Starting a Pro Basketball League in India

Post by **Dhruv** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 4:27 pm

The big 5 although if you are interested in starting a league maybe visits in potential cities would be better suited to help you gauge if there is interest. i.e you could do a survey of the attendees and do some first hand market research to get a better idea of what is feasible in those particular cities.

anilkumar · Post by **anilkumar** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 3:53 am

Not for a Pro League.....for holding matches of the Harlem Globe Trotters in India, which would be the best 5 cities to start with having BB folowing and indoor venues?

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:23 am

Hi Anilkumar,

I am glad that you are doing the right things to make basketball popular in India. The Globe Trotters will certainly thrill many people in India and develop interest for BB among the children.

I do not know much about the BB facilities in India or about the market.

anilkumar · Post by **anilkumar** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 4:15 pm

I would like to put the subject of the Harlem Globe Trotters touring India as a fresh topic for open views from interested persons. Do I have to open a fresh topic or can it be shifted from here.
Can we have a seperate subheading....moderator?

anilkumar · Post by **anilkumar** » Thu Sep 29, 2005 4:49 pm

Been very busy with the spade work for the Harlem Globetrotters coming to India. Unfortunately, the Asian tour has been postponed and we are working on the new schedule.
In fact, I was off the forum since I had a whole lot of issues to sort out in getting the tour in place.
The good news is that they are definitely coming in to help the game in India.
I am looking for ideas to build up a base for that.
Lets do some brainstorming on how we could work on a school/college league as a prelude to building up the momentum

suresh · Post by **suresh** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 11:58 am

One thing would be to have summer leagues going. These are leagues which operate
during the summer vacation -- the matches must be held during the evenings for obvious
reasons. Then one can have an all-star team selected from within the league. Now, if
this functions in say four or five cities, then you might start finding a talent pool for the next
rung.

anilkumar · Post by **anilkumar** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 1:25 pm

Summer League is perhaps a good way to start for the schools...since it wud be vacation for them. But then, how do we initiate team ownership buiding across atleast for some cities in the South for logistical convenience. What would be a good way to initiate team building...we need to start from the scratch. There are perhaps no existing teams or wud u suggest we take a hit at all school teams in the concerned citiesand take thier feedbak to start with. If so, we need to think of an administrative structure to begin with. Any ideas????

mugu · Post by **mugu** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 4:58 am

anilkumar wrote:Been very busy with the spade work for the Harlem Globetrotters coming to India. Unfortunately, the Asian tour has been postponed and we are working on the new schedule.
The good news is that they are definitely coming in to help the game in India.

I don't want to sound discouraging. It is fine if Harlem Globetrotters come to India. They will generate some interest, even if momentary. After that people will forget about the whole thing.
What India lack at the moment (apart from grassroots level development) is an international competition on a regular basis. Say two to three men's tournaments and as many women's tournaments to begin with and then slowly expand.
I doubt whether we have a single international tournament at the moment. We also need to popularise national-level tournaments.
The Prithvi Nath Sharma memorial tournament is `on' at the moment in Delhi. It is quite a popular one among the locals in the Karol Bagh area. But bar one newspaper, there is hardly any coverage in the media.
Unless the media comes forward in a big way, at least to highlight the national-level players and their teams/clubs, there is no way that the game can be taken to the levels that it could be/should be.
Until then, basketball will be confined to a para or two when India plays the Asian qualifiers abroad or at best 500 words when India plays such qualifiers at home, in Delhi, Chennia, Mumbai or Kolkata.

anilkumar · Post by **anilkumar** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 7:54 am

The media will help hype up an event provided you have an event worthy enough for that. If we create an event for the media to build it, then they have always been very good and helpful in that. So its the need of the hour to create an event and I see a Pro League in whatever format that we cud think of as the best bet.
People are interested in following Basketball to a much larger extent than many other games today even in a country like ours. We need to creat either a personality(which we dont have right now) or an Indian event or a foreign tagged event.
So, lets start of how to do something for it rather than why we shud not do such a thing. Its tough...real tough...agreed but its very easy to say so and then quit.
Look at creative ideas, look at how to incorporate technology, how to involve the media, how to bring in the corporates, how to gets fans to follow the game, bal,bla,bla. For this, you need something to start with...Why not a small time League?

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 6:23 pm

The Harlem Globetrotters will have to play in several cities in India to generate broad based basketball interest in the youth. This interest then will have to be pushed to the next level by arranging basketball facilities and tournaments. What mugu is trying to say (if I can understand his reasoning) is that a coordinated effort must be done to popularize basketball and improve the standard of the game in India.

I hope that Anil Kumar does not take the comments of some members as being negative. I applaud his effort to make basketball more popular in India.

