Jayson Tatum shoe promo might have cost the NBA millions

A few pairs of shoes and a Jayson Tatum All-Star berth may have cost the NBA millions of dollars.

In the days leading up to All-Star weekend, the NBA ran a crossover with NikeID. In exchange for voting on what pair of Jayson Tatum’s shoes he would wear during the All-Star Game, fans would receive 12 months of League Pass Premium for free. The NBA streaming that allows fans to watch games commercial-free and gain access to in-arena streams for all 30 NBA teams costs $22.99 per month, or $275.88.

The promotion – one that would obviously be costly to the NBA – was not actively promoted. While there was a promotional tweet from the NBA about the shoe vote, that post did not actively promote the free League Pass portion of the promo.

However, X user @notbigracks picked up on the promotion and tweeted out the link to the polling around midday Thursday. The post got over 1 million views.

Multiple users were able to confirm that not only could people redeem the free year of League Pass Premium, but they could replace a current subscription with the promo code and reap the same benefits.

After about three hours of the original post, the NBA had canceled the “ALLSTARTATUM” promotion.

“We are aware that some fans are having issues redeeming the ALLSTARTATUM promotion,” the NBA’s website read. “Unfortunately, this promotion is no longer available. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

The damage was already done. According to the original poster, the link had been clicked 57,870 times. That doesn’t count the other users who posted about it or those who redeemed the promo code without taking the survey.

“It’s over with but we had a good run,” @notbigracks wrote. “Assuming everyone who clicked this link got the free League Pass, this tweet cost the NBA $15 million in 3 hours.”

All over some Tatum 2s. Hope it was worth it.