade deadlines, the draft and finals:

We also see fans hangout with “during” and “post” game threads for just about every NBA game with fans relying on Reddit as their second screen experience, on both desktop and mobile during live events.

Viral NBA content starts on Reddit

Back in March 2017, u/RDollaz photo posted to Reddit of Klay Thompson signing his toaster.

Weird, right? Reddit thought so too… A few weeks later, astute redditors realized their team hadn’t lost a game since Klay met that fateful toaster:

What followed was the birth of a meme and tons of press celebrating the toaster as the lucky charm for the Golden State Warriors wins.

From tons of Reddit posts crediting the toaster after each GSW win, tweets from the likes of NBAonTNT and Sports Illustrated, all the way to Klay telling sideline reporters that the “toaster has been working.”

Icing on the cake? u/RDollaz got invited by Klay Thompson to ride on the bus during the Warrior’s Championship parade.

Making headlines

The NBA audience on Reddit is consistently making headlines. From Complex to the Washington Post, NBA fandom on Reddit isn’t only eye-catching, it’s engaging. Looking to join the conversation? Our Brand Strategy team has a few thought-starters for you to keep in-mind:

AMA Series : Provide a unique perspective on the sport of basketball from a wide variety of verticals. Be the conduit for talent for AMAs with sports data-scientists, advertising analysts, league scouts and more.

Reddit vs. the Pros : Redditors look to professional commentators, Fantasy Sports speculators and other influencers to determine their predictions and then compare and contact their strategies with others. Let’s find an influencer in the NBA space and have them create weekly predictions then crowdsource those predictions made by redditors.

Surround the fan dialog : During the season our sports and basketball communities see a huge spike in traffic due to our users’ inclination to create official game threads (megathreads) for each matchup throughout the season, participate in discussions and talk about any highlights and news.

For more community insights and the latest Reddit news, stay tuned to our blog.