Anil Kumar.

anilkumar · Post by **anilkumar** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 4:13 am

Sorry, if my comments appeared a bit harsh. I understand the view points expressed. India has all the facilities for getting started to broadbase the game and its spread. We look at 8 cities like Chennai, Bangalore, Kochi, Hyderabad, Pune,Coimbatore,Trivandrum and Vizag. All these venues have Indoor facilities if we could look at a Senior league or perhaps, even a College/School league under a similar format would be good to start with.

mugu · Post by **mugu** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 4:58 am

I too appreciate and applaud the efforts of Anilkumar in populraising/promoting the game in India. My comments were only to point out the difficult/near impossible task Anilkumar and his colleagues will have once they get down to it.
My points were based on:
1) Harlem Globetrotters have visited India in the past, twice if I remember. (Maybe thrice) Nothing much happened after that. If anything the standards/popularity slipped to the extent that National championships barely get a mention on TV and get very little in print media;
2) Popularity in certain pockets (Kerala, TN, Andhra, Punjab) have not really helped the game develop and attract youngsters/sponsors/media or for the country to attain a decent ranking in Asia;
3) League will surely create fresh interest, but ours is a media inebriated with cricket/Sania/Karthikeyan. It will take a lot more than Harlem Globetrotters and a club league/colleges league to wean them away from their pet topics. (Getting a few paras won't help much. Take the example of Football!)
4) NFL is a classic example of plans gone awry. Though some interest has been kept alive and the federation has managed a huge sponsorship deal with Zee, our standards have remained pathetic. (Poularity remains strong as ever before in Kerala, Bengal, Goa, Manipur and to a lesser extent in Punjab, Delhi, TN, Andhra, Karnataka, Maharashtra)
5) Playing among oursevles (even with a few foreign players) have not helped football improve standards, as could be seen from the recent display against Fiji and Pakistan.
6) A sustained effort to improve standards can only be managed through more competitions against foreign teams (in football as well as basketball). Volleyball has realised this and even though their National League is yet to create an impact, the Indian team has attained certain rating at the Asian and world level because of a sustained junior programme and more international exposure.
7) The answer thus lies in a four-pronged thrust: a) more competitions for seniors and juniors at the national and international level (begin with bilateral exchanges with a few Asian countries and a few annual tournaments inviting Asian clubs/teams); b) prepare teams at different levels, seniors (two teams at the least), juniors, sub-juniors, provide them training under expert coaches and give them top-level competitive exposure; c) popularise the game at the state/district level by creating more facilities, holding more tournaments and providing incentives; d) if the time gets ripe, start a National league, professional or any variety.
In a country where a basketballer will get a rare look-in when it comes to selecting Arjuna awardees every year (the last was Parminder Sr, whose choice itself came in for criticism because of the fact that India does not have anything to show even at the Asian level. Arjuna award rules stipulate that your performance have to be at the international level), it will be tough. Very very tough to hope that without preparing the ground to revive interest (and to build a team), one can change its fortunes around by starting a pro league. (By interest, I don't mean recreational interest)
I thought I will forewarn Anilkumar. I was not trying to discourage. Please go ahead and bring Harlem.and start the Pro League. Let's hope Indian basketball takes a turn for the better.

anilkumar · Post by **anilkumar** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 10:36 am

Thanq for the points mentioned and taken note of. A couple of pointers:
1) The Harlem Globetrotters is proposed to generate an interest level in the game among the 3 fundamentals- media, corporates and supporters.
2) The tour is part of a long term arrangement to come into India across 30-40 cities over a period of 3-4 years and focussing on Asia thru India.
3) The absence of a personality in Indian basketball shifts the need to creating an event or a personality. The latter takes time, the former can be done faster, hence a League proposal.
4) For any league to survive, what needs is professional understanding on managing one. It starts with the concept of ownership...so we need to create Team owners...public/private/corporate/mediahouses etc etc.
5) For looking at owning a Team, you need to have a Business plan in place so that it appears viable to an owner (financially from an investment view point).
6) The revenues for any league in a country like India would obviously be TV dependent and if Zee could pump in close to Rs. 300 odd crores for a 10 year domestic football deal, we need to understand that money is available and somebody needs to work to get a fraction of that into other sports like BB....or else cricket will keep swallowing everything.
7) With a spate of TV channels looking for other events, BB has and always been a TV sport. SO package it as one, and money will come in.
8) There are plenty of expats who are looking to promote BB and I presume that if we make a good business plan across, they wud look at it seriously, if not invest in it.
9) The rest of the stuff....players, infrastructure, officials, media support will follow automatically.
THE KEY IS A GOOD BUSINESS PLAN ON HOW TO SET UP A LEAGUE.

mugu · Post by **mugu** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 12:07 pm

I like your optimisim and basic arguments. Indian sport (BB especially) needs people like you, Anilkumar. Good luck!

anilkumar · Post by **anilkumar** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 10:14 am

Has anybody got any idea about the PHL, the Hockey League and how they went about it in terms of revenue management etc. to help get started with a busines splan for a BB league.

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