Building NBA.com on Drupal 8

Sports fans rely on the digital experience when they can’t make it courtside. That’s why Turner and the NBA teamed up with Phase2 to reimagine and relaunch their entire digital presence in under a year, bringing their new concept to the web, mobile, apps and connected devices in time for the 2016-2017 season.

The NBA’s new digital presence distinguishes them as the first national sports league with a fully responsive platform, offering fans an exceptional game experience. The ultimate goal of NBA.com was to bring the fans closer to the game, with nothing standing in the way of the live experience.

The broad scope of this project presented a huge challenge. Complicating the process was the need to integrate content and live game data from other APIs and services, as well as syndicating original content to be used by other systems. A fast and efficient editorial experience was essential.

Working with a blended group of Phase2 team members and Turner’s technical team, we created a powerful Drupal 8 website that brings the game closer to the fan in new and exciting ways. Fans can watch live games from multiple camera angles, follow their favorite teams, and even keep track of live scores for multiple games at once on their device.

On the backend, Drupal 8 is both ingesting data and driving content, feeding those platforms, and driving the web and mobile experience. NBA.com is also taking advantage of Angular 2 and other front-end advancements to bring live content to the fan. Editors can create extensive coverage for special events like the All-Star game or playoffs, and bring complete coverage to readers all in one place.

At this year’s DrupalCon in Baltimore, MD, I will be speaking on the success of this project with the lead architect from Turner, Josh Mullikin. We will discuss the technologies used (Drupal 8, Angular2, Elasticsearch, AWS) and the challenges we faced, including live event and scoring feed integration.

You can check out the session recording here: