Towards the end of February, KFC announced their continued partnership with the iconic American professional basketball league NBA with two hamburgers as well as various gifts and prizes. Between now and 11 March, the starting lineup is centred around a burger with mixed wagyu/Angus patty, grilled pineapple slice and a top bun with markings resembling the ridges on a basketball. The Super Ball naming is a play on words, as the “菠” (bo) in “菠萝” (pineapple) sounds like the English word “ball”. Incidentally “菠” has the same pronunciation as “波”, the Cantonese transliteration of “ball”.
A truffle sauce chips burger will be launched in the second half of the campaign on 11 March. The gifts and prize draw come with a 39.9 RMB (5.54 USD) meal with one of the burgers, a Pepsi-Cola and a side (chips with the Super Ball burger or a Portuguese-style egg tart/pastel de nata with truffle chips burger).
Customers who come early can get a random basketball card with their meal. The card will allow them to enter a prize draw, which gives them a chance to win 1 of 5 tickets to the NBA Finals, 1 of 20 Wilson exclusive basketballs, or 1 of 100 super VIP season passes for Tencent Sports streaming platform or NBA phone wallpaper as the consolation prize.
The campaign comes roughly 5 months after the first collab between the fast-food chain and the basketball league. The first co-branded series featured plain buns with wagyu patty but with the same chips topping. On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, the topic “KFC NBA, play your Super Ball” (#肯德基·NBA打出你的超级Ball#) garnered 4.34 million views. As the NBA remains popular among Chinese viewers, KFC’s themed burger designs and opportunities to win tickets will likely attract many fans of the sport.
