What We Saw During NBA All-Star Activations, Stunts, and Parties

Basketball culture isn’t built around the rules of a skills competition or the format of an all-star game, and the fans that flooded San Francisco for NBA All-Star Weekend illustrated that difference.

Amid the blocks between Union Square and the Moscone Center, along the path from Chase Center to Pier 48, and on the BART and Muni lines from SFO to Oakland Arena, fans carried branded shopping bags, lined up outside once-vacant storefronts, and turned driveways, civic plazas, and warehouses into courts and concert venues. 

For multiple days, they kept the city alive as NBA and WNBA players, entertainers, actors, and other luminaries wove their way in and out of venues. Around each corner was an appearance, signing, exhibition, or panel… and someone leaving with branded merchandise.

ADWEEK spent just a bit more than three days in San Francisco, taking in many of the activations, activities, parties, and, yes, the occasional All-Star event. Here’s a sampling of what we saw:

Google Pixel House

When a brand sets up a house at one of these events, you’re typically lucky if there’s a bar, a networking session, a few panel discussions, and an after-party. It typically isn’t curated to interact with AI.

Partnering with The Robot Company creative consultancy (a subsidiary of LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s SpringHill Company), Google Pixel created an environment that echoed a player’s house but asked visitors to interact with it through Google Pixel’s Gemini AI. (We asked what happened to Dawn Robinson from All-Star Game performers En Vogue). The space also hosted multiple events, including Brand Aces’ Battle of the Platforms matchup between players representing publications, including Slam, Boardroom, and Togethxr.

Foot Locker

Not so much a Foot Locker as a collection of shoe brand activations, this “experience” in a former multi-story H&M built itself around a court with a giant LED display and was flanked on either side by Nike’s museum of releases for Jayson Tatum, Michael Jordan, and Jordan Brand’s Black Label collection, among others.

Upstairs, a DJ set the vibe as Adidas built its activation around Anthony Edwards’ lie detector, Puma and LaMelo Ball took it to the sewers with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (who Puma built an entire pizza shop around just down Powell Street), Anta and Kyrie Irving opened a Jersey-style deli, and New Era sold caps out of a trolley. 

American Express

Locking into its partnership with TNT Sports’ Inside the NBA, Amex took over a former Uniqlo and filled it with tributes to the show and hosts Kenny Smith, Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, and Shaquille O’Neal.

Cardholders could play games from the show like “Race to the Board” and “Who He Play For?” or set up archival VHS footage at “Cue the Tape.” While Amex members could drop in for All-Star gear, custom merch, or snacks, the crowd on the day we went got to see Johnson interview the Detroit Pistons’ first-time All-Star Cade Cunningham.

Starry

After lighting up the court at last year’s All-Star Weekend, the lemon-lime PepsiCo brand got a bit more aggressive in San Francisco: using a robot with WNBA champ and MVP A’ja Wilson’s voice to track down fans on Powell Street and get them to take a can of the product from beneath it’s toilet-like lid.

The brand’s human representatives were less pushy—but more numerous—in dispensing Starry between Union Square and its activation at the Moscone Center, where mascots Lem & Lime took photos with fans outside a brand trolley as an emcee handed out prizes to those whose caffeine jitters were calm enough to sink mini basketball shots.

The Female Quotient Equality Lounge

Held on Saturday in partnership with Google at Google Pixel House, the packed event brought together women from business and sports to talk, network, learn, and listen to multiple panel discussions. 

While Google executives Adrienne Lofton and Kate Johnson were both part of the discussion, they were surrounded by luminaries, including WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert; New York Liberty CEO Keia Clarke; Golden State Valkyries president Jess Smith, and CMOs Lauren Stafford Webb (SoFi), Lara Balazs (Adobe), Zena Arnold (Sephora), and Dana Marineau (Rakuten). 

AT&T

As an official NBA partner, AT&T had its brand all over the place on All-Star Weekend: practice, media day, the HBCU Classic, the dunk contest, local appearances by WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu, etc. At the NBA Crossover fan festival at the Moscone Center, however, it let fans check out a changing LED court with a customizable hoop and sent them home with a video of their efforts.

They not only got to check themselves out on AT&T’s big screen, but throughout the weekend, they got to line up and meet Ionescu, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and dunk contest champ Mac McClung. 

Coinbase Arena

Jacob M., we still want to know who you are.

Coinbase built an LED-ensconced basketball court around a robotic hoop with a smiling digital backboard that moved as players tried to shoot at it. Throughout the weekend, NBA stars Andrew Wiggins, Cade Cunningham, Draymond Green, and James Harden tried to figure it out, with Cunningham getting second place and Harden at one point spiking the ball in disgust as the backboard taunted him.

But in All-Star Weekend’s waning hours, a mystery player known only as Jacob M. sat atop the leaderboard and left with only a sweatshirt for the effort. There’s an NBA team that had just nine wins heading into the All-Star break: Send a scout and a 10-day contract after that fan.

Pixel Pro Shot Challenge

Google and Robot’s other activation is less about what Pixel can do for fans than what fans could do for it.

In one of the larger activations on the NBA Crossover floor, Pixel asked fans to walk a tunnel past Pixel cameras and into a locker-room labyrinth of enhanced pop-a-shot games. In one room, fans are asked to shoot mini basketballs at alternating lit rims as quickly as possible. In another, designed by shooting coach and NBA trick shot influencer @LethalShooter, fans have to sink shots in rotating rims. Finally, in an area roughly the size of a street basketball court, four fans get to shoot at a vehicle assembly robot converted into a moving rim.

Noah Kahan at Pier 48

About a 13-minute walk from the All-Star events at Chase Center, American Express turned Pier 48’s grounds and warehouses into a food-cart concourse, an activation area, and a full-scale concert venue for multiple nights of All-Star Weekend.

Those who showed up early on Thursday got Chance the Rapper and a live broadcast of Inside the NBA. After the skills, 3-point, and dunk contests and before the parties on Saturday night, however, Kenny, Ernie, Shaq, and Chuck could only be found on banners as fans and cardholders packed in to hear Vermont’s Noah Kahan play “coffee house” songs and offer comfort to those not having the greatest time.

Club Thirty

In his town, All-Star Weekend was—in many ways—Stephen Curry’s weekend. 

He dropped limited-edition shoes from his Under Armor line at San Francisco’s new Shoe Palace location. He was named MVP of the All-Star Game after leading Shaq’s OGs to the title in a new format he helped create.

But the masterpiece—the lens through which to view all pieces of his empire on All-Star Weekend—was Club Thirty. Located in the Splash space at Thrive City just outside Chase Center, Club Thirty was built by creative firm 7k on behalf of Curry’s off-court business collective, Thirty Ink.

Balancing story-high LED displays and scrolling scoreboards with soft lighting, wood-grain-and-brass accents, and plush banquettes and barstools, Club Thirty showcased Curry’s Gentleman’s Cut bourbon at its bar, highlighted his career with a Legacy Museum of personal memorabilia (including his latest gold medal from the Paris Olympics), and launched new programming from his Unanimous Media with help from iHeart Podcasts and All The Smoke hosts Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. 

Curry’s team showed up, and not just his Warriors teammates (among other athletes and celebrities). Longtime partners Rakuten sponsored Club Thirty’s green-screen photos and tunnel walks, while Warriors arena namesake Chase put its brand behind the venue’s interactive legacy wall for fans and VIPs as well as viewing parties the night before.