South Africa's basketball community

Basketball – national body or national business?

By on March 22, 2010 in News

warriorsThe NBA’s Golden State Warriors franchise is reportedly up for sale. The team has youth and potential, but that’s the same as the last time it was sold in 1995 [remember Chris Webber and Latrell Sprewell?].

A handful of the other team sales that have taken place in the last couple of decades:

Look at those amounts!

What’s interesting is the business approach to running these teams, something that has worked incredibly well in the developed North American market.

Now I’ve never heard of any such deals for the NBA itself, but it does make a good argument that a business approach is the best way to deliver outstanding results rather than giving national sporting bodies all the power.

The one big problem with this argument is of course development – North America has a well developed high school and college feeding system, without which there would be no talent for the professional league anyway.

What do you think – would basketball in South Africa perform better run completely independently as a business or is it better under the umbrella of a national body?

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Subscribe

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe now to receive more just like it.

There Are 6 Brilliant Comments

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. MJ says:

    Unless I am mistaken, basketball in South Africa is organised similar to the US ie. we have BSA and US has Basketball USA, we have PBL and US has NBA.

  2. I believe you're right MJ although we know a direct comparison of each is difficult for a number of reasons.

    I'm interested to see whether anyone thinks there would be a difference if the entire sport was run as a business, or alternatively if all the commercial entities were removed and it was run solely under a national umbrella.

  3. NeoDa1 says:

    Every professional league in the world does not exist independently from the mother body. Just like the NBA, PBL, PSL. They all operate under the umbrella of the mother body but are given the freedom to generate their own revenue which the mother body would tap into. The pro league is a business no doubt or else it wouldnt have enough revenue to promote the sport. The mother body with the money they get from wherever the should take care of development, they can hold the pro league to task about development but the prime objective of the league is to make money. The mother body should also be run like a business. The same principles used by the pro league to earn revenue the mother body should table their strategies to generate income.

    Sport is money, money follows sport so why cant we just be prepared to go get that money..

  4. K says:

    ok – did we not just witness a global recession because of laissez-faire and money first economics? there is no way on this gorgeous planet that we want to rid ourselves of our development-focused institutions. if Germany can have 50% taxation and and an effective government, so can we have great basketball, great business in basketball and great administrators. social capitalism is the way forward gents….

  5. @NeoDa1 Interesting viewpoint – a part of me agrees with you entirely – that the right incentive is necessary to ensure that things move forward. Something that we see in the big divide between public and private enterprises and the results they achieve.

    @K The recession has shown a dark side of capitalism, but isn't social capitalism very similar to what we have now, only reliant on more volunteers? I do think this can go part of the way. A lot of the efforts that have already moved basketball forward in SA have been on a volunteer basis, but I don't know if it can carry on like that and actually deliver great results. I hope it is the answer but I don't know if it can work effectively – how do you see it playing out?

  6. @NeoDa1 Interesting viewpoint – a part of me agrees with you entirely – that the right incentive is necessary to ensure that things move forward. Something that we see in the big divide between public and private enterprises and the results they achieve.

    @K The recession has shown a dark side of capitalism, but isn't social capitalism very similar to what we have now, only reliant on more volunteers? I do think this can go part of the way. A lot of the efforts that have already moved basketball forward in SA have been on a volunteer basis, but I don't know if it can carry on like that and actually deliver great results. I hope it is the answer but I don't know if it can work effectively – how do you see it playing out?

Top