The NBA has announced a set of digital upgrades for the 2026/27 season, expanding its “Tap to Watch” links across TikTok and extending highlight access to hundreds of creators, part of a broader push to route social engagement toward live broadcasts.

“Tap to Watch” links will now appear on every TikTok post that mentions #NBA, in addition to content from the hundreds of creators the league has granted access to its game highlights this season. The feature already connects fans to national, local, international, and NBA League Pass telecasts through the NBA App, NBA.com, team platforms, and partner sites including Google, which will keep surfacing “Tap to Watch” links in OneBox search results and on its new Sportscaster platform. The league is also launching an NBA Gametime experience on X, pairing real-time scores and highlights with tune-in information in a custom timeline, and adding a feature that lets fans add the schedule to their own calendars with “Tap to Watch” links attached to each game.

The TikTok expansion builds on a multi-year global content partnership the two sides signed in July, which paired creator access to NBA and WNBA events with TikTok GamePlan, a product built to move fans from short-form clips to live games, and TikTok Pulse Premiere, which opened new advertising inventory tied to league content. TikTok has cited measurable tune-in lift as the rationale: the company has said fans are 42% more likely to watch a live game after viewing related sports content on the platform, and during the 2026 NBA Finals its in-app Anchor and Detail Page generated 497 million impressions, and its NBA Finals Search Hub drove 426,000 referrals to “Tap to Watch.”

Inside the NBA App, the league is introducing “Game Pulse,” which combines a live court visualization with highlights, milestones, and advanced stats such as shot charts and quarter-by-quarter player performance. The feature will include commentary from NBA legends including Muggsy Bogues, Carlos Boozer, Gary Payton and Joakim Noah, alongside creators Lethal Shooter, Kris London and Jenna Bandy. The league is also rolling out Ask NBA, an AI-powered assistant built on official NBA data that answers fan questions about games, players and on-court trends, and daily live warm-up coverage ahead of tipoff.

“The breadth of our digital ecosystem allows us to connect with NBA fans in more ways than ever before,” said Chris Benyarko, NBA Head of Direct-to-Consumer Products, Technology & Operations. “This season, we’re bringing together new experiences, deeper basketball insights and fresh perspectives from creators, while making it easier for fans to discover, follow and watch live games across the platforms they use every day.”

The league has been building its creator pipeline independent of any single platform deal. At All-Star Weekend in February, the NBA embedded more than 200 global creators across broadcasts, in-arena programming and fan events, a group with a combined reach of over one billion followers, in what the league called its largest creator integration for a single event to date.

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