Approximately half of the NBA's 30 teams have controlling owners have backgrounds in tech and investment management.

Mark Cuban was the first owner with a background in the dotcom boom when he bought the Dallas Mavericks in 2000 for $285 million. Paul Allen had previously bought the Portland Trail Blazers in 1988 after making his fortune from Microsoft.

Steve Ballmer is another Microsoft billionaire while Vivek Ranadive founded Tibco and Joe Lacob comes from Silicon Valley venture capital.

“I wanted to own a sports franchise long before I wanted to be in technology,” Lacob said.

The NBA has over 66 million followers on social media, almost twice as many as the NFL. Major League Baseball has only 15 million. 

Unlike other leagues, the NBA allows fans and media members to post highlights on social media.

“Adam Silver realized early on that people would tape things off the TV set and upload it to YouTube,” says David Levy, president of Turner, which airs NBA games and comanages NBA.com for the league. “He understood Instagram. He understood Snapchat. He gets the fact that fans are fans, and you need to fish where the fish are.”

Data backs up that instinct. “It’s almost like a free commercial,” Gilbert says. “To me, it’s all great for the league, enhances the league, promotes the league, and I think the NBA has got it right on.”

The NBA hopes to continue their growth internationally to compete with soccer.

“Soccer is much bigger than basketball on a global basis,” said Adam Silver. “We look at the delta between basketball and soccer and see an enormous upside.”