Mamdani borrows Knicks fan energy to power viral campaign videos

Zohran Mamdani’s latest campaign work is less about traditional persuasion than emotional engineering. His team has borrowed from viral Knicks fan videos to make politics feel as immediate and charged as a playoff night in New York, folding urgency, identity and belonging into a social-media style that helped a little-known 33-year-old state assemblyman break through and then win the Democratic mayoral primary.

The tactic builds on a campaign video machine that has already shown unusual reach. Mamdani’s early online videos leaned on humor, New York-specific references and explanatory segments aimed at younger and infrequent voters. One of the best-known examples centered on rising halal-food prices and was dubbed “halalflation.” Another victory explainer drew more than 4.5 million views on X in its first 24 hours, a sign that his operation had learned how to package policy and personality in a format native to the platform.

That playbook now meets the Knicks at a moment when the city is primed to react. Mamdani has popped into watch parties, cruised by celebrating fans, visited a subway station painted in Knicks colors and highlighted an estimated $90 million economic impact per home game. He even wore a Knicks jersey under his suit jacket, turning the team’s deep playoff run into a live political backdrop. The team has not won a title since 1973, a drought that has made this run feel like a civic event rather than a routine sports story.

The most visible expression of that strategy came in a basketball-themed ad tied to the Knicks’ Game 1 NBA Finals win. The spot featured Mamdani passing a basketball to former city comptroller Brad Lander, then to community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier and finally to state assemblymember Claire Valdez, all progressive candidates he backed. It avoided naming the team directly but used orange-and-blue imagery and the line, “This is the team. This is our year.” The ad cost about $110,000 across the campaigns involved, a sizable investment in a message designed to ride the city’s loudest shared emotion.

Behind the scenes, the video operation has been run by Brooklyn-based Melted Solids, led by Debbie Saslaw and Anthony DiMieri, with videographer Donald Borenstein, campaign photographer Kara McCurdy and communications director Andrew Bard Epstein. The approach shows how local candidates are increasingly professionalizing virality, not just chasing attention but trying to convert fan-culture intensity into political momentum. The gamble is that Knicks euphoria can widen Mamdani’s coalition beyond online enthusiasts and into the broader, less predictable electorate that responds to shared civic feeling.