• by Wayne Friedman , December 13, 2022

NBA Entertainment, the marketing/production division of the National Basketball Association, has hired a new marketing agency business started up by David Levy, former longtime Turner network senior executive.

Horizon Sports & Experiences (HS&E), an affiliate company to the Horizon Media media agency group, will look for ways to boost the league's global marketing efforts.

Levy, former president of Turner, and Chris Weil, the former chair/CEO of Momentum Worldwide, are co-CEOs of HS&E.

Gregg Winik, NBA president, content and executive producer, in a release said: "Adding [Levy's] expertise to HS&E's strong data and analytics capabilities will help us better understand the needs of our fans and how to reach them."

For nearly five decades, Turner Sports has aired NBA TV telecasts on its networks. ESPN/ABC has had TV rights to the league over nearly 30 years.

In 2014, Turner Broadcasting Systems and ESPN struck separate nine-year deals at $24 billion each for the TV rights -- nearly three times the annual value of the previous contract.

As part of this deal ESPN's sister channel, ABC Television Network, continued to have the rights to the NBA Finals.

HS&E says its focus is on “IP creation and monetization, strategic advisory and consulting, media rights, sponsorship, sales, and experiential, metaverse, and Web3.0 strategy and activation.”

Since October -- the start of the NBA season -- through December 12, the league has spent $9.3 million on U.S. national TV advertising to promote the league -- 2,388 airings of commercial messages, resulting in 383.3 million impressions, according to iSpot.tv.

In the year-ago period, the league spent $7.9 million for 1,444 airings, getting 336.2 million impressions.

Total national TV advertising revenue since the start of the season on all NBA TV networks is estimated to be $147 million.

A year ago, over the same period, it was $131.7 million.