How A Brand Stole The NBA Dunk Contest

👋 Welcome back to Sponcon Sports, a weekly newsletter dedicated to sponsored content strategy in the sports industry! 

Some of the most interesting sports content isn’t a post, a graphic, or a video. It’s tools built to make following a team easier for fans.

Two recent examples show what that can look like.

At Oklahoma State, Addison Skaggs built a live social media scoreboard that runs throughout games.

Once the game starts, the scoreboard goes live and automatically updates in real time. Fans follow along in the comments while the rest of the feed is free to focus on highlights and storytelling.

It solves a problem social teams know well: the moment you post a score graphic, it’s already on the clock. Fans jump into the comments asking for updates and suddenly every post becomes a scoreboard.

This flips that dynamic.

There’s also a smart platform play behind it. Facebook, X, and Instagram prioritize live video, pushing the scoreboard to the top of fans’ feeds during games. Instead of fighting the algorithm, the team is working with it, earning organic distribution a static post can’t match.

And because the scoreboard becomes a destination, it also became a sponsored asset.

Meanwhile, Sam Long built a personalized matchday hub for the home, AFC Wimbledon experience.

You can see it here.

The dashboard pulls together everything a supporter might want before heading to the stadium: team news, train times, fan chat, betting odds, playoff probabilities, even how busy the pub might be.

Instead of bouncing between apps and sites, fans get everything they need in one place.

It also creates natural visibility for sponsors across categories like transportation, betting, and hospitality, while actually helping fans plan their day.

Which raises an interesting point.

Most teams already publish game previews and “know before you go” content. But they rarely capture the full matchday journey or update in real time.

A centralized, automated hub like this could.

Once the integrations are set, most of it runs on its own. Teams can review it before matchday, but the heavy lifting is already done.

Both examples follow the same playbook: build something fans genuinely use. When that happens, the sponsorship opportunities tend to follow.

In Today’s Edition:

• Flawless VKTRY 👟

• Cash App Call Back 👸

• The Winners Walk ☂️

🏊️ DEEP DIVE
The NBA Dunk Contest’s Real Winner

The most interesting part of this year’s NBA Dunk Contest didn’t happen during the broadcast.

It happened on a brand’s Instagram account.

While the NBA ran its annual showcase event in Los Angeles, a carbon-fiber insole company managed to center the conversation around something else entirely: the dunks Mac McClung didn’t perform.

By the time the weekend ended, VKTRY Insoles had:

• Broken the biggest piece of dunk contest news weeks before the event

• Turned that attention into a creator-driven campaign across basketball media

• Captured fan data through SMS throughout the week

• And revealed McClung’s unused dunks directly to fans during the contest window

The result was a campaign that didn’t just ride the All-Star news cycle. It shaped it.

Step One: Break The News

The campaign really began on January 24th.

That’s when VKTRY and Mac McClung revealed that the three-time defending dunk contest champion would not attempt a fourth straight win in 2026.

But the announcement didn’t come from a traditional sports outlet.

It came from a creator.

VKTRY partnered with basketball creator Cheyne Gitsham to deliver the news in a video that quickly spread across platforms, generating 4.2M views across channels.

The fit made sense.

VKTRY sells carbon-fiber insoles designed to increase bounce and explosiveness. McClung’s reputation as one of basketball’s most explosive dunkers provides natural proof of that product benefit. The brand and athlete have been partnered for years, often activating around All-Star Weekend.

This time, they pushed further.

Instead of simply promoting the partnership during the contest, they inserted themselves directly into the dunk contest conversation weeks before it began.

Breaking the news was the first move. Controlling what happened next was the real strategy.

Step Two: Restart The Conversation

After the initial announcement, the campaign went quiet.

Then it restarted on February 9th.

The timing mattered.

The Super Bowl had just wrapped up the night before, meaning the biggest advertising event of the year was finally out of the way. Meanwhile, NBA All-Star Weekend was days away, and the dunk contest reveal was scheduled for February 14th at 10 PM, immediately after the contest broadcast.

VKTRY used that moment to reintroduce the story.

The brand released a video explaining the history of its relationship with McClung while reminding fans that something bigger was coming.

But this time, the campaign added a new layer.

Data capture.

Throughout the content, fans were encouraged to:

Text “MAC” to 69097 for a surprise.

This call to action would become the connective tissue for the rest of the campaign. And it wouldn’t live only on VKTRY’s own channels.

Step Three: Expand The Ecosystem

Once the SMS call to action was introduced, VKTRY expanded the campaign across basketball creators and media accounts.

Creators including Braxton Picou, Shane Hennen, Adrian Collado, and Ian Murphy produced video skits reacting to the McClung news and encouraging fans to text the campaign number.

At the same time, creator-led basketball media brands joined the story from a different angle.

Accounts like All Hail Bball and Strictly Bball leaned into storytelling rather than comedy. All Hail Bball released an interview with McClung, while Strictly Bball shared the news in its own editorial style.

Meanwhile, VKTRY continued feeding the conversation on its own channels.

One advantage of the brand’s long-standing relationship with McClung is that they weren’t starting from scratch. Over several years working together, VKTRY had accumulated a library of behind-the-scenes footage from dunk contests and training sessions.

They repurposed that archival content throughout the week.

Clips pulled from past contests and training runs were posted across Instagram and TikTok to keep building anticipation for the reveal. The footage felt authentic because it was phone videos, practice dunks, and moments that showed McClung working on the types of dunks fans associate with the contest.

Those four archival clips (Clip 1 | Clip 2 | Clip 3 | Clip 4) alone generated more than 5.5M views leading into All-Star Weekend.

By the time the contest arrived, the campaign had already spread across multiple corners of the basketball internet:

• Athlete content

• Creator content

• Fan-led basketball media

• Brand-owned storytelling

The reveal simply gave that ecosystem a payoff.

