The Golden State Warriors again emerged as the big winners at the NBA’s annual sales and marketing meetings this year.
The team won a league-high five sales and marketing awards at the meetings, held Jan. 12-14 at the JW Marriott in Miami. Last year, the Warriors won a league-high seven awards.
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Golden State is enjoying success on and off the court.
Photo by: NBAE / GETTY IMAGES
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The Warriors were recognized for having the most full-season suite equivalents sold leaguewide and for having a 90 percent full-season-ticket renewal rate. Golden State also won an account growth award in corporate sponsorships and a digital innovator award, and the team was recognized for selling more than 10,000 full-season tickets.
Golden State, which won the Sports Team of the Year award at SportsBusiness Journal’s Sports Business Awards last year, had the NBA’s best record on the court as of last week (30-5). The team last week also marked its 100th consecutive sellout at Oracle Arena, the seventh-longest active sellout streak in the league.
Dallas has the NBA’s longest active sellout streak, at more than 500 games.
The Warriors capped season-ticket sales for this season at 14,500. The team has 7,200 fans on its season-ticket waiting list.
“It’s fun amongst your peers to get recognition,” Warriors President Rick Welts said. “We are grateful for the run that we are on organizationally, and the challenge is to keep it going.”
The league recognizes teams in a variety of categories at the annual sales and marketing meetings. Other teams winning multiple awards were the Utah Jazz, San Antonio Spurs and Cleveland Cavaliers. Each won four awards recognizing various ticket-sales, retention and sponsorship metrics.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and NBA Chief Marketing Officer Pamela El addressed the team and league executives who attended the event. The league also brought in as guest speakers Under Armour founder, chairman and CEO Kevin Plank as well as Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google.
“Our theme for the meeting was culture and innovation and making the league and its teams a great place to work,” said Amy Brooks, executive vice president of the NBA’s team marketing and business operations department. “In order to build emotional connections with our fans, we need to build emotional connections with our employees as well.”
For the Warriors, winning the five league awards provides additional traction as the franchise looks to build a new, 18,064-seat arena in San Francisco, Welts said.
“We are feeling more confident that everything is on track for a 2018 opening,” he said.
