MBA shakedown

The Metropolitan Basketball Association has found a new home for the 2002 season.

After the announcement that ABS-CBN might no longer carry the fledgling league after the current campaign, officials of the Multi-Regional Basketball, Inc. (MRBI) which runs the MBA, started shopping around for other broadcasters for its games.

The reality was that maintaining the league was already very prohibitive for ABS-CBN, whose gargantuan promotional campaign gave the birth of the league tremendous public awareness when it started in 1998. At a time when the economic crunch is dramatically reducing advertising all around, maintaining a basketball league with huge expenses and buying airtime to broadcast them on a competing network (NBN) was no longer economically appealing.

The league had three options for block-timing (renting airtime): NBN 4 (where it currently airs), RPN 9 or Studio 23, where, admittedly, it may be mismatched with the upscale programming of ABS-CBN’s "premium" network. They ultimately came to terms with NBN, which has coincidentally decided to go full-blast into sports programming in 2002.

There will be more changes than just the move to another network, though. In assuming the responsibility for running the league, the MRBI will also shoulder the huge costs of not only broadcasting the league, but paying for everything from travel, food and lodging for everyone involved to hauling around all its advertising paraphernalia. Now the league will get stuck with the bill and the sole responsibility of selling itself to advertisers in order to survive.

Two of the league’s biggest expenses have been transportation and satellite transmission costs. In its first two seasons of playing home and away games, the league increased its costs by playing one game of its doubleheaders in the north and the other in the south. This was impressive from a television standpoint, but came at a huge price. One of its first cutbacks in 2002 will be travel. Elimination round games will mostly be played within metropolitan Manila, where almost all the teams have housing for their players. Travel to the south will be limited initially, then increased come the playoffs.

This proposition, though, may have a serious trade-off. The MBA’s strength is in the south, particularly in markets like Bacolod and Cebu. However, most of the decision-makers in the advertising industry are based in Metro Manila, where the MBA has to build its strength. Culturally, the big city is a melting pot, so the market is divided. Cities and municipalities here have never really had their own sports franchises, so the "brand" of each local government unit has never really been developed.

To cut back on satellite costs, MBA games may be videotaped and broadcast later in the day. That change alone will slice off tens of millions of pesos in expenses. But what impact it will have on the live gate receipts can’t be predicted as of the moment.

On the other side of the coin, the league has made concessions by allowing sponsors to be incorporated into the teams’ names. But some franchises still don’t have any corporate backing.

Given all the modifications, are any new teams still interested in joining the league next season?

"Not new teams, but more of re-activation of old franchises," revealed league commissioner Butch Antonio. "We’ve talked about Pampanga coming back, among others." Pangasinan has also sent a letter of intent to return.

Another major change may take place in the south, with the teams from Mindanao possibly merging to form one squad. Again, what impact this will have on viewership still can’t be foretold, but the MBA seriously has to improve parity to avoid lopsided games. The team standings show how dominant the north is, with most of the teams in the south struggling to keep above the .500 mark. Still, Antonio is optimistic that the MBA will not only survive, but flourish with all these austerity measures.

"We’ve always been the most innovative league," he boasts. "We’ll probably come up with other new rules like the Free Three and the Blitz Three."