PBA, GAB make headway

The Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) came up with an agreement with the Games and Amusements Board (GAB) yesterday, placing P3.3 million in escrow with the Equitable-PCIBank pending resolution of the case on GAB’s share from the league’s television income.

The move enabled the professional cage league to continue operation while in the thick of a legal fight regarding its financial obligation to the government agency.

PBA commissioner Noli Eala and GAB chairman Eduardo Villanueva signed the memorandum of agreement, calling the PBA to place the fund at the Equitable-PCIBank. An escrow is a bond or deposit held in trust by a third party pending resolution of a case.

The amount represents GAB’s three percent share from the television revenues earned by the PBA last season.

The PBA, however, maintained it could not remit GAB’s share since it has yet to receive full payment from Viva-Vintage.

"We can have a fat TV contract but if at the end of the day, we do not get paid, we have no income from television and radio from which GAB will get its three percent share. As they say a sale is not a sale unless paid and collected," said former commissioner Jun Bernardino in a previous letter to GAB.

To this day, Viva Vintage has yet to settle its financial obligation to the PBA worth nearly P200 million.

Viva entered into a consortium with the Vintage Enterprises after the latter requested the PBA to restructure their contract at the height of the economic crisis in 1999.

Vintage Enterprises gained the right to air PBA games with a whopping bid of more than P2 billion for five years from 1998.

With the PBA-GAB MOA, the Samsung All-Filipino Cup resumes with a double-header today at the Philsports Arena. Earlier, GAB gave the PBA until today to settle its obligation or the government agency will revoke the cage league’s permit to operate.

It’s Talk N Text versus Sta. Lucia Realty at 5 p.m. San Miguel Beer plays Barangay Ginebra at 7:30 p.m.

The Kings and the Beermen both seek to bounce back from a loss the last time out in a bid to gain solo second place in their respective groups. San Miguel is tied with FedEx with identical 1-2 win-loss marks in Group A while Ginebra is deadlocked with Red Bull with 2-1 cards in Group B.

Talk N Text broke into the win-column with a decision over San Miguel Sunday and is fancied to make it two in a row with Kenneth Duremdes still a doubtful starter for Sta. Lucia. Duremdes, who has missed their game against Red Bull Wednesday, is nursing a sprained ankle.

The Phone Pals snapped a two-game skid as main man Asi Taulava came back from a two-game suspension. The team lost its first two games to Shell and Alaska.