Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Nothin' But Net: NBA Celebrates a Slam Dunk at the Paris Games 2025 and Outlines the Evolution of its European Broadcast Strategy

11/02/2025

Nothin' but net: NBA celebrates a slam dunk at the Paris Games 2025 and outlines the evolution of its European broadcast strategy By Heather McLean

Thursday, February 6, 2025 - 14:56

Print This Story

The San Antonio Spurs' own French superstar, Victor Wembanyama, made a mark on TV, OTT and social media at the NBA Paris Games 2025 [Credit: NBAE/Getty Images]

The NBA Paris Games 2025 featuring the Indiana Pacers and the San Antonio Spurs in regular-season games on 23 and 25 January set multiple records across television viewership and digital and social media engagement.

Marking the 40th anniversary of the first NBA games in Europe, the matches pulled in global viewers as well as those across Europe and in particular, France, as the Spurs' own French superstar, Victor Wembanyama, made a mark on TV, OTT and social media.

Content across social platforms from the Paris matchups drove them to become the most-viewed NBA Global Games ever on social media, generating more than 718 million views.

The two games, which aired live in France on beIN Sports and Canal+, are the most-watched NBA games ever on television in France. The NBA's premier OTT platform, NBA League Pass, saw viewership up 29% in France versus last year's Paris Game.

Meanwhile, content featuring Wembanyama on social media as he toured Paris last week saw him propelled to become the second most viewed NBA player across @NBA social media accounts this season, with more than 836 million views; a video of him juggling a ball on the Paris Saint-Germain pitch garnered 43.1 million views on Instagram alone.

Interesting journey

On the NBA's success in France, Bastien Lacheny, NBA vice president, global media distribution for Europe and the Middle East, based out of the NBA's London office, tells SVG Europe: We're obviously delighted by the results and the performance of those games, but I think it's fair to say that it's been an interesting journey for the NBA when it comes to playing games in Europe. There's a very strong and long history of basketball and NBA in Europe, and a rich tradition.

Those games [in France] actually marked the 40th anniversary of the first NBA games we had in Europe. We've played 98 games in 10 European countries since 1984, so it's not something that is new. It's always been part of our strategy to try to provide to the local fan, given that most of them won't have the ability to attend an NBA game live in the US; the full experience. Having the ability to do that with Victor Wembanyama, for two games in his home town of Paris was incredible, continues Lacheny.

We were very pleased with the numbers, both on social where we generated the most video views ever for an NBA Global Game, and on linear television, where between BeIN Sports, our historical pay TV partner, and Canal+ that was broadcasting those two games free to air, we were able to achieve also a record number. So it was a fantastic result.

Massive change

The NBA's push for live games in Europe is part of a longstanding strategy of bringing the game to the fan, wherever they might be. However, notes Lacheny, but again, even if we are bringing those games to Europe, it's still only a few games a year .

Therefore the main fan experience for those living in Europe is OTT or linear broadcasts. Comments Lacheny: We've been airing games in the region since 1981, and actually it's a pretty cool story because the first game was the Celtic vs Lakers game on VHS; it was flown over from the US to Italy and hand delivered, so you can imagine the significant delay between the actual game and the viewers!

Fast forward to 2025 and you have the ability either through our broadcast partners that usually in the region are showing one to two games per day, or using our premium subscription service, NBA League Pass, to watch every single game on any device and at any moment, he adds.

So it's a massive change that has obviously been coming from the significant evolution of the media landscape in the region, the enormous growth in interest that we've seen in many European countries since then, and also a very different technological ecosystem.

The NBA is focusing on bringing games to fans in Europe from the US that they can watch without staying up all night waiting for them to start. Lacheny notes: What's pretty singular about the NBA fans in Europe is the fact that a lot of games are in the middle of the night, so this is a different market and different ecosystem that we're trying to address, which is why it's the 12th consecutive season we've scheduled weekend games that air in primetime in the region, creating regular viewing for fans. And we're seeing increased viewership on those game as well in several markets.

A packed house for the NBA Paris Games 2025 [Credit: NBAE/Getty Images]

Booming fandom

Following the NBA Paris games, fandom around the association in France is booming. Things have moved on significantly over the decades, comments Lacheny: I was an NBA fan when I was growing up, and there was literally no French player then. We have a record-tying 14 French players in the league today. And more generally looking at the region, we have 61 of the record-tying 125 international NBA players on opening-night rosters this season that are from [the European] region, which creates a tremendous opportunity for us.

