LaVar Ball's Big Baller Brand Gains $13.2M Amid Trump Feud, Net Worth 2017

The ongoing feud between President Donald Trump and Big Baller Brand entrepreneur LaVar Ball has provided free publicity for the outspoken basketball dad and his sports apparel company.

According to Apex Marketing Group, a company that examines sports profits, Big Ball Brand has gained an estimated $13.2 million in free digital and TV advertising since Trump and Ball have been exchanging grievances.

"This back and forth with Donald Trump has extended the brand awareness outside of just sports," Apex Marketing Group Eric Smallwood told Yahoo Sports Wednesday. "People who don’t follow sports are starting to get more awareness of the brand. To have that reaction from someone as high up as Trump, it has definitely helped [Ball] reach a larger audience."

Trump and Ball have been in the news since the Big Baller Brand owner seemingly downplayed Trump’s role in the release of his son LiAngelo Ball and two UCLA Bruins players who had been arrested last week for shoplifting in China. Trump, who made a two-day visit to the country, claimed he expedited the case when he asked Chinese president Xi Jinping to help.

After the president heard Ball’s comments, he took to Twitter, called the basketball dad "ungrateful" and suggested he should have "left his son in China." Ball appeared on CNN Monday night and insisted that he didn’t need to thank the president. Trump took to Twitter once again regarding the incident.

"It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence — IT WAS ME. Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair," Trump tweeted.

Since the feud, Ball has been the subject of jokes on NBC's famed comedy show "Saturday Night Live." "Late Show" host Stephen Colbert even dedicated a monologue about Ball Monday night, which has helped increase his company’s exposure, according to Bob Dorfman, executive director of San Francisco-based Baker Street Advertising.

"It’s getting Ball’s face out there to an audience that had either never heard of him or had heard of him but didn’t know a lot about him," Dorfman told Yahoo. "If exposure is half the problem, then I think it’s got to help."