As the NBA begins its new 11-year broadcast rights package with a heavy focus on digital content, longtime basketball YouTuber Kenny Beecham will become one of the first online creators to sign on with a mainstream media brand through a new partnership with the NBA on NBC, which he and his brand Enjoy Basketball announced on Wednesday.
The deal will see Beecham’s Numbers On the Board and Small Ball podcasts air on the NBC Sports Now FAST channel and Peacock in a daily noon-1 p.m. ET slot in addition to teammate Pierre Andresen’s T’d Up podcast. Beecham will also make appearances on NBA on NBC game coverage.
“It’s surreal to be part of the NBA’s return to NBC, a network that defined basketball for an entire generation,” Beecham said in a press release. “Our goal at Enjoy has always been to bring fans closer to the game through conversation, community, and creativity — and this partnership allows us to do that on a bigger stage than ever before.”
Enjoy Basketball, a basketball culture brand launched in 2022, is an offshoot of Beecham’s popular YouTube and podcast content. Beecham first published a video on YouTube 13 years ago under the “KOT4Q” channel, where like many early NBA YouTubers, he posted play-throughs of the NBA 2K series. Later, Beecham became a host of multiple podcasts through deals with House of Highlights, Vox Media and Omaha Productions. Under the Enjoy Basketball banner, Beecham collaborates with real-life friends Pierre Andresen, Darrick Miller and Mike Heard.
The brand has recently expanded to include new launches like WAG Talk, a social media series featuring lifestyle and dating content built around women sports stars. It also has a popular merchandise line and newsletter that caters to Millennial and Gen Z audiences. Temperamentally, Enjoy Basketball also aims to be different; more positive and more passionate than the typical debates and controversies that often surround basketball coverage in particular.
Enjoy Basketball is the type of brand many mainstream outlets often mimic, but rarely reach across the aisle to for partnerships. The brand’s founders see it as a breakthrough moment for not only the company, but sports media more broadly and young audiences being engaged with on a corporate scale.
To them, it shows that NBC is genuine in its desire to connect with younger fans and speak basketball in a way that connects with them, not simply the way they did it when they last had NBA broadcast rights in the early 2000s or the way other networks might be putting out NBA content.
“They’re really looking for that outlet that can speak to them straight and is not just going to give them the hot take to go viral and get attention,” said Cody Hock, a manager of Beecham’s and cofounder of Enjoy Basketball. “The younger audience is (also) chronically online … the game is more than just the broadcast now. So I think NBC just understands that it extends beyond that. They have to show up on all the different platforms and communicate in the right tone and the right way and be there.”
As a result of the new partnership, NOTB will leave the Omaha banner and become an NBC Sports exclusive. Episodes will post to YouTube and other podcast platforms after they premiere on the NBC Sports FAST channel and Peacock.
Hock expects the NBA All-Star game and other premier events to be key touchpoints for NBC’s coverage of the NBA and an opportunity for Enjoy Basketball to make its presence felt.
The return of the NBA on NBC begins next Tuesday, Oct. 21 with an Opening Night doubleheader in which the Houston Rockets will travel to Oklahoma City to face the Thunder and the Golden State Warriors will travel to Los Angeles to face the Lakers.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.