The incredible thing is that these are not just role players, these are some of the best players in the world, he continues. You have Giannis Antetokounmpo in Greece, you have Nikola Joki from Serbia, you have Luka Don i in Slovenia, and you have Victor Wembanyama in France. And so it does reflect on their local markets.

This move has benefitted fans and the NBA is seeing viewing figures in Europe rise as a res
LINK: https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/114643/...
See more stories from svg

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

23/06/2026

Nagravision Launches Nagra Venturi Security Offering

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

23/06/2026

ITN Expands Programmatic Local TV Platform

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

23/06/2026

Warner Bros. Discovery Taps AWS for New AI-Powered Ad Tech

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

23/06/2026

Study: Younger Viewers More Distracted But More Receptive to Ads

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

23/06/2026

Chilevisin, ClaroVTR Tap Pixop for 4K FIFA World Cup Feed

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

23/06/2026

Imagine Communications Names Greg Garmon as Senior Vice P...

Multifaceted Growth Executive Brings 20+ Years of Experience Leading Organizations Across Tech and M&E Imagine Communications today announced the appointment ...

23/06/2026

Australians in Film and Screen Australia's talent development initiative UNTAPPED returns for 2026

Australians in Film and Screen Australia's talent development initiative UNT...

23/06/2026

Visual Productions Unveils RdmRelay2 Four-channel Relay Control at InfoComm 2026

Visual Productions Unveils RdmRelay2 Four-channel Relay Control at InfoComm 2026 Brie Clayton June 22, 2026 0 Comments New Relay Solution Combines DMX, ...

23/06/2026

SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible, Opening Standards Library to the Global Media Technology Community

SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible, Opening Standards Library to the Gl...

23/06/2026

June 22, 2026

Newly identified molecule strengthens the eye's response to damage in retinal disease Scripps Research discovery finds that restoring the naturally occurrin...

22/06/2026

Behind the Mic: SportsCenters Lisa Cohn to Retire This June From ESPN as Longest-Tenured Anchor

Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...

22/06/2026

Cosm Appoints David Ho as Chief Legal Officer

Cosm has announced the appointment of David Ho as Chief Legal Officer, a newly created executive role reporting to President and CEO Jeb Terry. Ho will oversee ...

22/06/2026

Warner Bros. Discovery and AWS Announce AI-Powered Advertising Technology Platform

Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced the developm...

22/06/2026

Daktronics Completes Audio Control System Upgrade at Petco Park for San Diego Padres

Daktronics has completed an audio control system upgrade at Petco Park in San Di...

22/06/2026

Accelerate Media Names John Willi President, Launches Accelerate Sports Network

Accelerate Media has named John Willi as President and announced the launch of the Accelerate Sports Network (ASN), a prep sports media and streaming platform c...

22/06/2026

AWSN to Air 3XBA Womens Basketball Tournament Live June 26-27

All Women's Sports Network (AWSN) and 3XBA (3 3 Basketball Association) have announced live television coverage of the annual 3XBA tournament on Friday, Jun...

22/06/2026

OWL AI Appoints Jay Prasad as Chief Executive Officer

OWL AI has announced the appointment of Jay Prasad as Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors. Prasad succeeds Josh Gwyther, who has served...

22/06/2026

CP Communications Provides RF Support for Inside the NBA at 2026 NBA Finals

CP Communications delivered RF video and audio support for TNT's Inside the NBA at the 2026 NBA Finals, providing main show coverage in San Antonio and ea...

22/06/2026

Polymarket and GRID Partner to Integrate Esports Data and Streaming into Trading Platform

Polymarket has announced a partnership with GRID, an official esports data platf...

22/06/2026

SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Metinteractive's Rachel Mele, Ken Cyr on Building Technology Backbones for Sports Venues

As sports venues continue to evolve into more video-centric, fan-engagement-driv...

22/06/2026

SVG All-Stars: Corbin Perkins, Chief Engineer, Victory+

As the regional sports production scene shifts toward streaming, this Texan helps lead the engineering behind Victory+'s growing live platform...

22/06/2026

Meet the 2026 Sundance Institute Documentary Edit Intensive Fellows

By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs the memories of your elders [are] a scaffolding for you to build your identity on - and t...

22/06/2026

Blade joins CEDAR Audio Icons line-up

New hyper-resolution analyser EQ revealed CEDAR Audio's all-new Icons plug-in series has just gained its newest member, Blade. Described by the compan...

