The NBA-themed animated series starts its fifth season on Bleacher Report this week.bleacher report
Former U.S. President Barack Obama predictably received a warm reception for his appearance at February’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, including a standing ovation from the sold-out crowd. But a virtual Obama, appearing at the conference in a specially made “Game Of Zones” cartoon, proved nearly as popular.
The animated clip features Obama in a “Game Of Thrones”-type setting saving former Philadelphia 76ers General Manager Sam Hinkie from an angry mob of analytics deniers, and the half million additional views on YouTube alone typified the buzz surrounding what has become one of Bleacher Report’s top digital content hits.
Beginning an eight-episode fifth season Thursday, “Game Of Zones” is a mashup of HBO’s popular series “Game Of Thrones” and NBA culture. It is the work of a pair of brothers who taught themselves the mechanics of animation.
“We originally thought that this was going to be a one-off type of thing,” said Adam Malamut, who was a freelance, Los Angeles-based animator when he developed the series with his younger brother, Craig. “But that quickly turned into eight episodes and now five seasons, and it’s sort of taken on a life of its own.”
The roots of “Game Of Zones” lie in a prior sports-themed cartoon, “Sports Friends,” first developed by the older Malamut before he ultimately pulled in Craig, previously studying astrophysics at Wesleyan University, to assist.
Debuting on Yahoo Sports in 2012, the series caught the eye of Bennett Spector, Bleacher Report’s vice president of brand strategy. Spector was looking to bulk up the original content for the site, by that point under the ownership of Turner Sports, and further a goal of positioning the company at an intersection of sports, pop culture and entertainment.
The Malamuts pitched a “Game Of Thrones”-styled series based around a reimagining of NFL storylines in a medieval setting. But given Turner’s deep ties to the NBA, Spector pushed them toward a basketball framing for the idea.
The first “Game Of Zones” episode debuted in 2014 and quickly went viral, including a mention on TNT’s “Inside The NBA,” leading to a quick ramp-up in the production of more episodes, each generally running three to five minutes long. Themes explored during the series have included Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant’s prior entry into free agency and former New York Knick Charles Oakley’s feud with team owner James Dolan.
The Malamut brothers now work in-house for Bleacher Report, and after initially doing all the writing, production and voice-over work themselves, they are now supported by more than a dozen Bleacher Report staffers who either work full time on the series or support the site’s broader video initiatives. Financial details of the brothers’ contract were not available. McDonald’s is the presenting sponsor of the series.
“Game Of Zones” for its fourth season last year generated more than 4 million views per episode when combining native traffic on Bleacher Report with that on social platforms such as YouTube and Facebook and peaked at 6.6 million for the season premiere.
Similar or greater audience numbers are expected this spring, as the Malamuts get deeper into individual plotlines and boost the series’ production values with more detailed and complex animation.
