The NBA has announced a partnership with music startup UnitedMasters, which will see artists’ content distributed across its range of digital platforms.

UnitedMasters, which was launched last year, allows independent music artists to license their own music and distribute it to businesses via its promotional services.

The NBA plans to use up-and-coming music artists across NBA digital platforms and its social community of 1.5 billion, including NBA.com and the NBA App, as well as league and team social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and Snapchat.

NBA senior vice-president Jeff Marsilio said: “With this partnership, fans will now have a new way to discover music while they enjoy NBA highlights across our social and digital media. Up-and-coming artists will have a massive digital stage to share their music.”

“We’ve seen that there are a lot of synergies between the music industry, sports leagues, and individual personalities across athletes and musicians,” says Steve Stoute,  founder and CEO of UnitedMasters. “The overlap between UnitedMasters artists, their fans and the NBA’s following provides a mutually beneficial opportunity to tap into an artist pool that is also a target consumer for the NBA.”

The global partnership creates a direct line between musicians and the NBA, resulting in access to worldwide audiences and the ability for artists to amplify their music at scale.

UnitedMasters debuted in November 2017 with the help of a US$70 million investment which included stakeholders such as 21st Century Fox.

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