22/06/2026

Sampleson release Aeronaut

Turn any live input into a cinematic soundscape Designed for use in the studio and on stage, Sampleson's latest creation is capable of taking any audio ...

22/06/2026

ADDAC System's new Four Strings Series

Adds guitar strings to Eurorack rigs ADDAC System are renowned for their weird and wonderful synth designs, and their line-up includes plenty of gear that&#...

22/06/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026 fever grows, as more than one third of Australians tune in to SBS coverage

FIFA World Cup 2026 fever grows, as more than one third of Australians tune in ...

22/06/2026

NAGRA Venturi - Turning Piracy Intelligence into Measurable Business Impact

In our latest blog, Tim Pearson explores NAGRA Venturi, the new streaming security solution for the AI era from NAGRAVISION. Designed to aggregate and analyze ...

22/06/2026

Xumo Expands Contextual Targeting Capabilities Through Gracenote and IRIS.TV Integrations

Expanded integrations give advertisers access to distinct contextual signals acr...

22/06/2026

Greg Garmon Joins Imagine as Senior VP, Americas Video Sales

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/06/2026

Kaleidescape Breaks the 8K and 4:4:4 Barriers

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/06/2026

Xilica introduces Dynamic Voice Lift in new Designer

Xilica today announced the release of Dynamic Voice Lift, a new feature in Xilica Designer v4.12 that brings adaptive speech reinforcement to large meeting spac...

22/06/2026

NVIDIA Brings Trusted, 24/7 AI Agents to Telecom Operations

Telecom operators have seen remarkable returns from using generative AI to automate network management, customer care and back-office operations. Most of that i...

22/06/2026

Official trailer released for Katie Price: Nothing to Hide, coming to Sky and NOW on 8 July

Monday 22 June 2026 Official trailer released for Katie Price: Nothing to Hide,...

22/06/2026

Eco Wave Power Turns Waves Into Watts With NVIDIA AI Infrastructure and Digital Twins

The next era of AI will not be defined by compute alone. Its growth will be dete...

22/06/2026

NVIDIA Vera CPU Opens the Way for Agentic Scientific AI at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Mission, Vision and Veritas - new Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) supercom...

22/06/2026

From Materials Simulation to Experimental Astronomy, New NVIDIA AI Software Unlocks Scientific Discoveries

At the ISC conference running in Hamburg this week, NVIDIA is introducing new so...

22/06/2026

NAIRR Science Program Reshapes Scientific Research, Powered by NVIDIA AI Infrastructure

For the past two years, the U.S. National Science Foundation's National Arti...

22/06/2026

At ISC, JUPITER Shows What Exascale Science Looks Like

JUPITER, Europe's first exascale supercomputer at Germany's Forschungszentrum J lich, runs on NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips and NVIDIA Quantum-X800 Inf...

21/06/2026

FIFAs Oscar Sanchez on World Cup Effort: Were Feeling Good and Where We Want to Be

To call the 2026 FIFA World Cup a big undertaking would be a big understatement....

21/06/2026

John Walden's Cubase Video Tutorials

New series now live on Udemy Regular SOS contributor and Cubase workshop columnist John Walden has just released a new Cubase video course that is now avail...

21/06/2026

Hotter Than a Hot Tub: The 45C Breakthrough to Cool AI's Biggest Machines

Hot tubs sit at about 38 to 40 degrees Celsius, warm enough that most people can only soak for about 15 minutes. NVIDIA's newest AI servers can run their co...

21/06/2026

Sky announces immersive documentary series The Wargame

Sunday 21 June 2026 Sky announces immersive documentary series The Wargame The Wargame first looks ZIP (2MB) Sky today confirms the commission of The Wargam...

20/06/2026

IK Multimedia introduce ReSing Doubling

New add-on creates doubles & vocal stacks IK Multimedia's latest ReSing add-on kits the innovative software out with the ability to automatically genera...

20/06/2026

What's Next for Apogee? Start Here.

What exactly is Apogee Control V3? Control V3 is a new mixer application that controls Apogee interfaces. The new hit feature is that V3 finally allows for...

19/06/2026

NBC Sports U.S. Open Coverage Fires Up 92 Cameras, Bunker cams

Split compound eases operational challenges at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club...

19/06/2026

ESPN's Men's College World Series Production Adds Onsite Studio, POVORA CapCams, Expanded Drone Coverage for Finale in Omaha

North Carolina, Oklahoma meet in the best-of-three Finals as ESPN leans into spe...