Case Study: National Basketball Association achieves deeper fan engagement with Microsoft Azure

NBA uses Microsoft Azure to power new content that elevates fan engagement

The National Basketball Association needed a way to make sense of nearly 10 billion daily fan interactions and turn massive game and audience data into more personalized, engaging experiences. Working with Microsoft Azure, the NBA set out to build a direct-to-consumer platform and AI-driven analytics capabilities, including NBA CourtOptix, to better understand fan behavior and preferences.

Microsoft Azure helped the NBA consolidate and analyze billions of data points using services like Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Machine Learning, Azure Databricks, and Azure AI. The result was a faster rollout completed in weeks, scalable personalization at cloud scale, and richer insights that support customized content, recommendations, and visualizations to boost fan engagement.

National Basketball Association

Ken DeGennaro

Senior Vice President, Media Operations & Technology