NEW REFERRAL PROGRAM 🤝

All you need is 1️⃣

SportsBall’s first referral program hosted a variety of exciting prizes: manual labor, guest writer opportunities, and even an invite to Riley and Claire’s wedding for 150 referrals. 👰‍♀️

We’ve simplified things.

Now if you share SportsBall with just 1 person, we will send you a link to a one-click Sports Calendar Plugin tool where you can add your favorite teams’ games directly to your preferred calendar app. 📅 Instead of futzing around with sports app notifications, we’ll help you keep things simple with the tools you already use.

We’ve partnered with TeamCalendar.com who created this amazing tool and are excited to integrate it into the SportsBall experience. Click below to share! ⬇️

LEARNING MODULE 💡

Blink and You’ll Miss it 😴

The Boston Celtics are your 2024 NBA Champions 🎉 as they beat out the Dallas Mavericks in an... interesting series. Finals viewership was the lowest since 2007 - barring the COVID era - with only 11.31 million viewers on average across 5 games. 📉

In general, TV viewership has been declining for a decade since we all cut the cord and signed up for eight streaming services that cost more than cable. According to Nielsen, 38% of all television viewing is now streaming, the highest proportion ever and it’s often the elephant 🐘 in the room when examining broadcasting statistics.

But there’s more than just national media overlord trends at play with these NBA Finals. A host of basketball-specific factors 🏀 were equally as liable for the lackluster series.

⭐️ No Friendly Faces

Playoff mainstays and attention grabbers like Lebron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant missed the boat this year, leaving casual fans to either educate themselves on a new wave of stars or watch the fresh season of the Kardashians. It seems many chose the latter.

The old guard of NBA stars only combined for a single win this postseason, leaving the league to lean into the budding regime of Anthony Edwards 🐺, Luka Doncic 🐴, Jayson Tatum ☘️, and other young talent.

⚖️ Non-Compete

At least the games were competitive, right? Not really. To start the series, Boston won Game 1 by 18 points after maintaining an average lead of 15.9 points the whole contest. Game 2 was more competitive but not by much; then the wheels started to fall off. 🛠️ The Mavericks won Game 4 by 38 points and the Celtics closed out the series with another 18-point blowout.

The average lead across the entire series was 13.1 points; not great for the common basketball enjoyer.

This is by no means a slight on the teams involved. The Celtics were the best team at the start, middle, and end of the season as they became the winningest franchise in NBA history with their 18th championship. Jayson Tatum and Jalen Brown are certified stars and deserve their moment in the sun.

We’re just saying it could have been easier on the eyes. 👀

Silver lining? Our big shiny NBA playoff tracker was finally put to rest as the Celtics were the first to the elusive 16-win mark. 🏆

THIS PAST WEEK ⏮️

Shots! ⚾️

The most exciting competition this week at the College World Series isn't the baseball games; it’s Rocco’s Jello Shot Competition 🥃.

While the players are battling for a national championship on the field in Omaha, fans from each team crowd into the stadium-adjacent bar to buy $5 Jello shots attempting to out-consume fans from the other seven teams in the tournament.

Below is a never-before-imagined data viz on the number of jello shots purchased over the week by each team ⬇️

Currently, on day eight of ten, Tennessee (13,346) holds a narrow lead over Texas A&M (12,474) and a total of 50,425 Jello shots have been purchased at Rocco's (as of 8 PM PST on 6/20).

Last year, 95,030 jello shots were ordered with 68,888 coming from LSU who also won the tournament on the field. 95,030 jello shots translate to roughly 9 per minute over 10 days 🤢. From each $5 shot, $1.50 is donated to local food banks, which totaled $142K in 2023, so it's all for a good cause 👏.

The Volunteers will face the Aggies in the Championship on the field this weekend and we’ll see who’s fans can win off the field. We’ll post the final results and follow along at Rocco’s X account below.

Ideal Career Arc 💼

In what seemed like moments after the NBA season ended, headlines were made in the coaching sphere as JJ Redick landed the heralded position of Los Angeles Lakers head coach. Check out his stoic headshot and resume below ⬇️. SportsBall is manifesting a similar professional arc, minus the exceptional athletic achievements. Stay tuned.