Step Four: The Reveal

On February 14th, immediately after the dunk contest concluded, VKTRY released the moment the campaign had been building toward.

Mac McClung revealed the four dunks he had prepared for the contest.

The brand shared the content across platforms, using the collaboration feature with McClung on Instagram and TikTok to combine audiences.

McClung also quote-tweeted the reveal on X.

The moment generated at least 5M views and 131.2K engagements across those platforms alone.

And that figure likely understates the reach.

The Instagram post was a carousel, meaning impressions are not public. However, the post generated over 87K engagements, with 29% coming from shares and sends, suggesting significant additional distribution through private sharing.

The campaign’s SMS strategy also remained central to the reveal.

Fans were prompted to vote on their favorite dunk:

Text “DUNK” to 69097.

And just like earlier in the week, that call to action extended beyond VKTRY’s own channels.

This time, the distribution leaned more heavily into basketball media brands.

Outlets including SLAM, Ballislife, MADE Hoops, and League Alerts shared the dunks through Instagram collaboration posts, placing the content directly inside the feeds where basketball fans already consume highlights.

The moment also reached larger sports media accounts like House of Highlights and Complex Sports, creating additional earned reach.

Step Five: Turn Attention Into Sales

The campaign didn’t end with the reveal.

The next phase focused on conversion.

VKTRY released a tongue-in-cheek “apology” video featuring McClung. In it, he joked about misleading fans into thinking VKTRY insoles were only for dunkers, before expanding the message to a broader audience of basketball players.

Then came the payoff.

On February 15th, the brand launched a sitewide promotion offering VKTRY insoles for $99 (33% off) through February 18th.

By that point, the campaign had already captured a large pool of basketball fans through SMS.

Now those fans had a reason to buy.

The Gamble Worked

VKTRY’s strategy depended on one assumption. That the dunk contest itself wouldn’t dominate the conversation.

That assumption turned out to be correct.

The 2026 dunk contest field lacked star power and struggled to generate the same excitement the event once delivered. Coverage afterward reflected that sentiment, with many fans and analysts describing the contest as underwhelming overall.

That created an opening.

While the official contest happened inside the Intuit Dome, much of the online conversation revolved around a different question:

Would Mac McClung have won again?

VKTRY didn’t just join that conversation. They built a campaign designed to create it.

The Bigger Trend

This campaign also reflects a larger shift happening across basketball marketing.

Brands are increasingly distributing stories through the entire basketball media ecosystem, not just through teams or athletes.

That ecosystem includes:

• Creators

• Fan-run media accounts

• Highlight pages

• Insider-style news distribution

• Basketball-focused publishers

Over the past year, several brands have used a similar approach.

Taco Bell worked with NBA insider voices and fan media when relaunching the Quesarito in partnership with Nikola Jokic.

CeraVe tapped into the NBA news cycle with Adrian Wojnarowski to announce Anthony Davis as its “Head of CeraVe,” then later used parody insider account NBA Centel to distribute news of its league partnership (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3).

More recently, the brand extended that playbook through its partnership with Kevin Durant. KD was introduced as the “new face of legs” for CeraVe, a campaign that also included Legion Hoops and his high school teammate Chris Matthews (aka @LethalShooter).

VKTRY followed the same blueprint.

Instead of relying on one channel to carry the story, the campaign spread across creators, fan media, highlight accounts, and the athlete himself.

The distribution strategy looked less like a traditional brand campaign, and more like how NBA news spreads online every day.

The Takeaway

VKTRY didn’t have the NBA’s broadcast rights.

They didn’t control the dunk contest.

But they found a way to sit at the center of the conversation anyway.

The campaign worked because several pieces aligned:

• News that gave fans something to debate

• Creators and basketball media that expanded distribution

• SMS capture that turned attention into owned audience

• Timing that aligned with peak All-Star interest

• A product story that naturally connected to the moment

The dunk contest still happened inside the arena, but the most talked-about dunks of the weekend lived somewhere else entirely.

On a brand’s channel.

🔍️ SPONCONSPIRATION
Steal These Ideas

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I really like the Winners Walk concept from the PGA Tour and the Travelers Championship. The post features behind-the-scenes, mic’d-up footage of a tournament winner walking off the course, building anticipation for the Travelers in June.

MatchWornShirt challenged three Chelsea players to a game of Guess the Signature. I’d love to see the brand turn this into a recurring series across its partnership portfolio, especially since athletes regularly sign jerseys, some of which end up listed on the site.

If you’re working with a brand in the real estate or home goods categories, you should steal this segment name from the State of the Union Podcast and Zillow.

Sephora’s partnership announcement with F1 Academy was exceptionally well executed, from the clever copywriting to the on-brand race suit and livery, all the way to the makeup moment on slide two.

🚨 ICYMI
What To Watch For

Celtics Creator Investment: The Boston Celtics launched a Creator Academy, giving emerging creators two days of hands-on experience and networking to help them find their footing in the creative industry, sports business, and beyond.

ATP Doubles Down: The ATP and Overtime expanded their content partnership for 2026 after a strong first year that generated 80M views and more than 1M new followers for the ATP.

F1 Sponsorship Strategy: Kim Hobson breaks down how brands turn Formula 1 sponsorship rights into real business impact and ROI.

World Cup Group Chat: Lay’s is taking a page out of the Offball playbook, launching a World Cup group chat on WhatsApp featuring Lionel Messi, David Beckham, Alexia Putellas, Thierry Henry, and Steve Carell [via Digiday].

FIFA’s YouTube Deal: Speaking of the World Cup, Carlo De Marchis shared 10 key considerations around FIFA’s preferred platform deal with YouTube.