When the NBA "staged its All-Star Game in Toronto this year it was another subtle sign of a league's global ambitions," according to Steve Keating of REUTERS. The first time the event was held outside the U.S. "could hardly be considered daring or groundbreaking." There "are no such basketball bloodlines in China, now the NBA's biggest foreign market, and even fewer ties to India, the cricket-crazed subcontinent that the league has targeted for its next growth spurt."
According to the NBA, 300 million people play some form of organized basketball in China and the league has India's 1.3 billion population "in its crosshairs employing the same patient game plan to growing the sport from the grassroots up."
NBA President of Global Operations & Merchandising Sal LaRocca said, "There are a lot of similarities when we think about the opportunity in India and how we thought about China. There is also some very big differences. Basketball has been played in China for over 100 years and basketball relatively speaking is relatively new to India." Long before India's name is added to that growing list of countries to host an NBA game -- and there are currently no concrete plans -- the league "will have laid a solid foundation for its arrival on the subcontinent."
What was once a labor intensive promotional effort "has been overtaken by a viral volcano of tweets, videos and chatrooms with the NBA boasting that it has surpassed 1 billion followers on social media."
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said, "The U.S. together with Canada is roughly five percent of the global population. So there's a big world out there and they all seem to be following us on social media." While the NBA "has established a solid social media presence the footwear companies have provided the boots on ground" with Nike, adidas, Reebok and Under Armour leading the charge into vast new markets.
Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Stephen Curry "have provided the marketing muscle for the footwear giants on which the NBA has piggybacked."
LaRocca: "Nike, Under Armour and adidas had huge businesses in China and have done a great job in bringing players over there and exposing them in ways that frankly we would not be able to do" (REUTERS, 3/17).
