Canvassing The NBA’s International Business Landscape
How did the NBA become the first truly international American sports league? It’s a question I’ve found myself asking over and over again, and a question that doesn’t seem to have an immediate and logical answer. Other American sports leagues seem to have equal, if not better, pathways to international success.
The MLB is semi-international with rabid fanbases and emerging prospects throughout the Caribbean, South/Central America, and Japan. In these countries baseball is the sport, the same way soccer is throughout much of the world.
Football is the number one sport in the United States, yet the NFL struggles greatly with reaching diverse international fanbases and developing international prospects. The NFL has recently created a program with hopes of alleviating these issues, but it is still in its infancy. More on that here.
Basketball is different. Looking past some of the Balkan States and the Philippines, it is increasingly difficult to find countries where basketball is the number one sport. While there haven’t been any thorough analyses of the worldwide sports scene and individual sport popularity on a global scale, Sports Show — and a simple Google search — say that Basketball is the third most popular sport in the world behind Soccer and Cricket.
In terms of participation, basketball ranks fifth with 450 million participants at a wide range of levels of play and commitment according to FIBA, the Federation of International Basketball Associations. For context, baseball ranks seventh, while (American) football does not crack the top ten.
I spoke with David Denenberg, SVP of Global Media Distribution & Business Affairs for the NBA, to help us understand how the NBA’s desire to drive international growth originated, what is happening today, and what the future of the NBA and international basketball may look like.
Below is our Q&A, with some added context on topics following answers from Denenberg. Some typical phrases of speech have been edited to allow easier reading for you.
QUESTION: What do you think allowed the NBA to become the first truly international American sports league?
ANSWER: You know, honestly, I’ve got to give the former commissioner David Stern a lot of credit there. He sort of planted the seeds, like let’s use China as an example. He planted the seed there 25 years ago, and we now have a thriving business in China. He made sure that we were getting games out, distributed internationally and beyond. We were literally faxing videotapes of games overnight. When I first got to the NBA we were doing this with a bunch of different countries. He thought it was important to get exposure to the league and he thought we could build a fan base based on that. And that certainly came to fruition. We now have deals in over 200 countries and multiple languages, but that all started from just making sure the product got out there.
I also attribute it to the fact that our players aren’t wearing hats or helmets, so they’re very recognizable. That led to them becoming celebrities, not just domestically, internationally as well. So I think it’s with a lot of work by a lot of people, but it was really having the vision to know that this game could become a truly global game and getting the product distributed worldwide as long ago as whatever, 25–30 years ago.
ADDED CONTEXT: The late David Stern was touted by SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pelt as “not only one of the greatest sports commissioners of all time, but also one of the greatest businessmen of the last century.” His impact on the game allowed the NBA to prosper into the global sports stratosphere in a way few, if any, could have predicted.
Also, I want to speak to Denenberg’s point on the ability of NBA players to transcend into traditional celebrity unlike the superstars in many other sports. To reword what he said, the NFL has a helmet problem and the MLB has a hat problem. While this may be symbolic of the ability of NBA players to make a name for themselves outside of sport, or it may not be, another necessary thought is the benefit of only five players on the court for each team at any given time — far fewer than the NFL’s 11 or the MLB’s 9.
QUESTION: How does the influx of international talent affect the NBA? Do you now have plans to expand internationally and market internationally? Does it change the plans of the NBA in general? Does it even change them at all?
ANSWER: Well, absolutely. A great example is we’ve had this program called Basketball Without Borders for a long time where we essentially send NBA legends and coaches to Africa, and other countries, to run clinics for the local players there. With that, we had we wound up developing so much talent out of Africa alone, as one example, that we now were slated to launch the Basketball Africa League, actually last weekend. Unfortunately, that got postponed because of the Coronavirus. In any event that will come at some point soon. We’re creating a league in other instances where — you ask about teams — we’re gonna have a G-league team in Mexico City in the upcoming season based off the popularity of the league there.
