Ever since I was a kid, the NBA has been talking about going global. But really, all it has been is talk. I remember hearing about a European expansion, which always sounded like a cool idea and nowadays, as the NBA’s European players are some of the best in the game, it seems more and more likely. In 1992, the U.S. Olympic “Dream Team” achieved the first wave of the NBA’s globalization as the squad showcased the NBA product for the rest of the world. Then in 1995, the league actually became global when it initiated two non-American teams into the league– the Toronto Raptors and the Vancouver Grizzlies. In the NBA’s story of globalization, this expansion represents the greatest effort to grow the league beyond U.S. borders. Besides the Toronto Huskies, a team in the defunct Basketball Association of America that only played the 1946-47 season, until 1995, U.S. basketball was limited to the U.S. Canada has always been a difficult place to house NBA teams, due to a weak currency and an even weaker interest. In 2001, the Grizzlies left Canada for Memphis and the Raptors, while still a viable franchise, have not become the success story that the league had hoped in its prized foreign franchise financially or athletically.
While Canada, no doubt, is the easiest place for the NBA to expand, it is not the international market that wants or demands the NBA product. And the NBA seems to be wising up to this fact. On Tuesday, NBA Commisioner David Stern discussed in an interview with Reuters the current state of the NBA’s globalization and how China will be the next frontier for the league. According to Stern, who has always been a major proponent of international expansion, the NBA in China will soon be a reality. “The model that we’re working on now is the placement of all of our assets in China in an enterprise with all NBA rights,” Stern said from New York Tuesday, “That would include rights to sponsorship and merchandise revenue, TV deals there, and the ability to operate a league such as NBA of China.” Stern believes that as China embraces the free movement of labor in other business areas, so too will it allow the best players to play in the Chinese league. Currently, there are rules restricting how many foreign players play for each Chinese team.
Despite what Stern says on the record, if the Commish had his way, and he may get it, the Chinese league would become NBA China, and the allure of the American game would replace the drab CBA. Stern views the Beijing Olympics as the ultimate force to drive his globalization goals. He said of the ‘08 games, “It’s going to be an awesome tournament. Beijing is going to be to the globalization game what the Dream Team was to the beginning of globalization.” And he may be right. The Olympic tournament will bring to China what the Communist nation has been begging for the last decade– the best players in the world playing the prevalent Chinese sport on Chinese soil.
There is no mistaking the importance of China in the future of the NBA. Wednesday, the NBA’s president of international business operations announced the first foreign NBA store will open on Beijing’s Wangfujing, the city’s premier shopping avenue. A store in Shanghai and NBA-themed restaurants in China will follow. The NBA has a 50% annual rate growth in China making it, by far, the league’s fastest-growing market. It’s shocking that while so many international companies have moved into China over the last few years, the one company that dominates China has been so timid in its expansion here. Clothing stores, restaurants, expanded television coverage are all fine. But let’s go Stern. Enough is enough. Bring the game to the country that wants it most. Bring the NBA to China.
•Reuters: Commissioner Wants To Give China NBA’s Expertise
•People’s Daily: NBA To Open First Overseas Store