I would say the single biggest factor that has grown the game in individual countries has been when we’ve had a player from there. So, for example, Yao Ming and China drove interest in the league exponentially from where we were before he was there. Obviously, Dirk Nowitzky in Germany as well. Now you’ve got Pascal Siakam from Africa and Luka Doncic from Slovenia, although Slovenia is a much smaller market. We are up to about a quarter of our league or so now as international players, and as we continue to mine the talent internationally, I think that’s just going to continue to drive the interest internationally.
Whether there winds up being additional leagues or teams in the NBA that are based internationally, who knows? But certainly the other thing I would say in that regard, we created these academies. We have, I think about eight or 10 of them internationally, one in China, one in India, where we’re again developing local talent. So it’s all part of the the plan to really make the game truly global.
ADDED CONTEXT: Basketball Without Borders began in 2001. Since then the NBA and FIBA have staged 52 camps in 32 cities in 27 countries on six continents. The program has reached more than 3,000 participants from 133 countries and territories. 51 Basketball Without Borders graduates have played in the NBA — although it is important to note that only the top regional talent is invited to these camps. Notable attendees include Pascal Siakam, Dragan Bender, Joel Embiid, Gorgui Dieng, Enes Kanter, Nikola Mirotic, Luc Mbah a Moute, Omri Cassipi, Marc Gasol, and more.
Our next blog will highlight my conversation with Tim Cato, Dallas Mavericks beat writer for The Athletic, and the so-called Luka Doncic effect. We will discuss how the emergence of a player like Doncic has sparked an intrigue in basketball for his entire country of Slovenia. People wake up in the morning to see his highlights and check his stats, garnering increased viewership and visibility for the NBA as a whole. Player driven interest internationally is for real.
QUESTION: What foreign media markets are already consuming a lot of NBA content? Are there ones that are growing that you guys are targeting specifically?
ANSWER: Well Canada, obviously, because of the Raptors doing so well last year. We broke all kinds of ratings — and every metric you can think of — records last year in Canada. So that’s a big priority market. Mexico is a big one also. It is more than just Mexico City, which has 22 million people living in the region. So we’ve done games in Mexico City. We’ve also done games in China, Japan, Africa, throughout Europe, London. So, you know, we’ll continue to look for opportunities to use those events to help drive interest in the league.
ADDED CONTEXT: A staggering statistic to consider when thinking about the NBA’s global reach is that just 25.5% of the NBA’s domestic social channel viewership over the last six months comes from the United States, according to Tubefilter and Tubular Labs. The Philippines, Brazil, Italy and France rounded out the top five. This is important to consider when you hear that NBA ratings may be decreasing. Sure, that may be true, but that is only according to domestic television ratings. Considering the plethora of variables able to obstruct ratings such as illegal streaming and full game breakdowns on social platforms, among others, it is clear that the NBA is growing, and growing fast.
QUESTION: I was wondering if you could paint a picture from the NBA corporate side on what exactly this international league with all these international players will look like in the future. Is it still primarily American promoted and oriented, or do you guys really hope for it to become a truly international league?
ANSWER: I mean, honestly, that’s TBD. It’s going to be hard to have an NBA team in Europe that’s part of the current NBA league. But there’s no reason we couldn’t replicate the NBA model and have an NBA of Europe where you have teams in London and France or wherever. So I’m not saying that’s around the corner, but you certainly could. There’s no reason you couldn’t replicate the structure that we’ve created in the US and import it to other areas. But certainly for the immediate future, our goal is to continue growing the current NBA and interest in the NBA in all those countries whether it be our social media initiatives, whether it be through our league pass and other live game telecasts or ancillary programming content. We just want to continue to grow the game globally.
ADDED CONTEXT: The main goal is to grow the game globally, and the NBA is doing just that more successfully than any other sports league in the US and maybe the world.
I wanted to once again say thank you to David Denenberg for taking time out of his day to speak with us during such volatile times. Look out for our next blog featuring Tim Cato!
